| Home | Sections | Shop CA House | Join the CA | Contact us |
|
| ||||
|
| ||||
Library > New Acquisitions > Book Review
Compass; Alan Gurney; W W Norton & Company Inc.; New York, 2005; £9.99; CA 16624
Pilot books ain't what they used to be. "It depends entirely on the compass, and if there is a small error you will be buried in the belly of a shark" warns a thirteenth century treatise on the East China Sea.
I am indebted for this quotable snippet to the volume under review, an entertaining and comprehensively researched account which does for the marine compass what Dava Sobel's book 'Longitude' did for the chronometer. The book has a similar flavour of solid historical scholarship combined with popular story telling, and, indeed, draws its initial inspiration from the same event, the loss of HMS Association and other ships of the Mediterranean fleet on the reefs of the Scilly Isles in 1707, due, it would seem, more to ropey compasses supplied by the Navy Board of the day than to any question of longitude.
If you enjoyed Longitude then you will enjoy this book, which deserves to have the same sucess. If you've not read the former then I recommend them both. - BMF
Page prepared 31 January 2006