36. Captain James Clark Ross (1800-1862) had difficulty navigating accurately in Antarctica

“During Captain James Clark Ross’s voyages around the Antarctic circumference, he often wrote in his journal perplexed at how they routinely found themselves out of accordance with their charts, stating that they found themselves an average of 12-16 miles outside their reckoning every day, later on further south as much as 29 miles.”

Another irrelevant historical observation

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clark_Ross
What does Eric Dubay think that this quote shows?  That sailors were unable to get an accurate latitude and longitude in the southern hemisphere?  Of course they were, or how else would they know at the end of the day that they were 12-16 miles outside their reckoning?

So it seems that during the day in 1840 a sailing ship captain had difficulty keeping track of their exact location.  Hardly surprising considering that they were on sailing ships without GPS, subjected to uncharted sea currents and wind patterns and could not measure speed accurately.


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