STATION POINTER.

The origin of this most invaluable instrument to the nautical Surveyor or Navigator is somewhat obscure. The first mention of it occurs in A Treatise on Maritime Surveying," by Murdoch Mackenzie, senior, 1774, where it is described as consisting of “a brass graduated semi-circle about 6 inches in diameter, having 3 radii with chamfered edges.

Such an instrument as this may be called a Station Pointer and would be found convenient for finding the Point of Station readily and accurately." In the Nautical Magazine, 1842, it is stated that about 1784 Graeme Spence invented the Double Sextant and made a model of a new Station Pointer as a counterpart to this Double Sextant. The rough models of these instruments were shown by Mr. Mackenzie to Lord Howe, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was pleased to order others upon the same pattern, of Troughton, the skilled mathematical instrument maker. Spence never received one penny in reward from Mr. Mackenzie for the same, nor any addition to his small pay of £45 a year, from the Admiralty." This was Murdoch Mackenzie, junior, the nephew of Murdoch Mackenzie, senior; he succeeded his uncle as Admiralty surveyor in 1771, and possibly was in possession of his uncle's original instrument or a similar one. Graeme Spence, his cousin, was bound apprentice to him for 7 years in 1773. It is stated that after the death of Spence in 1812, a small book, containing drawings of many of the instruments and apparatus of his invention and their methods of use, was submitted by his widow to Lord Melville, at that time First Lord of the Admiralty. Then in "Nicholson's ་་ Journal, 1801," is given the Description. and use of the Station Pointer constructed by Joseph Huddart, F.R.S. Huddart was a very inventive genius and a celebrated surveyor both in home and foreign waters. He served for some years under the Trinity House and became an Elder Brother. This description of his Station Pointer is a very good one and is accompanied by an illustration, which shows it to have been remarkably similar to those

of the present day. Huddart's Station Pointer is still preserved in the Museum of the Trinity House. Cary, London, is the maker's name engraved upon it, but without any date. There is also an inscription stating that it was purchased by Trinity House on Huddart's death in 1842.

In "Simms' Mathematical Instruments," published in 1837, is a description and woodcut of a very antediluvian kind of Station Pointer, with fine wires stretched along the legs instead of chamfered edges, and which strange to say continues to be reproduced to the present day in

Heather's Mathematical Instruments." As Simms became the partner of Troughton in 1826, it is quite possible that it is Spence's model which is here produced.

Captain Belcher in his "Nautical Surveying, 1835," claims to have improved the Station Pointer, principally by substituting an open brass semicircular centre of half inch aperture, to enable a pencil to be used in place of the pin in the earlier instruments for marking the Place of Station" which he found so frequently tore the paper.

As Huddart's Station Pointer is still in existence, why should not Mackenzie's or Spence's be possibly hidden away in some Museum or private house? I have searched all the likely London Museums without success. Can anyone throw out any suggestions as to where these instruments might be found or furnish any further information as to the origin of the station Pointer or as to what has become of Graeme Spence's manuscript book? It is not at the Admiralty. H. E. PUREY-CUST.

source from which he meant to take the materials for his supplement. Thanks to Mr. Manwaring's kindness in calling my attention to it, I bought this and another similar volume on Gunnery and Fortification, from Mr. Halliday, of Leicester, in 1920. There were also two volumes on Military Architecture,'' which I did not buy.

The volume on Naval Architecture consists of 89 leaves of coarse paper, 25in. by 19in., with folding plans of ships pasted on to them, for the most part on both sides. Altogether there are 41 blank pages out of the 178, but a great number of the remainder have two or more plans. The Volume is lettered on the back, Naval Architecture, Vol. 2, Charnock," and has a leather label inside the front cover with the words, "Naval Architecture by John Charnock, Esq., Civil Engeneer (sic) and Historian. Died 1807, aged 51."

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On page 2 there is a portrait of Charnock, published in 1810, engraved by the order of Henry B. H. Beaufoy, Esq.," whose book-plate is found just beneath the label already mentioned.

A catalogue of the plans, etc., would be wearisome. I will only mention a few points. There are many drawings of ships' boats and various small craft, including several of the Dublin yach (as proposed, 1753). Some of the more detailed plans are the Boreas and Trent (1757), Rainbow (1744), Royal George (1756) and Yarmouth (1745). There is a finished drawing of an 80-gun 3-decker on the 1733 Establishment, and engraved plan of a proposed 80-gun 2-decker. Another interesting drawing is a diving dress of a very cumbersome design. The earliest ship represented appears to be " Capt. Geo. Mathews,

an

the Nile, launched in August, 1727.' Many of the drawings are made on the back of printed Dockyard forms.-R. C. ANDERSON.

THE MAYFLOWER.

The writer of the notice of Dr. Rendel Harris's book "The Finding of the Mayflower," at p. 352 of the last volume of THE MARINER'S MIRROR, very pertinently asks, Did ships of 1620 have their names and ports of registry on their sterns ? " It appears that in endeavouring to identify the ship's timbers in a barn at Jordan's as those of the Mayflower reliance is placed by Dr.

I am here only concerned with the giving of an answer to the reviewer's query-an incomplete one, as will be apparent, but which may serve for the present.

John Reeves, the author of a wellknown work on The History of English Law," published in 1792 a History of the Law of Shipping and Navigation.' In this book he makes some comments upon the statute 26 Geo. III. cap. 60, then recently passed, intituled An Act for the further Increase and Encouragement of Shipping and Navigation, and which had probably prompted him to deal with the subject. After pointing out that the frequent changing of the name of his craft had been a favourite trick of the smuggler, Reeves says "It has been before noticed that the changing of the names of ships had been a mode long practised for defeating the effect of the register-laws. Το prevent this in future, owners are not to change the name by which a ship was first registered; and they are, within a month after the first registering, to paint in some conspicuous part of the stern, in letters of four inches length, the name of the ship; and any owner or master obliterating or concealing the name so painted " and so on.

The actual wording of the Act of Parliament is more diffuse than this statement of its effect, but I prefer to reproduce Reeves's language because it appears to imply that it was by this statute of 1786 that the painting of names on the sterns of English merchantmen first became obligatory. It will be observed that nothing is yet said about the painting of the name of the port of registry. An earlier Act, 7 and 8 Wm. III. cap. 22 (A.D. 1696), which required the registration of British-built ships, has no word of painting names of either ship or port.

the

Perhaps Dr Harris would contend that the Mayflower was a case of intelligent anticipation. She. had certainly been to America.-W.S.

The tack of the Fijian canoe sail is, I believe, secured by a strop: the point of the" yard" fits against a cam, into a kind of slot, cut or carved in the solid covering board at the end of the canoe, which does duty for the time being as the bow. This covering or decking is made in a single piece of hard wood, usually dogo (pronounced ndong-o," which is mangrove). It is of similar form and design at both ends of the canoe, though the two extremities of the "dug out "hull itself always differ slightly. The term cama (pronounced thama-sounding the th as in "then," never as in "think") means "outrigger." Kau means wood or wooden, signifying in this instance "log" hence a camakau is a solid outrigger craft, in contradistinction to a twin-hulled one. The hull of a camakau, or the main hull of a drua (pronounced 'ndrua ") is called the kata. The wind

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ward hull in a drua is always somewhat smaller and shorter than the true Kata. Hence, in sailing down the wind the word of command to let her come up a bit " is Ki cama! and the order to let her go off a bit (you cannot wear ship in a Fijian canoe) is Ki kata!. These terms mean literally, "outriggerwards" and 'hullwards" respectively. If sailing on a wind, or close hauled, the commands are different, viz., tau! for luff," and uli! for a rap full, or “ bear up"; though the word lave! is sometimes used for the latter. It means raise the loom of the steer-oar," by which movement the blade is depressed and acts as a sort of sliding keel at the after end of the canoe, so that her bow falls off in obedience to the lateral pressure of the wind. It is not a case of porting or starboarding the helm, to govern the direction of her head (since there is no rudder), but of raising or

depressing the blade (and conversely the loom) of the steer-oar in a plane parallel to the vessel's length (there is no keel). This steer-oar, which, in a canoe of large proportions, is of vast size and weight, is called the uli; and the man who wields it stands abaft it, looking forwards. In a double canoe (drua) two steer-oars and steersmen were often employed.

Other terms are ai vana, the mast; ai vakavakarewa, the halyards; na mua e liu, the bow or fore part; na mua e muri, the stern or after part; na dreke (pronounced ndreke), the hold or interior, dug-out portion; ai kaso, the cross poles that sustain the outrigger; ai lobi, the stay; a dali, a rope; ai voce, a paddle; ai kelekele, the killick or mooring stake (no etymological connection between them). In Fijian the vowels are sounded as in Spanish, and every one is pronounced. Of the consonants C, as written, is always pronounced as th, b is always sounded as mb, d as nd, g as ng, singer," q as ng in "linger"; and no two consonants are ever in juxtaposition excepting dr (-ndr in English).-B.G.C.

in

GWYN'S BOOK OF SHIPS.

An engraving by P. C. Canot, after a painting by Thomas Allen, of Harwich and the Yatches going out, with Lord Anson returning the Salute from Landguard Fort, is undated, but seems to represent Harwich on August 7th, 1761, when Lord Anson accompanied by a fleet of yachts sailed in the "Charlotte yatch" from that port to Cuxhaven to bring the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz to England. It was intended that the future Queen of George III. should land in state at London; but after thrice sighting the English shore and being driven off again by bad weather, once nearly to Norway (the princess meanwhile bearing the voyage well, and amusing herself with a harpsichord, as we are told in the Gentleman's Magazine), the fleet finally came again into Harwich.

Possibly Thomas Allen painted a picture of the "Yatches coming in" also, but the engraving named above, in the Dawson Collection at the Penzance Library, evidently, unless some other such occasion can be found to fit it, represents the sailing of the Charlotte and the accompanying yachts on this Cuxhaven voyage.

The outward-bound fleet shows nothing but broadsides and sterns and it is

impossible to identify the ships by the descriptions of their figure-heads as shown by Gwyn. There is but one shiprigged yacht however, and as far as it is possible to compare them this and Dr. Dingley's supposed Charlotte may well be the same. In the Encyclopédie Methodique-Marine, 1783, we have an excellent plan of the Yack du Roi d'Angleterre, the Caroline, and Lescallier also gives what as to hull at least must be a somewhat fanciful picture of a ship-rigged English Royal Yacht; both of these later ships have more or less marked points of difference from either supposed picture of the Charlotte, and thus far support these identifications.

The ketches making up the rest of this fleet of yachts are exactly of the class represented by Gwyn's yatch ketch,' and make it almost certain that this, although not appropriated specially to the service of the King personally, was in the wider sense a Royal Yacht. The ensigns of the print show no cross of St. George and may well be red, the tilts abaft the mainmast are shown in all, and the rig, except for crossed topgallant yards, that were we may be sure sent down again during that stormy homeward passage, is exactly the same. Each of these yachts carries four guns amidships, projecting from wreathed portholes; this is the only detail that I fail to match in Gwyn's picture.

"

The Y"-shaped gear from the gaffs of the yatch-sloop" and the ship rigged vessels of Gwyn's book, shows a neat device, by means of which two brails were controlled by one fall. This in the case of the yatch-sloop' was in the period 1760-70 something of a novelty, I believe; for a little earlier we find in this rig instead of the ordinary brails a sort of martnet that had remained a part of the rig since its inception, and had been taken over from the older smacksail (see "M.M.," Vol. V., P. 48). On this same page, curiously, I notice examples in plenty of the door-like port-lids mentioned by Dr. Dingley as being present in Gwyn's oared frigate. These, however, are not so hinged because of the presence of channels above them; they are rather to be compared with the sideways-opening portlids at the waist of 17th century ships, that have immediately over them a waistboard pierced with loopholes for muskets, and seem to be so designed

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as to offer no obstruction behind which boarders might find a shelter.

Careful as Gwyn's drawings are, it is not surprising that Dr. Dingley should hesitate to accept the extremely swallowtailed topsails of his schooners as representing anything normal, for they look so very unpractical. Possibly Gwyn misunderstood a drawing that showed in addition to lower yards the separate square-sail yard that was hoisted with its sail when going free, but remained at other times lowered almost to the foot of the mast. Had he attempted a compromise between these two positions for his lower-yard he would have arrived at his mid-mast position, and would then have had to swallow-tail his topsails to correspond. If such topsails were actually in use it would be difficult indeed, one would imagine, to make them anything but a nuisance in sailing on a wind. One of the flights hanging in the Shippers Hall at Lubeck has a spritsail-topsail of the same shape, but that would only be used when going free and does not help one to accept Gwyn's. I, at all events, although I have noticed many pictures of 18th century schooners, have never elsewhere seen such topsails, and should judge that, if they were a fashion, this must have been for a short period only.-R. M. N.