In the forum archives, find 15Apr2007 16:07:03, Ric is addressing the "58-338" notiotation in Betty's notebook, Others before and after. Also me, sometime in 2007 as a newbe.
It is very informative to go back and read those old discussions in the Forum archives.
Here is the link to the April 2007 archive.
On that page, search for "LOP/Betty's notebook".
Thanks Mike, Marty.
Many referrals to LOP but AE/FN knew precisely where they were I believe, except for the name of the island.
The question of whether they knew they were on Gardner or not has been eating at me for a while. If they gave up on Howland and headed for the Phoenix Islands, you have to wonder if they knew anything about them, had a chart or other reference that would help, or were just winging it, so to speak.
If Gardner was just the first land they saw where they thought they could bring it down safely, did they know what it was? If it’s me and I’m betting the farm on this landing, I’d be squawking everything I knew about it (especially where I’m going to try it) before I went in, but if she did no one heard her.
Anyway, the current version of Sailing Directions, a nautical pub that FN would have been familiar with from his time at sea, describes the islands in a way that would have given them a pretty good chance of making the ID before they landed, including the wreck. Has anyone checked a 1937 version of this to see if the wreck was mentioned? I haven’t found back issues yet, but if anyone has figured out what charts he was using or would have had available, I’d be curious to see what how Gardner was described and whether the wreck was indicated. It just strikes me as odd that the post loss transmissions don’t seem to include the name of the island. Kind of hard to imagine that they could find it without knowing what it was.
The current version lists the wreck as “reportedly breaking up”, so it’s not an up to the minute pub, even today, but Norwich City had been up on the reef for 7 years at this point, and a fairly well publicized rescue had gathered some recent data about the island.
Once they’re down safely, there’s no “Welcome to Gardner” sign, no customs guys, no nothing. Except a wreck with a name. Even with just a basic chart, a couple of sights would have given them an accurate location pretty easily and it’s hard to believe that a guy who just did 2500 DR miles at 100 plus knots couldn’t figure out which island on the chart he was on. I believe Amelia had even studied basic celestial (mention of Bowditch in one of the books). Does anyone know if she was capable of reducing a sight?
Since the sextant box apparently made it to shore, how about the sextant itself? Or the octant? What was more useful, the box or the contents?