The quadrant was born in this time and space less than half a century, and now someone says to Li Huamei that this is better than the quadrant, of course she doesn't believe it - it's really smaller than the quadrant. ()

"Bragging." In a nutshell, it was a direct denial. Unlike her master, who often traveled in the seas of East Asia, her ships mainly went to Goa and sometimes to Manila, and she had seen most of the new European gadgets through the window of the two colonial cities, but she had never heard of a better nautical instrument than a quadrant.

"Hehe, there are so many things you haven't seen, what is a sextant." Lin Chuanqing looked indifferent.

Li Huamei saw that there seemed to be a place with lenses, and she was about to go up and touch it, when she suddenly heard someone shouting: "Don't touch it, beware of the glass." ”

When I looked back, I saw a man I didn't recognize, thirty-seven or eighteen years old, tall and big. The shorthairs are generally taller, but this one is very tall, looking at least six feet seven or eight (1.9 meters), a head taller than everyone around them, and a muscular body. Round face and big eyes. She wore a blue cardigan that Australians often wore - they called it a training uniform, and someone told her that the blue ones were navy, the gray ones were army ones, and the fancy ones were worn by everyone. The complexion is dark, the skin is very thick, and it can be seen that it has been baptized by the sea breeze and waves, and his expression is stoic and serious.

Behind him were six dressed in black. The boys in the school outfits looked to be between thirteen and fourteen years old. All of them were dark-faced, but they stood firmly on the shaky deck. All of them were carrying a green canvas schoolbag and stood neatly in a row.

"Commissioner Chen, do you want to teach the children again?" From Lin Chuanqing. Be the first to say hello, this person should be a relatively high-level shorthair.

"Yes, this group of children in the sailing class, so far. I paddled a boat in Bopupu, and this time I came out just to have an internship. ”

He walked over, took back the sextant from Li Huamei's hand, and said in a deep voice: "This. The most important thing is the glass lens, and it's useless if you touch it. ”

Li Huamei said: "It's not like I haven't seen it." What a rare thing, as a treasure. Shelly. ”

The strong man didn't pay any attention to her, and saw Mondstadt stumbling from . When he came back from the side of the ship, he rebuked expressionlessly: "A sailor's instrument is his life, and you still want to be a navy if you just throw it away?!" ”

"Yes, yes, I—" Mondstadt Station. I couldn't stand on my feet, but I could see that I was in awe of this person, and I tried to make a good appearance.

"Go back to the cabin, disband!"

"Yes!" Mondstadt tried to salute as his stomach thumped and went to the side of the ship.

"Will you use a quadrant?" Chen Haiyang turned his head to look at the woman in front of him, it was the first time he had actually observed this woman up close. She wasn't too short by modern standards, at least 165 cm, taller at the time, tall, with her hair thinned and tied up in a bunch at the back of her head, which at first glance did seem like a modern woman - no wonder the otaku in the navy were dizzy.

"Of course it will, it's the guy who eats." Li Huamei could see that this was a difficult guy, and she said.

"Let's show me first." Chen Haiyang is very interested in ancient navigation jishu at the moment, many of the equipment used in modern ship navigation cannot be manufactured in this time and space, and how to use the mature jishu of modern and ancient times has become the main topic for training a new generation of sailors.

"Okay, I'll go get a box." She flicked the pony's tail that fell to her ear, "But you'll have to teach me how to use this sextant in a moment!" ”

"Yes." The other party replied very simply.

"Commissioner Lin, doesn't it matter if you have a sextant?" Lin Chuanqing saw Li Huamei go off the deck and asked his family.

"It's not a big deal, we were supposed to teach these kids too." Chen Haiyang said, "Besides, she also taught us things." ”

"Well, I really want this girl to give me some tricks at the helm."

"Don't be kidding, you old snakehead, a little sailboat dares to cross the Pacific Ocean, do you still need someone to teach this?"

"Sailboats have engines." Lin Chuanqing grabbed the steering wheel vigorously, "This kind of pure sailboat, I always feel a little wrong." ”

As she spoke, Li Huamei climbed up to the back stern again, carrying a box in her hand, which was not small in size and size.

"This is my full set of instruments." She opened it as she spoke.

Inside the box were several instruments, books, and scrolls of charts.

"There are still a few things on the Hangzhou, all of which are fixed, so there is no need to bring them."

Chen Haiyang watched with interest as she took out the first thing. This thing is quite large, it is made of bronze, it has a radius of about 0.6 meters, cast in bronze, and hollowed out in the middle. Angles are engraved on the outer sides of the quadrant with a minimum scale of 0.25 degrees. Two copper rings are installed in the center of the circle for hanging, and a thin silk thread hangs from the center of the circle, and a lead ball falls at the end of the line. On one of the straight sides of the quadrant are two copper blocks with two circular holes about 5 mm in diameter, through which the eyes can be used to locate the stars.

"This is the quadrant." Li Huamei explained, "Some people call it the Ocean Astrolabe. ”

"Wait, I remember the quadrant wasn't like that." The more Chen Haiyang looked at it, the more he felt that this thing was different from the pattern of the quadrant he saw when he was studying at the Naval Academy.

"This is the Quadrant," Ms. Li said, and then she understood, "You're talking about the British Quadrant." As she spoke, she took out an instrument inside and out, much smaller in size, also made of bronze, somewhat similar to a sextant.

"This is obviously a back illuminator!" Chen Haiyang patted his thigh and remembered the standard name of the textbook.

"Back illuminator? I don't know. Everyone calls it the British Quadrant. But this one is really easy to use and has high precision. ”

UK Quadrant. Chen Haiyang thought that this was really intuitive -- this was the British navigator John Brown. Invented by Davis.

"I can't see the astrolabe now, I'll show you it in the evening, look at the quadrant first."

Chen Haiyang took care of the students: "You all carefully watched Instructor Li's operation!" ”

"This is to make me the head of the sect." Li Huamei giggled, "I'll be ugly." With that, she lifted the back collimator.

The reason why the back collimator is called "back" is mainly to distinguish it from the right-angle collimator used before it. The two are used in a similar way, except that one is to observe the sun directly, while the other is the opposite, with his back to the sun.

To do so, the observer turns his back to the Sun and aims at the horizon through the narrow slits on the aligner on the large arc angle device and the light viewer on the small arc angler. Set the projection illuminator by estimating and adjust the illuminator until the upper shadow falls on the top of the narrow slit. At the same time, you can see the horizon. The sum of the readings on the two arc anglers is the top distance. Then you can know the specific latitude through the calculation of the formula. The large arc of this instrument is divided diagonally, so even small angles can be read accurately. The accuracy of latitude calculation has been greatly improved.

Li Huamei directly operated it, and asked the naval cadets to operate one by one, and let them calculate the latitude separately. Most of these children came from maritime families, but almost all of them were illiterate, let alone math. Kao made up the knowledge only because of the bad supplements of the national school, and naturally the calculation was very slow. Several people measured and calculated, and the answers handed in were quite different from the numbers measured by Li Huamei.

Chen Haiyang looked at the calculations of several students, and some of them obviously made a calculation error, and there was no problem with the observation numbers and the calculation process. It seems that the students' understanding is still okay. After all, in previous shore teachings, they had already taught students such things as the earth, latitude and longitude, time difference, and basic geography and astronomy. Otherwise, the concept of latitude alone can kill people.

"They know latitude and longitude?" Li Huamei was a little surprised. Almost no one in the Ming Dynasty understood this concept, and even those who begged for a living at sea every day did not know it, and they were not interested in knowing it—there was another system of ancient Chinese navigation.

Chen Haiyang is a little strange, isn't the concept of latitude and longitude the most basic concept in navigation: "I have taught them, otherwise how to sail?" ”

Li Huamei sighed with emotion: "I don't see more than ten people in Daming who know what latitude and longitude are. "I was suspicious. These Australians always say that they are immigrants from the Great Song Dynasty who lost overseas in Australia, and since they are alone, how can they know European science? And these instruments. It's as if they've been in contact with Europe. But Europeans have never heard of this place. It's weird.

What was then brought out was a small bronze plate with scales, holes, and hands, the edges of which were zigzag, and at first glance looked a bit like a circular saw blade.

"Night timer. But it doesn't work now, and it won't work until midnight. ”

"Is it possible to determine midnight time by using the punctuality of stars through meridians?" Chen Haiyang speculated.

"You're really good, you can see it at a glance! Used? ”

"No, I really didn't expect Shijie to have such a thing on it before you took it out."

"This is a pamphlet for navigation." She pulled out a book, the rough crusty cover, which was badly worn.

"This was—"

"The Seaman's Calendar." Chen Haiyang was a naval officer and his English was not bad. The title of the book is understandable.

"You know English?"

"Yes." Chen Haiyang is very humble.

"Hehe, that's amazing." Li Huamei praised casually, wondering why everyone in this group of Australians knows a few words of English? When it comes to Australians as a trading nation, Dutch or Spanish seems to be more useful.

She didn't know that thanks to the universal education and college entrance examination system in another time and space, almost everyone under the age of 30 in China knew a few English.

The book is full of astronomical charts that some voyagers must use, mainly meridian charts, charts for every quarter compass to access the scale and distance and departure charts for each degree, as well as logarithmic tables of natural numbers, trigonometric functions, and tide tables. It is a handy reference book for seafarers.

"The book is now only available in the UK. It's hard to find. This was the last time I got it from a British ship. "Apparently loot.

The other book was printed in Portuguese, and Chen Haiyang couldn't understand it, so he had to explain it to Li Huamei.

The book is called "Operating Regulations for Astrolabes and Quadrants". The purpose is to provide a reference table for increasing latitude and longitude. Whether it is the sun or the stars to determine latitude and longitude, it is necessary to link the change in latitude with the distance traveled, and sailors have a distance table. It is generally attached to each direction of the compass in order to increase or decrease the latitude and longitude. The book includes a table of distances, a table of latitudes from the ends of the earth to the equator, and a table of solar declination with a four-year cycle. Published as a guide to navigators, the book has a very long history, having been published in 1509, and the earlier editions may have been even earlier, at least when Columbus sailed in 1492. It has been revised and republished since then.

Chen Haiyang flipped through these manuals and looked at the numerous guidelines and numbers on them. What a great effort human beings have made to break through their own territory and explore new shijie. Although these manuals may seem crude, and some of the guidelines and figures are even wrong, they are the wisdom and experience of countless voyagers, and standing in front of them cannot help but be in awe.

Isn't this Li Huamei in front of her also one of those senior navigators? Chen Haiyang, who had always been suspicious and repulsive about her, had a subtle emotion in his heart.

The naval cadets were all half-grown children, and although they were bound by strict military discipline, they saw a lot of strange things that had never been seen coming out of the box, and they were all looking around while Chen Haiyang was not paying attention.

Li Huamei Zuihou took out a roll of paper: "These are nautical charts." It's expensive. She joked.

These charts are Mercator charts drawn in accordance with the latest scientific and technological achievements of the time and space. Medieval nautical charts were flat. This chart was originally a model of compass azimuths for medieval Mediterranean charts, and all the north-south lines given were parallel, and as the distance from the equator increased, the east-west distance became more distorted. As a result, there are often large errors in the bearings on the charts. Mercator invented a new projective chart. The most basic feature of this projection chart, which differs from a planar chart, is that it gives the true bearing or compass bearing line between any two points. Accuracy is greatly improved.

Most of these charts are from the seas of East and Southeast Asia, as well as the Indian Ocean. Chen Haiyang certainly knew the value of these charts, which in the past were a huge asset.

"Can you go to Goa?"

"I'm running the Goa-Macau route. Madras has also been. ”

"You're a navigator." He said from the bottom of his heart. Chen Haiyang is an explorer at heart, a lover of outdoor activities, and after retiring from the army, he once crossed the Siguniang Mountains alone, and sailed in the Qiongzhou Strait by himself. I have a great sense of sympathy for this kind.