THE NAUTICAL MAGAZINE, &c. MARCH, 1832. ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC. WHEN SO many valuable Periodicals are floating about on the ocean of public favour, it may appear a bold enterprise to launch another among them; but the Proprietors of the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE believe, that they have marked out a course for their work that has been too long neglected by all, and therefore, that the cruising ground which they have selected will be distinct from that of every other. The principal feature of the work will consist of the particulars of those hidden maritime dangers which are too often fatal to ships. As its name implies, the contents of the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE will treat on subjects relating to the sea; and the safety of seamen will naturally become its first care. Much information, of a nature highly valuable to mariners, is scattered about, destitute of any systematic arrangement by which it can be made available to them; but the pages of the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE will hereafter become the receptacle, in which it will be preserved for their reference. The mere detail of rocks and shoals is not, however, generally interesting, and of this the Editor of the work will be found not to have been unmindful; therefore, in order to render the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE Suitable to all classes of readers, and to raise it to that station in the opinion of the Public, which the Proprietors hope to find it assume, a department has been introduced into it, for the reviews of all interesting voyages, besides original sketches, the general character of which, they venture to believe, will be found entertaining. In addition to these, the last department of the work will be a repository of varied and useful intelligence, of a nature calculated to interest most classes of society. With this view, the Proprietors of the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE submit their Prospectus, accompanied by the first result of their labours, to the clear and discerning judgment of the Public, satisfied that, at their hands, useful industry will meet with its just reward. Prospectus. The contents of the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE will be arranged under the following heads : I. HYDROGRAPHY.-This important and comprehensive subject will form the principal feature of the work, and will include the particulars of all MARITIME DISCOVERIES, whether Islands, Harbours, Rocks, or Shoals, with their positions, and the authorities on which they depend; together with statements of changes in light-houses, in the positions of buoys, and in the condition of channels, as they occur; with accounts of harbours recently constructed at home or abroad, and directions for entering them, besides notices relating to the tides, the variation of the compass, and indeed every particular which concerns the safety of a ship. In this department of the work, the various supposed positions of reported dangers will be stated, with the view of attracting the attention of Seamen to substantiate or refute them. II. VOYAGES.-The second department of the work will contain reviews of interesting voyages performed by foreigners, as well as by our own countrymen. From this source much information will become accessible to many readers, from whom it has hitherto been excluded by the high prices of the works in which it is to be found. Original sketches of this nature will also occasionally appear; and thus, it is hoped that the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE will assume an entertaining, as well as an instructive, character. III.-NAVIGATION.-The third division of the work will be devoted to critical notices of all publications directly appertaining to navigation; especially of new charts, plans, and sailing directions. A copious Index of these publications will be given at the end of each volume, forming, in the course of time, an extensive list of all such as are interesting to the navigator. This department will also include notices of all improvements in nautical instruments, as well as of any new invention important to navigation. IV. NAUTICAL MISCELLANY.-The fourth department will contain statements of the arrival and sailing of ships in all parts of the world, according to the latest intelligence; accounts of wrecks, and information relating to shipping in general; notices of all intended or newly-established communications by steam-boats, the time of the departure of the foreign mails, and other intelligence of a miscellaneous and useful description. The great object of the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE is the advancement of Hydrography by the diffusion of useful information, and on this ground the Proprietors of the work respectfully solicit communications on the subject, however trifling, from the numerous intelligent seamen of the royal and mercantile Navy of Great Britain. The Proprietors feel assured that MARINERS will derive incalculable benefit from the publication of the discovery of new dangers, as they are inserted in the Admiralty Charts, as also of similar information received at Lloyd's, all of which will be communicated to one of them, who is the agent for the sale of the above Charts; and they believe, that by these means the NAUTICAL MAGAZINE will not only be found useful to the seaman, but of great interest to all connected with him in this or in any other country. The NAUTICAL MAGAZINE will be published in Monthly Numbers, at the price of One Shilling. This arrangement will enable the Proprietors to give early publication to communications, addressed to Mr. BATE, No. 21, Poultry, London 3 INTRODUCTION, THE art of Navigation, like many others, has, in its infancy, been nothing more than the crude result of practical combinations-of experience, which has taught the advantages or inutility of various contrivances of the knowledge of seafaring, and the constant observation of scientific, men-of the activity and energy of those passions which incite to the performance of great undertakingsand of casualty, which full often lays open to the consideration of man, things which had been concealed in obscurity. All these causes combined, have amplified and converted navigation into one vast science, the very essence of which is philosophy, and which, in its most comprehensive form, embraces the sciences of Meteorology, Astronomy, Geography, and Hydrography. Such is the energetic and concise definition which a modern author* has given of Navigation. From the earliest stage of this art, its progress, and enlargement by Mathematics, Astronomy, Optics, and Physics, we might be induced to look with indifference on the works of its first authors, and to consider them as rude and uninformed, if reason and justice did not convince us, that the whole magnificent fabric of navigation, which in the present day fills us with surprise, and commands our veneration, is founded upon them; and that, considering the state of science during the sixteenth century, the authors who first reduced this art to one concise system, have more claims on our admiration than all the improvements which it has received in the present day, from the application of new theories and sublime mathematical truths. The origin of Navigation, like that of other arts, is involved in the fabulous history of early times; but, according to the accounts of the most ancient historians, it was in the Mediterranean and Arabian Gulf that the first attempts were made in the art, and where commerce assumed an active character in the intercourse between the Egyptians and Phenicians. The former, who lived in a fertile land and a genial climate, which rendered them independent of the productions of other countries, devoted themselves to the cultivation of the sciences rather than to that of commerce, and, imbued with gross superstition, applied only a portion of their knowledge of astronomy to Navigation. But the Phenicians, whose country was unequalled in its beauty, less superstitious, and of a more active and commercial disposition, boldly extended their voyages, and established their colonies nearly in every country that was known. They improved the construction of their vessels, they forwarded navigation as much as the period * M. Tomas. Elogio de Duguay Trovin. admitted, and they became the teachers of this art to all nations, particularly to the Gaditanos (inhabitants of Cadiz) and the Greeks. The Carthaginians and Romans succeeded them; but although each in their turn improved their ships, the knowledge of Geography and Navigation, limited to the mere performance of short voyages, would have remained in its infancy, had not the progress of mathematics, and particularly that of astronomy, in modern ages, roused it from its lethargic condition. Navigation at that period consisted only in the knowledge of coasts, and in making short voyages from one place to another, without losing sight of the land; and when by any unforeseen accident this became invisible, the motions of circumpolar stars, and the flight of birds, naturally directed towards the shore, served as guides to the bewildered mariner. The configuration of coasts, and their mountains and principal headlands, with the use of the lead, formed another species of knowledge, for which the mariner was indebted to his experience in Navigation. Until the properties of the magnet were discovered, followed by the invention of the compass, the progress of Navigation could not be otherwise than slow; and therefore, from this important period, which was about the end of the thirteenth century, the real advancement of this art towards perfection can only be dated. The valuable invention of the compass is equally involved in mystery, and its real discoverer is unknown. Lafiteau, in his history of the Portuguese discovery in the New World, says, that Vasco di Gama brought it to Lisbon from the coast of Africa, on his return from Melinda, where the Arabs then used it, and he believed the Portuguese to have been until then ignorant of it. Some attribute it to Flavio Gioja, of Amalphi, about the year 1302; while others again are of opinion, that the invention is due to the Chinese, and that one of their emperors, a celebrated astrologer, was acquainted with it 1120 years before the Christian era; nor have others again been wanting, who have supported the opinion, that it was known in the time of Solomon. The ancient Greeks and Romans are also supposed by some, to have used it, but the silence of Pliny on this subject, says Señor Navarete, "renders this doubtful." In the midst of so many opinions respecting the actual inventor of the compass, it may safely be considered to have been in general use among navigators about the middle of the thirteenth century, as the laws, called Las Leyes de Partidas, that were in force at that period, prove it, in the following words: “Es bien, asi como los marineros se guian en la noche obscura por el aguja, que les es medianera entre la piedra y la estrella, y les muestra por • Cladera. Investigaciones historicas, sobre los principales descubrimientos de los Espanoles, p. 5. note 1. A native of Majorca: he died in 1814. + Hutton's Philosophical and Mathematical Dictionary. ↑ Bochard, book I. Chanaam, chap. 38, refutes Fuller, who maintains this epinion. |