The Nautical Sexant

The Nautical Sextant reveals in pictures, prose and perspective the experience and knowledge gained by the author from years of acquiring, studying, and restoring sextants from earlier times and from around the world.

This is an astoundingly good book, an important book—but a little difficult to explain. Mainly it is about restoring old sextants—a subject of some (however limited) interest to sailors. But like they say about art (you know it’s good when
you see it) this book is very similar. Apart from the superb writing and hundreds of stunning annotated color pictures, it covers other aspects such as: optical principles, mirroradjustments, types of telescopes and their relative desirability, errors of collimation, and sextant repair and collimation. Historical facts about manufacturer’s attempts to improve on the device is interwoven throughout, with an extensive history of the sextant makers themselves from the earliest to the present day.

It is the most in-depth exposition on marine sextants ever written, and will be of particular value not only to navigators, but to restorers, collectors, students of technology, curators, and sextant dealers. With its bibliography and extensive use of footnotes, it is sure to be a collector’s item some day. HB 245 pages.