The voyage of Verrazzano : $b a chapter in the early history of maritime discovery in AmericaMurphy, Henry Cruse
History
The voyage of Verrazzano : $b a chapter in the early history of maritime discovery in America
Murphy, Henry Cruse
America -- Discovery and exploration -- French; Verrazzano, Giovanni da, 1485-1528
It remains for me to lay before your Majesty a Cosmographical
exposition of our voyage. Taking our departure, an I before
observed, from the above mentioned desert rocks, which lie on the
extreme verge of the west, as known to the ancients, in the meridian
of the Fortunate Islands, and in the latitude of 32 degrees north
from the equator, and steering a westward course, we had run, when
we first made land, a distance of 1200 leagues or 4800 miles,
reckoning, according to nautical usage, four miles to a league. This
distance calculated geometrically, upon the usual ratio of the
diameter to the circumference of the circle, gives 92 degrees; for
if we take 114 degrees as the chord of an arc of a great circle, we
have by the same ratio 95 deg., as the chord of an arc on the
parallel of 34 degrees, being that on which we first made land, and
300 degrees as the circumference of the whole circle passing through
this plane. Allowing then, as actual observations show, that 62 1/2
terrestrial miles correspond to a celestial degree, we find the
whole circumference of 300 deg., as just given, to be 18,759 miles,
which divided by 360, makes the length of a degree of longitude in
the parallel of 34 degrees to be 52 miles, and that is the true
measure. Upon this basis, 1200 leagues, or 4800 miles meridional
distance, on the parallel of 34, give 92 degrees, and so many
therefore have we sailed farther to the west than was known to the
ancients. During our voyage we had no lunar eclipses or like
celestial phenomenas, we therefore determined our progress from the
difference of longitude, which we ascertained by various
instruments, by taking the sun's altitude from day to day, and by
calculating geometrically the distance run by the ship from one
horizon to another; all these observations, as also the ebb and flow
of the sea in all places, were noted in a little book, which may
prove serviceable to navigators; they are communicated to your
Majesty in the hope of promoting science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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