EXCERPT FROM THE DAILY LEVEL # 13

Sunday, September 13, 1998

FREAK OF NAVIGATION

Jay Ottinger (O:) reads 'Freak of Navigation'...

Sea Level, N.C., July 28, 1998

(O:)"The night was warm and inviting, and the stars shone in all their tropical brilliance. Captain John D.S. Phillips was in a dark corner of the bridge, quietly pulling on a cigar with all the contentment that comes to a sailor when he knows that the voyage is half completed. His ship, the passenger steamer SS Warrimoo, was quietly knifing her way through the waters of the mid-Pacific on her way from Vancouver to Australia. The navigator had just finished working out a star fix and brought Captain Phillips the results. The Warrimoo's position was spotted at about Latitude 0 -30' North and Longitude 179 -30 West. The date was December 30, 1899. First Mate Dalydon broke in, "Captain, do you know wat this means? We're only a few miles from the intersection of the Equator and the International Date-line." Captain Phillips knew exactly what it meant, and he was prankish enough to take full advantage of the opportunity for achieving the navigation freak of a lifetime. In an ordinary crossing of the date line it is confusing enough for the passengers because they lose a day, but the possibilities he had before him were sure to confound them for the rest of their lives. The Captain immediately called four more navigators to the bridge to check and double check the ship's position every few minutes. He changed course slightly so as to bear directly on his mark. Then he carefully adjusted engine speed so that he would strike it at just the right moment. The calm weather, the clear night and the eager cooperation of his entire crew worked succesfully in his favor. At precisely midnight, local time, the Warrimoo lay exactly on the Equator at exactly the point where it crosses the International Date Line! The consequences of this bizarre position were many. The forward part of the ship was in the southern hemispere and in the middle of summer. The stern was in the northern hemishere and in the middle of winter. The date in the after part of the ship was December 30, 1899. Forward, it was January 1, 1900. The ship was therefore not only in two different days, two different months, two different seasons, and two different years, but in two centuries, all at the same time! Moreover, the passengers were cheated out of a New Year's Eve celebration, and one entire day. December 31,1899, disappeared from their lives for all time. There were compensations, however, for the people aboard the Warrimoo were undoubtedly the first to greet the new century. And Captain Phillips, speaking of the event many years later, said: "I never heard of it happening before, and I guess it won't happen again until the year 2000!".....(Maycroft:) I don't know how the hell he's gonna prove he knew that he was exactly at that time....(O:) oh, there you go, you gotta piss on the parade!...(M:) yeah, but with the instruments they had in those days....(Twiford:) oh, you're getting technical now!...(M:) in nineteen-hundred....(O:) oh, you goddamn Kings Pointers 1) don't know how to find a point of navigation....(M:) I never was in Kings Point in my life!...(O:) you had to press a couple of buttons to find out where the hell you were....(M:) no I didn't, I was the fastest man they had to put three star sights on the chart .... (O:) yeah, like: uhhh, we're somewhere around here....(M:) well, that's what the old guy claimed he was, but I say....(T:) Harry, you want to put a hole in a good story?...(M:) I'm not napping the story, I say it's a good story, I hope the old guy was right...(T:) well, nobody's gonna believe that damn parrot story if you...(M:) no, but you know, how many guys know within fivehundred feet where the hell they are, when they're navigating?...(O:) well, now wait a minute....(T:) you always know where you have been, I've done that many times, get a bearing on a lighthouse and...of course, I mean, you put it on a Mercator chart (M:) yeah, well, I say though, but if you're half a second off on your timing, you're half a mile off, you know, you gotta (T:) if you see old sailing logbooks...these whaling ships would be out for years and years and they would give their Latitude and Longitude in seconds (M:) there's a guy with a ship, certainly in those days, that wasn't over fourhundred foot long, and he's gonna claim that he was on this time and this time ...with a fourhundred foot ship in four different zones...now, by God, he's got to be a pretty good navigator ... anyway, let's say, that was his assumed position....the Equator is just a line, like a pencil line....just an idea....

(Jay Ottinger, Harrison Maycroft & Horace Twiford)

1) Kings Point = U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Nassau, Co.