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Captain Vancouver's Longitudes – 1792

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2009

Nicholas A. Doe
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Extract

Captain George Vancouver's survey of the North Pacific coast of America has been characterized as being among the most distinguished work of its kind ever done. For three summers, he and his men worked from dawn to dusk, exploring the many inlets of the coastal mountains, any one of which, according to the theoretical geographers of the time, might have provided a long-sought-for passage to the Atlantic Ocean. Vancouver returned to England in poor health but, with the help of his brother John, he managed to complete his charts and most of the book describing his voyage before he died in 1798. He was not popular with the British Establishment and, after his death, all of his notes and personal papers were lost, as were the logs and journals of several of his officers.

Keywords

1. History.2. Errors and accuracy.3. Lunar distances.
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 374 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1995

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References

REFERENCES AND NOTES

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7 This section is about computational technique rather than measurement technique. For an authoritative review of the latter see David, Andrew (1993), Vancouver's survey methods and surveys. In From Maps to Metaphors, Tables Requisite to be used with the Nautical Ephemeris for finding Latitude and Longitude, pp. 51–69, 291–293, 303–305.Google Scholar
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