David Barrie - Sextant: A Young Man’s Daring Sea Voyage and the Men Who Mapped the World’s Oceans

For reasons that will be obvious, I should first record my thanks to my father and to Colin McMullen. I am also deeply grateful to my mother for encouraging me to embark on that life-changing voyage aboard Saecwen so many years ago.

Special thanks are due to my agent, Catherine Clarke, for helping me to refine the original proposal for this book and for persuading HarperCollins to publish it. Arabella Pike, my editor, saw the point of what I was trying to do and has been very supportive throughout the books development while at the same time offering shrewd and constructive criticism. I am immensely grateful to her, and to the team who have put the book togetherJo Walker, who designed the cover; Katherine Josselyn and Tara Al Azzawi who have masterminded the PR and marketing; Peter James, the copy editor; Geraldine Beare who assembled the index; and especially Kate Tolley, who has overseen the whole process with such skill, patience, and good humour.

I have benefited from conversations and email exchanges with Dr. Richard Dunn, Senior Curator and Head of Science and Technology at the National Maritime Museum, who has also kindly read and commented on parts of the manuscript. Richards colleagues on the Cambridge Digital Library Boards Longitude Project have helped me with technical queries: Katy Barrett, Dr. Rebekah Higgitt, and Dr. Nicky Reeves. I am also grateful to the staff of the Caird Archive and Library at the National Maritime Museum, the National Archives, the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, and the British Library.

The Director of the Royal Institute of Navigation, Peter Chapman-Andrews, has been very helpful, and I have made extensive use of the Institutes Cundall Library as well as the Institutes online archives. Peter put me in touch with David Rydiard, staff author, Admiralty Manual of Navigation , who kindly read and commented on the technical parts of the manuscript. J. D. Hill of the British Museum gave me useful advice about the Nebra Sky Disc. I am also grateful to Professor Maya Jasanoff of Harvard University and Professor Claudio Aporta of Dalhousie University for helpfully responding to my queries.

I would also like to thank Tristan Gooley and John Heilbron for their advice and encouragement, and Javier Mendez Alvarez of the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands, who showed me how a modern observatory works and patiently answered many questions. Warner Bros. kindly gave permission for me to quote from the screenplay of Mutiny on the Bounty .

Heather Howard, Colin McMullens daughter, and Vanessa de Mowbray have generously allowed me to reproduce photographs of Colin and of Saecwen, while my sister Fiona Rogers, my nephew Kit Rogers, and his wife, Jessie Lane, have commented helpfully on the manuscript. My sister-in-law, Elizabeth Gibson, has given me valuable advice, and her husband, Rick Morgan, brought to my attention and translated the passage from the Lusiads quoted in Chapter 3. My wifes cousin, Jane Kimber, and her husband, Jonny Clothier, have been extremely generous in allowing me to borrow their beautiful yacht, Brown Bear , in various parts of the world.

My wife, Mary, and my daughters, Eleanor and Miranda, have cheerfully endured my enthusiasm for celestial navigation over many years and have encouraged me greatly during the writing of Sextant . But it is to Mary, above all, that I owe my deepest thanksnot least for her expert help in polishing the manuscript.

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