An American Collection of Source Books for the History of Navigation

Extract

A country that frowns on rich men must be content to let its rare books cross the ocean. Certainly it will lose all those which make no appeal to the literary man, and those to which the devotee of ‘pure’ science is indifferent, since these are the two groups who might be consulted before such a transference, or whose protests would be listened to. Hence it is that, because only a tiny minority has as yet been interested in the crude beginnings of applied science and technology, a discerning American member of the Institute, Mr. Henry C. Taylor, has formed a collection of about one hundred and fifty books which tell the story of how skippers and pilots were taught to set course and make port during the Great Age of Discovery and Colonization. Nearly half of these books are in English, and this is understandable, for although the pioneers of the new methods of navigation were the Portuguese, the English sailor took pride of place after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Mr. Taylor appears at one time to have been satisfied with the breezy statement of Captain Smith of Virginia in 1626 that the seaman was sufficiently equipped if he had his Almanack, his Waggoner, a manual or two, and knew a good instrument-maker like Master Bates on Tower Hill. But one book leads to another, and, having got together these half-dozen books, he began to study them.