On Reflection

One of the earliest cartographic representations of the Gulf Stream, as much a diagram as a chart, was drawn in 1770 by (or more strictly for) the American statesman, savant and polymath, Benjamin Franklin, when he was in charge of the colonial post office. His initiative followed a complaint by the Board of Customs at Boston to the Lords of the Treasury in London that mail packets from Falmouth to New York regularly took two weeks longer than American merchantmen sailing from London to Providence, Rhode Island. …………read more

And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea: ‘Quiet now. Be calm.’ And the wind dropped, and there followed a great calm.

This passage from the gospel of Mark (I use the Jerusalem Bible) brings to mind a curious incident in Faial when I first sailed Jester to the Azores………read more

My first sextant was bought from an instrument maker in Glasgow, for 30 shillings I think. It was, of course, a Vernier, and from time to time I would rub graphite, mixed with a little oil, into its elegant silver arcuate scale to bring up the markings. Its mirrors were as bright as the day they were made and a drop of salt water ……..read more

I was interested to read again recently an account by David Lewis, written some years ago, of a series of gales he encountered in the course of a voyage in Cardinal Vertue from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. He experienced winds of gale force or more on six occasions……..read more