FOR some 15 years past, Dr. J. C. Beaglehole has been editing the Journals of Captain Cook for the Hakluyt Society. These embrace the three great Pacific voyages, and it is a happy circumstance that the two volumes covering the third voyage, and which complete a series of four massive volumes, have been published by the Cambridge University Press in 1967 in good time for the 200th anniversary, on 26 August this year, of the sailing from Plymouth of Cook in the Endeavour on his first great voyage to the Pacific.

Having loosed the topsails as a signal for sailing and hoisted a Jack at the fore topmast to inform Mr. Banks to come on board on 25 August 1768, Cook sailed in Endeavour next day. The undramatic entry in his journal began—‘At 2 p.m. got under sail and put to sea having on board 94 persons including Officers, Seamen, Gentlemen and their Servants, near 18 months provisions, 10 Carriage guns, 12 Swivels with good store of Ammunition and stores of all kinds’.

Now, with these four volumes, the Hakluyt Society, for the first time, has made available to us the daily entries set down by Cook from that first day of sailing in 1768, throughout the three voyages, until his final entry on 17 January 1779.

CAPTAIN JAMES COOK is deservedly esteemed as a great seaman, and he must be acclaimed also in the more particular role of a great navigator. For although he made no specific contribution to the art of navigation as such, he advanced it by sheer force of character. It was, indeed, a task for the mathematicians and astronomers, not for the sailors, to lay down new principles and new observations or calculations by which a ship's position could be found and her course directed when at sea. And it was for the mathematical and optical instrument-makers to design and perfect the instruments by which such observations could be made. But, in the last resort, everything depended upon the ships' captains, the masters and the pilots. They alone could decide whether some novel principle should be mastered, some new instrument actually used. ‘We have piped unto you and ye have not danced’ is a cry which echoes through the ages. For the sailor was not alone in turning a deaf ear to the advice of public men, scientists and his own professional instructors. He was hostile to change, he preferred some old rule of thumb. And this is to be expected from all such men as learn the actual practice of their trade or craft by working beside an experienced master who in turn is passing on the traditions of an earlier generation.

Temperature frequencies near the flight level of S.S.T. aircraft are here treated with regard to the areas Western Europe–North America–North Pacific. The used values are taken from charts of the 50-mb level (ca. 20 km.). They are divided into three groups: (1) Temperatures higher than standard temperature, i.e. higher than - 56° C (Figs. 1, 2) showing very clearly the big North Pacific warm area, (2) values higher than -46° C (standard temperature plus 10° C) (Figs. 3, 4), mostly expressing the polar warming in summer, and (3) temperatures lower than -65° C (Fig. 5), only occurring in winter and concentrated in the European sector of the Arctic. These effects are described along some flight routes.

In this paper, M. Blaise, Chairman of a committee of the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities, and the General Secretary of the Association, M. Pétry, comment on certain changes impending in the notation of luminous intensity and the range of marine lights. They conclude that the changes will be of benefit to navigators at sea and engineers.

In November 1925 the International Hydrographic Review published a report under the title ‘Observations of Visibility Lighthouses’. Since then notable progress has been made towards a standardization of methods. Relatively recently (1966), the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities (I.A.L.A.) published a recommendation for the notation of the luminous intensity and range of lights.

For some years the principal maritime nations have provided sea-going and future Masters and mates with some form of radar simulator training. These training courses, although differing in duration, subject material, training method and technique, had one common aim: to familiarize responsible sea-going personnel with radar as an instrument. They taught understanding of the various instrument controls, picture or display interpretation, plotting and anti-collision tactics based on the existing international Rules of the Road and Admiralty Court jurisprudence: and all this for open-sea conditions where the Master is sole master of the situation and with no outside adviser at his disposal. Many Masters and mates have followed these very necessary and useful training courses and many more will undoubtedly follow, for nobody should today go to sea in a responsible position as Master or officer of the watch without such training. Recently, pilot authorities have started to send their pilots to the same courses and again this is a step in the right direction.

A recent survey by Burger and Corbet (Welsh Institute of Technology) has furthermore shown that those trained do not seem to obtain full advantage of the acquired knowledge, once they are back in actual practice. This fact plus the fast technical advances in electronics and consequently new radar techniques should eventually lead to the institution of refresher courses.

The increase in the size of ships is no new phenomenon. The nineteenth century saw a greater revolution in ship-building than that which we are now witnessing. In construction, wood gave way to iron, and in propulsion steam took the place of wind. These changes were not made without provoking a conservative reaction: when Admiral Courbet, then still a young officer, prophesied the end of sail he became the target of much sarcasm. His opponents could not admit that a free source of motive power could ever be abandoned. Everything that is really important and new begins by being regarded with a mistrust that is eventually swept aside: once the possibility of doing better than before exists in fact, no obstacle can stand in its way.

The sea imposes little restriction on the size of ships. Unlike roads, sea routes are not confined within dimensions which limit the dimensions of the traffic they carry. For ships, restriction comes in at each end of the route, in ports, where the depth of water limits their draught. In consequence, we have seen the size of ships increase, during the last decades, in two specifically characteristic ways.

In this paper, which appeared in an earlier version on the back of a U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office pilot chart of the North Atlantic, the author first of all examines the causes of groundings; four typical cases are then described and analysed and lessons drawn from them. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the human behaviour patterns which lead to grounding, suggestions made about the effect of these patterns and the mariner's mental and physical fitness.

This paper describes a radar technique developed in the course of practical experience in cross-channel ferries, high-speed very manœuvrable craft. The principles of the parallel index system of radar navigation are treated in the Admiralty Manual of Navigation, Vol. I.

A practical radio operator does not have to translate consciously the sounds that he hears into morse symbols and then into letters of the alphabet. In the same way an experienced radar operator can become adept at interpreting a relative radar display without actually drawing the vector triangle; the saving of time is important in multitarget situations. The emphasis in the system described here is upon the relative motion which is directly observed on the radar screen.

As air traffic is expanding rapidly, more and more people are exposed to the possibility of accident. Although safety per passenger-seat mile continues to improve; because of the increasing capacity of aircraft this does not necessarily mean that the accident rate per trip follows the same pattern. The majority of accidents happen during take-off and landing but they are not necessarily associated with loss of life. The application of crash survival factors to structure and improvement in the restraint equipment for crew and passengers; the provision of rapid exit facilities and the reduction of the chances of conflagration have all played their part in improving the chances of survival.

Accidents involving collision with high ground on the other hand are almost always catastrophic and usually fatal to all the occupants. The statistics issued by I.A.T.A. show that some 40 per cent of all passenger deaths, in the airlines contributing figures, are due to this cause. Because of this it is imperative to consider every aspect of them that might lead to their reduction.

COMMANDANT OUDET'S paper ‘The Black Flood’ is a masterly analysis of the circumstances surrounding the loss of the Torrey Canyon. We have come to expect contributions of this standard from Commandant Oudet, so much so that one wonders whether the sort of international tribunal which he advocates would be more effective in pointing to the lessons to be learned from casualties than Commandant Oudet's own work has been for many years past. In his discussion of the Torrey Canyon loss, Commandant Oudet raises the question of whether the size of tankers should be limited. This question has been voiced elsewhere with the implication that, economics apart, the trend towards larger and larger tankers is a bad thing. It deserves a more detailed study.

To simplify this study a hypothetical case is considered in which a company has to transport oil at a rate of 200,000 tons per week between two ports where the round voyage takes two weeks. In theory this could be done using one 400,000-ton tanker, two 2000,000-ton tankers, …sixteen 25,000-ton tankers, …forty 10,000-ton tankers…. Economic considerations favour the use of large tankers provided there is sufficient water at the two terminals and enroute, but is this morally justified in view of the possibility of repetitions of the Torrey Canyon incident?

THE following notes stem from Ronald Turner's somewhat controversial paper on the metrication of navigation.

The unique feature of the nautical or sea mile as a unit of distance is that it is directly related to a commonly-used unit of angular measure. To be more precise, the nautical mile may be defined as the length of a meridianal arc of the terrestrial sea-level surface, the geographical latitudes of the end points of which differ by one-sixtieth of a degree. In other words, the sea mile is a minute-mile, and the resulting convenience to mariners is one that is not too lightly to be sacrificed on the altar of the metric system.

The association of the seaman's unit of distance with the unit of angular measure and with the size of the spherical Earth, became a serious consideration soon after the initiation of the Age of Discovery by the Portuguese navigators sponsored by Prince Henry. Before this epoch, and indeed for some time after, seamen used landsmen's units of measure: units derived from homely, but certainly non-scientific, standards such as the length of a thumbjoint, forearm, foot and pace, and in no way related to the size of the Earth.

The inconveniences in trade and commerce caused by a wide variety of units of length and weight must always have prompted men to suggest standardizing these units.

A horizontal angle between two charted objects provides a line of position and two angles between three or four objects will provide a fix or running fix except in the unique case of a ‘swinger’ or ‘revolver’. The method is faster than the conventional three-arm protractor.

A pelorus is frequently used to obtain two or more bearings for a position fix with generally sufficient accuracy. In rough weather the fix may not be particularly accurate, especially if the charted objects are a long distance away, such as lighthouses. If greater accuracy is desired, one solution is to use a sextant held horizontally to measure the two angles between three charted objects, plotting the fix by means of a three-arm protractor. The angles must be less than the 120-degree capability of the sextant and must be taken essentially simultaneously unless the snip's speed is slow. In some cases, it may be found that two objects lie to starboard and two to port, but the angles between the pairs exceed 120 degrees. The three-arm protractor cannot be used in this case. The method to be described will provide a fix or running fix without using a three-arm protractor.