"Sextant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new life, together with the use of a pocket sextant, prompted him to make various experiments for himself. The only sources from which he could obtain helpful information, however, were some cheap elementary books on mechanics and optics which he procured from the Society for ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... The sextant and chronometer had both been broken beyond repair, and they had been broken just this very night. They had been broken upon the night that Lys had been seen talking with von Schoenvorts. I think that it was this last thought which hurt me ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... when papa came on deck with the sextant in his hand, and "shot" the sun, as it is called; that is to say, he ascertained our exact latitude by observing through the instrument the height of the sun at noon. Placing it to his eye, he watched it until it ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... officer will find difficulty in estimating distances by the eye alone, as it requires long practice and studied observation. The sextant, however, offers a surer method of approximately fixing a position by taking the angles between any three points, which are generally found to be accurately laid down on the Coast Survey charts; then plotting the angles with a ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... observations for latitude and longitude, in order to ascertain my exact position; an 8-in. sextant, mercurial artificial horizon and chronometers being used for the purpose. It is not easy to describe the torture I had to go through when taking those tedious astronomical observations. The glass roof of the artificial horizon had unfortunately got broken. I had to use a great deal of ingenuity ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... navigators. He summoned thither astronomers and cartographers and skilled seamen, while he caused stouter and larger vessels to be built for the express purpose of exploration. He perfected the astrolabe (the clumsy predecessor of the modern sextant) by which the latitude could be with some accuracy determined; and he equipped all his ships with the compass, by which their steering was entirely determined. He brought from Majorca (which, as we have seen, was the centre of practical map-making in the fourteenth ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... began to be taken in things nautical. The sextant, compass, and log were the cause of much discussion, and the usual bets were made on the daily run, the stakes ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... deck, went to the chart house for his sextant. It was just noon, and he wished to log their exact position. Mart gave Bob a meaning glance and the two boys went to the wheel house, where old Jerry was leaning on the idle wheel ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... lever and its companion spark began to move around the tiny sextant, approaching nearer and nearer. Simultaneously, sympathetic, as though actuated by the same power, the hand of the speedometer on the dash began to crawl up and up. They had been all but racing ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... pinned on the wall a chart and the plan of a ship. Relics of the wrecked frigate abounded. On a shelf above the stove was a small pyramid of encrusted cannon-balls, and supported on nails at odd places on the walls were corroded old pistols, and what I took to be the remains of a sextant. In a corner of the floor sat a hoary little carronade, carriage and all. None of these things affected me so much as a pile of lumber on the floor, not firewood but unmistakable wreck-wood, black as bog-oak, still caked in places with the mud of ages. Nor was it the mere sight of this ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... passed towards China. Four seamen presented themselves in a boat, having Edward on the stern, to a vessel at Whampoa, and stated that they had belonged to a lost ship of that name. Swallow was one of them: he was examined by the committee of supercargoes at Canton, and produced a sextant on which was the name of Waldron, of the Edward. This name Swallow assumed, and said that he was captain of the Edward, of Durham; related his voyages to various ports of South America, the Sandwich Islands, and Japan. Compelled to abandon his vessel, injured by the fire ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... the dirty and thumb-worn, paper-covered ledger that was the log of the Charming Lass and had been the log of the old May Schofield for ten years before she went down. It was the one thing he had saved. He had been on deck, taken his sextant observation, and just completed ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... talked without intermission for two hours; before them on the table lay barometer, chronometer, sextant, journal, and half the ship's library. This consisted of Kingo's hymn-book and an old Dutch 'Kaart-Boikje'; [Footnote: Chart-book.] for the skipper could do just as little with the new hymns as the steersman ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... leave here one bag of beads in a skin, 2 bags of Sungo mazi 746 and 756 blue. Gardner's bag of beads, soap 2 bars in 3 boxes (wood). 1st, tea and matunda; 2nd, wooden box, paper and shirts; 3rd, iron box, shoes, quinine, 1 bag of coffee, sextant stand, one long wooden box empty. These are left with Mohamad bin Saleh at Ujiji, Christmas Day, 1871. Two bags of beads are already here ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... found means of carrying off a sextant from Mr Bayley's observatory. Omai fixed on the culprit, who was a Bolabola man, a hardened scoundrel. He confessed that he had taken the instrument, and would show where it was. This did not save him, however, from having ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... of his commands; and the men were often punished twice or thrice in a week. On board the ship of this disciplinarian, Charles and his father were carried in a billy-boat from Sheerness in December, 1816: Charles with an outfit suitable to his pretensions, a twenty-guinea sextant and 120 dollars in silver, which were ordered into the care of the gunner. 'The old clerks and mates,' he writes, 'used to laugh and jeer me for joining the ship in a billy- boat, and when they found I was from Kent, vowed I was an old Kentish smuggler. This to my pride, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of all, a great whirly-go-round, with striped horses and boats, and a steam-organ playing "Yankee Doodle." As soon as they started Joby saw that the whole thing was going around widdershins; and his brother stood up under the naphtha-lamp and pulled out a sextant and began to ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grew worse as I passed through the city, and then along the water-side streets, where there were shops displaying tarpaulins, canvas, and ropes; others dealing in ships' stores; and again others whose windows glittered with compass, sextant, and patent logs, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of the journey Sir George had his sextant, but, having to walk hungry and thirsty, he needed to walk light. Therefore he hid the sextant in a tree, where many a year later it was found, a rustic relic, by some settlers. Death raced him so hard that he eased the burden of keeping in front of it by tearing the boards from his New ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... inventions. This mathematical knowledge enabled the Arabs to make considerable progress in astronomy. Observatories at Bagdad and Damascus were erected as early as the ninth century. Some of the astronomical instruments which they constructed, including the sextant and the gnomon, are still ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... an inscription on a tomb. The Wild Rose was dead, and so was Captain H. C. Jorgenson, and the sextant case was all that was left of them. Old Jorgenson, gaunt and mute, would turn up at meal times on board any trading vessel in the Roads, and the stewards—Chinamen or mulattos—would sulkily put on an extra plate without waiting for orders. When the seamen traders foregathered ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... reduced accordingly. Nansen therefore gave the reduced latitude in his book, but he considers that his horizon was very clear when he took that observation, and believes that his latitude was higher than that given. He used a sextant and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... report; the first, as far as I can ascertain, was never published. This last was accompanied by many observations taken with the sextant and other instruments, requiring long experience to understand and handle correctly. Brahe, a German, had been instructed by my son in their use, and had made some progress. Notwithstanding his ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... to find my latitude, by "bringing down the sun" with the sextant; and was taught the bearings and deviation of the compass, as well as the mastery of the log-line and other similar little ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... much good work in various other directions. Among his mechanical inventions are a sonotype, a tuning instrument by means of which any one can tune a piano accurately, an improved level, theodolite and sextant, a scale for measuring the differences in ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... which was then in port at Apia. He was shown into their chart room and looked at their instruments, upon which he remarked, "I am a better Christian than you are, for you have two chronometers and a sextant, while I have only my belief in God and an old clock." When asked why he didn't take a sheep or some chickens along with him to eat as a relief from his constant diet of canned goods, he said, "You can't kill a fellow-passenger. Out in the great ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... canister, about fifteen inches square, was filled with spare shirts, trousers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life, another of the same size was stored with medicines, a third with books, and a fourth with a magic lantern, which we found of much service. The sextant and other instruments were carried apart. A bag contained the clothes we expected to wear out in the journey, which, with a small tent just sufficient to sleep in, a sheepskin mantle as a blanket, and a horse rug as a bed, completed my equipment. An array of baggage ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne |
