Page 107 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

NAUTICALARCHAEOLOGY, 6.3
N. Navigational and scientific instruments
N1. A pair of navigational bow dividers in almost perfect condition in the 1973 report (Price & Muckelroy, 1974: fig 6). As well as
other wrecked Dutch East Indiamen, such as the Lastdrager ( S t h i t , 1974), two particu- larly close parallels were found at Ellan Gheirrag Castle, Argyll (Bryden, 1968) (73 K 144; Site B, 6.6/25-7).
N2. Four heavily eroded strips of bronze riveted together, only 0-045 m in length overall, apparently the remains of the top hinge of a pair of dividers (73 K 249; Site A, 4.3130.6).
N3. A graduated wooden rule, marked off from 0 to 25 on one face, and with an angled mortice at one end, and an angled tenon at the other (Fig. 26). Evidently part of a measuring instrument, it has been tentatively identified as the sight-vane transom of an early and unrefined form of backstaff or Davis quadrant, an identification first sug- gested by Mr Allen Simpson of the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. The gradu- ation of the rule as a chord of a 30" arc, and the angled joints at each end, are adequately accounted for by this explanation; the prin- cipal cause for reservations lies in the less than totally satisfactory accuracy of the graduations, and in the fact that there is no attempt at indicating intervals of less than
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- Figure 26. Sight-vanetransom. Scale 1 : 2.
Figure 27. A backstaff of the Dutch type, as illustrated in W. J. Blaeu's The Sea Mirrour (1625): 13.
half a degree. One of the principal advantages of these instruments was the fact that they could be graduated to a fineness of two minute intervals (Waters, 1958: 302-4).
Assuming for the present that this identi- fication is correct, then this fragment pre- dates any surviving examples traced so far by over 40 years, and is unique in representing a
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