Problems in Regard to the Ship

Otago Witness, Issue 1917, 17 August 1888, Page 32

Problems in Regard to the Ship

and others travelling with her on the ocean, thbugh'the lives of all the passengers depend on these problems being satisfactorily dealt with. What erroneous ideas are entertained on this subject is shown by the way in which Charles Eeade pictures "Penfold's efforts to ascertain the position of the island on which he and Helen Rolleston find refuge after the scuttling of the Proserpine. Reade probably knew more about such matters than most, persons not professionally engaged in astronomical research, and he was acquainted, with naval men who could set him right. (I think some such friends must have told him to omit the account of Penfold's determination of the ship's position in an earlier chapter ; as I see this passage is omitted in a recent edition, though a reference to it in the corresponding island scene is left.) Yet he represents Penfold as determining the longitude approximately by a method which would only have given it roughly, and as foiled by the difficulty of determining the latitude (astronomically), though the very observation he is supposed to have made for the longitude have given him the latitude much more readily. Penfold makes a perfectly ludicrous remark about the sun's parallax, " Now for some way of approximating to the parallax ! " which has nothing to do with the problem of determining the place 6f his island — if it had, he ought, since he is represented as knowing most things, to have known the solar parallax ; or, if he had forgotten it and wanted it, he might at least have remembered the sun's distance and the earth's diameter, whence he could have determined the parallax in five minutes. Finding the way at sea depends on two methods, each of which is theoretically complete in itself —