It is not learned in a day, nor in many days; it
requires years.
Also, navigating by dead reckoning requires long
study and practice. But navigating by observations of the sun,
moon, and stars, thanks to the astronomers and mathematicians, is
child's play. Any average young fellow can teach himself in a week.
And yet again I must not be misunderstood. I do not mean to say
that at the end of a week a young fellow could take charge of a
fifteen-thousand-ton steamer, driving twenty knots an hour through
the brine, racing from land to land, fair weather and foul, clear
sky or cloudy, steering by degrees on the compass card and making
landfalls with most amazing precision. But what I do mean is just
this: the average young fellow I have described can get into a
staunch sail-boat and put out across the ocean, without knowing
anything about navigation, and at the end of the week he will know
enough to know where he is on the chart. He will be able to take a
meridian observation with fair accuracy, and from that observation,
with ten minutes of figuring, work out his latitude and longitude.
And, carrying neither freight nor passengers, being under no press
to reach his destination, he can jog comfortably along, and if at
any time he doubts his own navigation and fears an imminent
landfall, he can heave to all night and proceed in the morning.
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