Even today big ships are all required to carry working sextants and the navigating officers have regular routines to keep themselves familiar with making it work. Despite all the Global Positioning Satellites, gyro compasses and radio communications it is at the end of the day an instrument that does not require any electricity or power of any sort to make it work. So when all else fails a sextant can still work. T here is one other instrument you need when using a sextant and that’s a clock that keeps Greenwich Mean Time to a very high accuracy. Plus you will need celestial tables and a good understanding of how to use the tables or do the calculations from principles. Ah and oh yes you will also need to be able to see things, the sun, moon, stars or bits of land. Not that you will need to see them all at the same time but just one would be helpful.

Taking the noon day sight is the traditional way navigating officers found there position in the old days.

Very simply this is how it works.

If you knew when your local midday was and knew what Midday Greenwich Mean Time is you can tell how far away from the Greenwich Meridian you are. For instance Classic Sailing’s office is near as damn it 5 degrees West. So midday here is 20 minutes after those of you in London. Simple maths, there are 60 x 24 minutes in a day, 1440, minutes and there are 360 degrees going right around the world.  So for every degree its 1440 / 360 = 4 minutes. Thus 5 degrees West is 5 x 4 = 20 minutes. Which may explain why Cornwall is always a little backward!

So how do you know when it’s your local midday. That’s when the sextant comes into use.

Basically a sextant measures the angle between two things. In this instance it is the angle between the horizon and the sun.

So checking to see you have sun light filters in place you look through the sextant and adjust a mirror to superimpose the image of the sun and the horizon. (The filters stop the sun blinding you.)

Watching carefully you will see the sun climb in the sky, keeping adjusting your mirror angle you will notice it stop climbing and begin to drop down again. Noting the time of the highest point gives you the local time of midday. In addition the angle of the sun will tell you how far south or north of the equator you are taking into account the date and various other considerations.

The sextant is the development of an older instrument called a Falstaff which measured the angle of the sun form the length of its shadow but that was always a bit tricky at sea.  Indeed the sextant did not come into its own until accurate time could be kept but that’s another story.

Land Ahoy

So far we have mentioned measuring the angle between the horizon the sun, moon and stars but it can also be used on its side. For instance you are approaching land and you see two known mountain tops. If you measure the angle between them and use a compass to point to one of the mountain tops you can then use the compass bearing and the sextant angle to draw your position on a chart.

How far away

In the old days when one vessel was chasing or being chased measuring the angle of the mast head from the horizon would tell you very quickly if the other vessel was getting closer or going further away and by measuring the difference over a short time you could learn how much slower or faster than you they were. Particularly useful when the other vessel is a long way off and judgment by eye alone is difficult.

Horizontal Problem and Sextant

Source(s):

Classic Sailing