C/'/c(:•'C h a e t & C o m p a ss'

1S e x t a n t & S u n - d ia l,
L a t it u d e s & L o n g itu d e s
J U l'JX l

E &J U IV I,lil

G l o b e or P l a n e ?
-.■> :'A LETTER OF REMONSTRANCEllc ^ ) e c tfn lly adrfrcssed to the Officers o f

THl'l NAVAL AND MERCANTILE MARINE OF ENGLAND AND
AMERICA-THE FORMER STYLING HERSRLFuMISTRESS OF THE SEAS.”$\tblvsl)cij bn tbc ,^^ftctrc S o cietir,
B e i n o t h e o n l y c o m p k t e ^' t A u t h o r i t y o n t h e s e
TlfK WCRT^n,S u bjects througiiou t■sv-J- ^ •• - .f- c r >CHART AND COMPASS.
A LETTERR E S P E C T F U L L Y A D D R E S S E D TO THK O F F I C E R S OF T H E NAVAL
AND M ERCAN TI LE M A R IN E OF GREAT BRITAIN AN D AM ER ICA.

Gentlemen,

At a time when naval men and shipowners are beginning toinquire whether the science of navigation, with its collateral con­ditions, is not susceptible of some measure of improvement, may weventure to draw your attention to the undeniable fact that they arestill using a projection or Chart of the World which was invented
three centmies ago, and which has never been considered otherwise
than a make-shift, and retained only because there was no accurate
knowledge of the ocean’s surface or its configuration. But thisignorance is hardly creditable in the present condition of our com­
mercial interests and the extent of our foreign and colonial traffic.
I f those whom it may concern are really in earnest when they
propose to take into consideration any means that may be suggested
for affording greater security in ocean travelling, and leave them lessdependent on systems of navigation which may have been consideredefficient for coasting purposes, or before our colonial empire was soextensive as it it now, they will, I trust, be willing to admit thatnot merely the substantial construction of the vessels themselves
should be practically considered, but shipowners and naval men
generally should honestly and intelligently ascertain how far their
existing charts and projections may be regarded as incapable ofimprovement, or be practically relied on as affording the mostaccurate information as to distances and relative position of every
principal spot on the navigable ocean.
Without any reference to existing theories, may we venture to ask
how many of our most experienced seamen and naval officers could

5
say if they knew what was the actual difference between the northernand southern meridians of longitude ? Would they not be obliged
to confess that they were navigating their ships on an artificial or
purely conjectural system o f hydrography, and that the training they
had received had never taken into account the possibility of there
being a more simple and fixv more rational method o f navigation bya stricter adherence to demonstrable facts instead o f to artificial rules
and astronomical principles, which can have no more analogy totcn*estrial or water surfaces than there could be between the lengthof a ship’s deck and the date of the owner's birth.
I f their system was as correct as it professes to be, ought not a
fully trained and perfectly educated officer bo able to take a ship,say, to Malta and baek, on second or third voyage?

Instead o fwhich, when his theoretical education is over, he has to put his
theories in his sea chest and learn from actual observation, for manylong years, how to take a vessel, say, to the Cape o f Good H ope,
without finding

himself, some foggy morning, on the coast o f

Mexico ?
We are afraid these remarks will be received with much disfarour,and be resented as an insult to the services they are humbly in*tended to serve* B ut we are sure the issues are too serious to admitof any palliation, even in spite of the undeniable fact that thousandsof vessels every year find their way out and home again with themost infallible accuracy.

B ut is this any justification for retaininga system which has to be supplemented with the m ost voluminous
tables, and practically ignored by every experienced sailor ?
We are merely insisting on the fact that a comparatively perfectprojection is as easy of consttuction, and a thousand times moreintelligible, than one which makes a burlesque of the whole subject,and is as unlike what it is intended to represent as if concocted by avillage schoolboy. Whether the earth be a globe or a plane, a squarechart, with its rectangular meridians, cannot possibly represent its
natural divisions, or define its relative distances, or give the true
position of its several continents, or the actual bearing of any spotout ol'sight o f thecrow’s nest.’’Any accuracy of detail is utterly

impossible under such theoretical conditions.

Sui’ely no one will venture to say that th is unoecessary andinexcusable defect in one o f the m ost essential elem ents o f prac­
tical navigation is not a slur on tw o great m aritim e nations like
England and Am erica ?

I f other countries are no wiser, is thatany reason wliy we should persist in settin g such an example o fbarbarous ignorance ?

Our A dm iralty and Boards o f Trade are,unfortunately, regarded as oracular on all subjects relating to sea­
m anship and naval science.

W e are, therefore, the more inex­

cusable for encouraging others to retain what w^e dare not defend
in our own principles.
W e are ashamed to have to in sist that the proper constructiono f our charts o f the habitable world is as easily determined, andthe distances as accurately laid down, and the latitudes and lon gi­
tudes as m athem atically infallible, as w^ould be the plan of an
estate o f a few hundred acres.

A nd yet, in th is professedly m ost

enlightened age, we ^re still using a square chart, with every
figure and line o f it wrong, and as unlike the real earth and its
waters as the ingenuity o f man could c o n c e iv e !

Is not such

ignorance as pitiable in our case as when the N in evites were said
not to know their right hand from their left ?
The distances on Mercator’s chart are com puted on the arcm easurem ent, when no such shape as 'a curve can anywhere befound !

So there are not 90 degrees north or south of the Equator,

but only 57^ degi’ees ; barely 45 degrees of which are practicallynavigable !

M eridians o f longitude cannot p o ssib ly be parallel,

but m ust be divergeyit from tlie central north to the southern cir­
cumference.

M ercator’s straight edge is as preposterous as aSouth Polar centre !
B u t, w ithout pursuing th is su bject further, we are quite pre­pared to show that the topography o f the circular plane on which
we live, adm its o f exactly tlie same infallible accuracy as the com­pilation o f the m ultiplication table.
B y using the present im perfect and m ost m isleading projections,ships m ust inevitably wander hundreds o f m iles out o f their direct
courses ; w'hile tim e and m oney and valuable cargoes are often
risked, merely because the authorities

t hom e think they would5forfeit a certain amount of prestige by abandoning their timehonoured fallacies.
I f the Royal Geographical Societies of England, Scotland, andIreland cannot give you better instructions, on what grounds, it
may be asked, do these scientific Associations venture to collectincomes of £6,000 or £8,000 a year each^ and obtain royalcharters for diffusing imposture and fraud and fiction ?
Now let us make a few practical remarks on the quadrant andsun-dial.
From models or specimens now to be seen in theBritish LIuseum, we learn that tlie quadrant was known and used
£0 early as the end of the 14th century, or several hundred years
before sailors ever dreamed they were sailing on tiie surface of aspherical ocean.

The inventor, therefore, never contemplated

its employment otherwise than on an horizontal base, at rightangles to the sun’s vertical rays or to the perpendicular of any
other distant o b je c t; and it can, by no possibility, give a trueelevation, if used on any other con d ition s! I f these absoluteconditions are not'practically complied with, the observers would
have three-fourths of their time occupied in making

allowance

for curvature’' which it is well known they are never insane
enough to think of.
Again, all observers arc supposed to be on one and the same
horizontal base, so that a greater angle than 90 degrees is nevercontemplated or provided for or obtainable in any survey tliat canbe made !
Every arctic explorer knows that in the latitude, say, ofBehring’s Straits, or Hudson’s Bay, an observation of the sun canbe made at midnight, looking d m north; which would be physi­
cally impossible if a large segment of a circle intervened between
the observer and the June solstice; looking over the North“ Pole !”How discreditable it is to two such maritime nations as E ng­
land and America, to say nothing of the other European govern­ments, that such gross and wiiolly inexcusable ignorance on someof the most important points and the most elementary conditionsin navigation should still p revail!

Again, we do not believe that there is one nantical man in t^nthousand who knows tlie true cause o f the compass needle’s
pointing north and so u tli!

U nless our naval instructors are no

wiser thernselves, their .sole object seems to be to allow our sea­
men and officers to be mere machines, and, like the children o flandsmen, to be unacquainted w ith the m ost rudimentary principles and conditions o f practical science.

A n exposure inevitably

will take place some d a y ; and the professors will then learn alesson from their ill-instructed dupes they are not likely toforget.
Tlie English press, both eccular and religious, is unfoiiunately
in the hands of those who are as ignorant o f the genuine facts o fscience as the m ost thoughtless o f their readers.

And to hide

their shameful incapacity, they toady, like brainless sycophants
to the professional authorities, wlio like abject cowards allow thesehalf-witted journalists to display their wisdom by burking all open
discussion, and publishing their vulgar sneers when any honestinquirer ventures to refer to the subject.
■\Ve could fill m any.pages with the description o f the manifold
fallacies in connection with some o f the m ost familiar objects
around us.

Phenomena and facts are daily taking place before

our eyes, while’ we go on, y ea r. after year, and age after age, as
ignorant o f their true character as i f no such things had ever been
seen.

Even men o f the m ost undoubted intelligence have, forexample, gone on for the last 150 years using a ship’s quadrant,
and never pausing to inquire or to perceive that the instrum ent
was utterly incapable of being accommodated to the conditions
they supposed to e x is t !
Another instrument, quite as familiar as that of the quadrantor sextant, is the sun-dial.

It is the very oldest philosophicalinstrument ever used or invented by man.

And for more than

5,000 years it was used in all its sim plicity and perfection o f
principle ; that is, on the m otionless disc of a stationary earth,with a revolving sun to mark the shadows in its daily progress, or
circular orbit, from its rising to its setting.
But, for the last 200 years, a set o f crafty, and fraudulent, and'a -7
infidel professors have dared to assure their dupes that the sextant
and the sun-dial could bo as easily used on a round and revolving
globe, as on a circular and m otionless plane!

And, in theignorance and credulity of our childhood, we have been led toaccept as genuine truth some of the m ost degrading and senselesssuperstitions ever devised by tlie arch-fiend himself, in order topersuade m ankind tliat tliey were wiser tlian God, and had far
sounder view s o f I lis creation.
W e have scores o f other facts, quite as palpable and im portant,
but we forbear, and only ask our readers to weigh well what wehave already stated.
Mr. Jordan, of 81, Spring Street, IIull, w ill send a lithographedsketch o f the true and false application o f the sextant, which lie
was the first to detect.

The in u tility o f a sun-dial on a revolving

globe w ill be apparent at a glance, when it is remembered that abody rotating on an axis, in one uniform plane before a fixed sun,m u st cast a straight shadow, east and w est o f any upright BtafT‘,
placed anywhere or in any latitude between the solstices, so—

AV---------------------------• — -------- ----------------’E
D ocs it do so ? W hy n o t ! Is it hardly credible that m illionso f in telligen t m en have used these two instrum ents during thelast tw o centuries, without detecting the glaring absurdity ofadapting them to the conditions o f a round and revolving globe ?
And yet the very professors who have m ost fraudulently hidden
these facts fi*om us, have been year after year pocketing theirenormous revenues, w hile leaving us to believe that all thatscience could reveal was honestly and instantly proclaimed for thebenefit o f those who have so unreservedly trusted them.

A nd bo

far from exhibiting the com m onest courtesy towards those whowith every mark of respect sought to discuss the m atter withthem , they have either refused to see them or have given them
plainly to understand that no unprofessional assistance could beentertained for a moment.
The Secretary o f the Zetetic Society w ill gladly furnish any
further particulars on application.
W e have left ourselves no room to refer at any length to theplumbline and pendulum.

W e have had, however, many oppor­

tunities o f proving that they are both o f them as fatal to theglobular thory, as any o f the other instrum ents we have m en­tioned.

The plum bline has never been shown to deviate a hair’s

breadth from a true perpendicular to any horizontal base.

A nd

as for the pendulum, its vagaries have as much consistency as aweathercock !

So that, literally, every possible test to which

ingenuity can appeal—a ll o f them, w ithout one solitary exception,utterly refute the globular theory and fully establish the truth ofthe motionless plane, which the most learned and godly men
maintained and taught for the first five thousand years.

And thepagan blasphemy now insisted on in all our secular and religiouB
literature has not the very ghost o f a fact on which to rely,
Pythagoras, its original inventor, openly asserted that he had“ spent six months in h e l l a n deven if he had not told us so,

we should know that there is but one source from whence such asystem o f lies, and imposture and blasphemy could have emanated.
H as it g ot one defender, except am ong the very scum o f theliterary world ? God’s bitterest curse m ust rest on any country
and people enslaved by such heathen superstition.

And, in spiteo f all the extravagant and senseless ecstacy now being displayedon the occasion o f her M ajesty’s Jubilee, we should have thoughtthat after a fifty years’ slavery to such pernicious fallacies, andsuch worse than heathen ignorance on the most elementary sub­jects, we m ight have hoped that this year would have beencharacterised by some less child islt^ tid sensuous transports thanthose we are givm g way to.
A ll eommunications to he
S o c ie t y ,'Secretary^ Z e t e t i c

Cosmos Houses Balham, S urrey.

The only correct diagram of Latitudes and Longitudes andSolar courses ever published or procurable, with coloured
Map of the World as a circular plane, may be had of theSecretary, })ost free, 2s.
G. W. O O O K , r r in tc r , 3, 4

6, iSwan B u ild in g s, Mooj'gatc Street.