The Figure of the Cross-Staff and the Manner of Observation.
"Davis's Quadrant," invented by the celebrated navigator of that name in Queen Elizabeth's time, was the best of these. This instrument was known also as "the back-staff" from the position of the observer with his back to the sun when using it. The cross-staff or fore-staff was, however, still used, as it was in the time of Columbus; this was simply a four-sided straight staff of hard wood, about three feet long, having four cross-pieces of different lengths made to slide upon it as the cross-piece does upon a shoemaker's rule. These cross-pieces were called respectively the ten, thirty, sixty, and ninety cross, and were placed singly upon the staff according to the altitude of the sun or star at time of observation; the angle measured being shown by a scale of degrees and minutes intersected by the cross-piece on that side the staff to which it (the cross) belonged. Besides the cross-staff, a form of small quadrant, called an "Almacantas staff," was used just after sunrise, and before sunset, for finding the sun's azimuth, and the variation of the compass, while in latitudes north of the line, the "Nocturnal" gave the hour of the night, by observing with it the hands of the great star-clocks, Ursa Major and Minor, as they turned about the Pole Star.
The Figure of the Nocturnal.
Letter to the Governor of St. Antonio.
"The day after anchoring at St. Vincent," Rogers says, "we clear'd our ships, but it blow'd too hard to row our boatloads of empty butts ashoar; and we could do little to wooding and watering, till this morning, we were forc'd to get a rope from the ship to the watering-place, which is a good half mile from our anchorage, and so haul'd our empty casks ashoar by boatloads, in order to have 'em burnt and cleaned in the inside, being oil-casks, and for want of cleaning our water stunk insufferably. But borrowing a cooper from the 'Dutchess,' and having five of my own, we made quick dispatch." "We also sent a boat to St. Antonio, with one Joseph Alexander a good linguist, and a respectful letter to the Govenour, who accounts himself a great man here, tho' very poor, to get in truck for our prize goods what we wanted; they having plenty of cattel, goats, hogs, fowls, melons, potatoes, limes, ordinary brandy, tobacco, &c." And while here Rogers adds, "that tho' our people were meanly stock'd with clothes, and the 'Dutchess's' crew much worse, yet we are both forc'd to watch 'em very narrowly, and punish'd some of 'em, to prevent their selling what they have to the negroes that come over with little things from St. Antonio's." In his letter to the Govenour, Rogers tells him that "as our stay cannot exceed two days, despatch is necessary, and that the bearer can inform his Honour of the public occurrences of Europe, and the great successes of the Confederate arms against the French and Spaniards, which no doubt must soon be follow'd with a lasting peace, which God grant."
Desertion of a Linguist.
From an entry in the journal a few days later to the effect "that our boat return'd yesterday with two good black cattel, one for each ship, but no news of our linguist;" it appears that worse luck befell him than that which attended Mr. Carlton Vanbrugh, or it may be that he took less real interest in the cruise than that gentleman. Whether this was so or not, the officers of both frigates at once agreed, on the return of the boat "with the two good black cattel," that they "had better leave him behind than to wait with two ships for one man that had not follow'd his orders;" or as Captain Rogers puts it in a marginal note, "our linguist deserts."
That there was honour as well as method among the leaders in these "undertakings to the South Seas," is clear from the minutes of a debate now held on board the "Duke," "to prevent those mutinies and disorders amongst the men who were not yet reconcil'd since the taking of the small Canary prize."