CORRESPONDENCE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 474, 15 June 1912, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor. Sir, —In your issue of June Sth you have an article entitled "Schooner Asks Her Way Across the Ocean,'" and in the course of that article you convey the impression that to do so i 1? rather irregular to say the least. It is quite evident from what you say that the schooner had come a Jong distance without seeing land, and aho that the navigators of the schooner did not feel too sure of their own chronometer. May I say in defence of the navigators of the schooner, that there is no chronometer or time piece in existence that is perfectly correct. Also that where a craft is buffetted abnut, as a schooner would be, by every wind that blows, that she may fee! a certain amount of uncertainty ss to her position, as far as longitude is concerned, especially as that position depends primarily on the said unreliable chronometer. Let me say that any sailing vessel, whether schooner, barque, or ship, is only too glad to verify her own reckoning by that of some other craft that has presumably seen land more recently than herself. You must recognise in justice to the sailing vessei that she must go as the vind drives her with all the disadvantages of compensating for leeway, deviation and variation of current, etc., while the well equipped and strong powered liner calmly pursues her way, and while influenced by certain of the above-named conditions, can generally by previous observations and a constant table of deviations, more or less ignore them, and by virtue of her immunity from minor drawbacKS affords information for the guidance of the less we equipped and, longer from land sailing vessel who seeks her friendly (and I am glad to say, seldom refused) good offices as to longitude, she being always fairly sure of her latitude. Permit me to say that in asking her longitude there is nothing impertinent in it; it is the ordinary courtesy of the sea and quite common. —I am,- etc., ALBT. P. BENNETT, Master Mariner. Hamilton, June 11th, 1912.