The Violently Moving Boat And The
Closeness Of The Observer's Eye To The Surface Of The Water Are To
Blame.
A big wave that lifts up a mile off is liable to steal the
horizon away.
But in our particular case there was another perturbing factor. The
sun, in its annual march north through the heavens, was increasing
its declination. On the 19th parallel of north latitude in the
middle of May the sun is nearly overhead. The angle of arc was
between eighty-eight and eighty-nine degrees. Had it been ninety
degrees it would have been straight overhead. It was on another day
that we learned a few things about taking the altitude of the almost
perpendicular sun. Roscoe started in drawing the sun down to the
eastern horizon, and he stayed by that point of the compass despite
the fact that the sun would pass the meridian to the south. I, on
the other hand, started in to draw the sun down to south-east and
strayed away to the south-west. You see, we were teaching
ourselves. As a result, at twenty-five minutes past twelve by the
ship's time, I called twelve o'clock by the sun. Now this signified
that we had changed our location on the face of the world by twenty-
five minutes, which was equal to something like six degrees of
longitude, or three hundred and fifty miles. This showed the Snark
had travelled fifteen knots per hour for twenty-four consecutive
hours - and we had never noticed it!
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