A careful study of Parts A and B of the new Regulations as far as the application of the Steering and Sailing Rules is concerned leaves one disappointed and apprehensive. The first because an opportunity for considerable rationalization has not been fully used and the second because the corner-stone of the edifice of safety which for many years has supported the careful seaman has been knocked out. Apart from these there is a number of ambiguities.

It will be realized at once, of course, that these words are being written by one of the old school who has for several years opposed the more fundamental changes and to whom, since he first went to sea some sixty years ago, the old Rules covered with a minimum of verbiage the infinite variety of maritime circumstances and conditions. Additionally, having studied most of the collisions which have brought shipowners to Court, he has found none in which the Rules were faulted, but a vast majority in which human frailty in the form of misappraisal of the circumstances or conscious disobedience of one or more of the simple Rules had been the cause of disaster.

The corner-stone referred to above was the clear division of responsibility between the two parties to a situation involving collision risk in both the crossing and overtaking encounters.

Dense fog prevailed over the whole of the Thames area for three days from 1518 on 18th through to 1900 on 21st December 1972, with no real clearances of significant extent or duration throughout this period. Such prolonged fog had not occurred there since December, 1962.

I Suppose this incident might be entitled ‘How not to find a lightship’. It took place in the 1930s while I was serving in the M.S. Potter, one of the United States Line's long-haul cargo motorships of the period. She was a three-island, fivehatch ship which could lift eight-thousand tons and move it at eleven knots. She was my home for five years and wound up as part of a breakwater at the Normandy beachhead.

Dr. David Lewis, a Fellow of this Institute and occasional contributor to the Journal, arrived at Palmer Station in the Antarctic, under jury rig, on 29 January having left Sydney on 20 October 1972 and stopped twenty-four hours at Stewart Island, N.Z., on the way. His long-term objective is to circumnavigate the Antarctic Continent, single-handed. He was twice capsized, in the course of which his gloves disappeared which resulted in badly frost-bitten fingers. After two months day and night in insulated boots, the warmth in the U.S. base when he arrived made his feet balloon and crack.

Marine and air navigation can still learn from each other. Mariners are following aviation in adopting some routing and control but aviation could follow mariners in their refusal to accept routing and control unless it is cost effective. However it may be easier in the marine case to measure the cost and probability of a collision than it is in the aerial case. But many states have established mandatory airways and routes; originally their navigational aids were very useful and in the event of forced landing the search and rescue people knew where to look. But many airliners now have self-contained navaids like the inertial navigation system (INS) or doppler so that they can navigate off airways, and also forced landings are rare. In the history of air traffic control at first it applied only around airports; when it spread to routes many aircraft were quite happy to fly off airways. But now airways have proliferated and have become customary and respectable to airline pilots so that few complain when some states force aircraft to follow lengthy and costly routes. The only virtue of airways is their freedom, theoretically, from uncontrolled traffic and from military dangers. If A.T.C. were confined to those situations where the risk of collision without A.T.C. would be worse than, say 1 in 10,000,000, flying would be a little more expeditious, but everyone feels secure within the system and insecure, guilty and uncomfortable outside it, so A.T.C. is used universally by airliners.

At the invitation of the Nautical Society of Japan, a society with aims similar to the Institute's, the Executive Secretary visited Japan between 5 and 17 April. A short report to Council follows.

Stewart very rightly draws attention to the practical value of the knot as a measure of velocity. In so doing he underlines one of the defects of SI: the essential simplicity and uniformity so attractive when considered in abstract becomes rather blurred when put into practice. The knot falls completely foul of SI; neither the unit of length nor that of time is an SI unit. The practical application of both units illustrate the difficulties well.

The choice of a standard set of prefixes to units, each separated by a factor of 1000, is both logical and convenient. One need never write down a number less than unity or greater than 999·999. … If the number is 1000 or more, it is divided by 1000 until it does lie within these limits and the appropriate prefix added to the unit. If it is less than unity, multiplication is substituted for division. For length measurements one starts with the metre and goes up to the kilometre, or down to the millimetre, micrometre and so on. Perhaps the only person whom this does not suit is the astronomer who is likely to prefer the light-year (approximately 10 metres, the index 16 being outside the range of prefixes) or the parsec (2·46 light-years).

The world, however, is not a linear one and difficulties start when one measures areas.

A recent Portuguese postage stamp of interest to philatelists and navigators alike was issued to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of an adventurous air flight over the Atlantic from Portugal to Brazil by two officers of the Portuguese Navy, Rear-Admiral Cago Coutinho and Commander Sacadura Cabral.

In a valuable memoir published in English as well as in Portuguese by the Club Militar Naval of Lisbon an account of the novel method of navigation adopted by the two aviators is given. In the foreword to the memoir we are told:

‘The use of points of reference through the line of the intended crossing, and the able and skilful modifications of the formulae of nautical astronomy, by which the observer may, before starting, prepare the greater part of his calculations, in this way leaving only another quite material [small] part to be done in the air, are the two original conceptions by which the astronomical navigation, with a sextant, can be done in the air with accuracy and comfort …’