If you intend to navigate upon the ocean, out of sight of land, using only celestial bodies as your "lighthouses," there are three absolute necessities: a sextant (or other means of getting the exact altitude of the sighted body); a nautical almanac or ephemeris, preferably the current issue (or a considerable ability with spherical trigonometry and an encyclopedic knowledge of the movement of celestial bodies--particularly the one you are using); and an accurate timepiece set to, or correctible to, Greenwich meridian time (Coordinated Universal Time).

Given those things, and some paper and a pencil--and ideally, a chart and a few simple instruments, like a pair of dividers or compasses, a straightedge and perhaps a set of parallel rules or a pair of triangles, you should do very well--provided that you also know how to use all of the above.

With American Practical Navigator, you can find the knowledge you need to use the above tools. It's all in there.

It is one of the textbooks used by the United States Naval Academy to teach celestial navigation, as well as the United States Power Squadrons. I am a full certificate member of the latter.

American Practical Navigator is not an essential book. There are other texts that are useful in learning celestial navigation; but, it is by far the best.

Nathaniel Bowditch, the original author of the American Practical Navigator, was born in 1773, in Salem, Mass. He sailed as a ship's master, and worked as a cooper and ship's chandler, but his all-consuming interest was in mathematics. He learned French, Spanish, German, Latin and Greek in order to absorb the discoveries of others, and at the age of 16 was reading Newton's 'Principia,' translating it from Latin--and he found errors. He later published his own findings, and they were accepted. He wrote his first almanac at the age of 15. He developed an new, simplified method of determining lunar distance, and on his voyages began to find errors in John Moore's 'The Practical Navigator,' the leading navigational text. The rest, as they say, is history.

The current American Practical Navigator, Nav Pub. No. 9, published by the Defense Mapping Agency Hydrographic Center, is in two volumes.

Any serious student of celestial navigation will want a copy.

Another volume, similarly useful, and a good adjunct to your library, will be 'Dutton's Navigation & Piloting.'

With these two volumes, and the current Nautical Almanac and your instruments, the world's seas become your thoroughfare.

Joseph Pierre, N
Author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Our Journey Through Eternity

28 of 32 found the following review helpful:


DO NOT PAY THIS PRICE!  Jan 30, 2000 By Daniel Howard
This is a government press. and I believe it may even be against the law to charge more than twent percent of cost. I am a graduate from a merchant marine academy and was required to buy these books. EXECELLENT book however. There is a new volume (combined)and it is not as good as the two seperate volumes.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:


Best overall nautical reference book ever written  Nov 04, 1999 By Tom (tyannone@bellatlantic.net)
If you could have only 2 books onboard your ship, this should be one of them. (The other, of course, would be a current Nautical Almanac.)

7 of 7 found the following review helpful:


Kindlization didn't work for this book  Dec 24, 2010 By mfagan
I have owned the hard-copy for decades; but wanted to review something while on vacation, so I downloaded it to my Kindle (after having read Peggs' review). I have a Kindle DX (white version) and concur with Peggs that tables are corrupted, symbols (such as the one for degrees) are replaced with a question mark, some graphics do indeed have black bars in them to the extent that they are useless. I am very disappointed; although perhaps I can get what I need from it (helped by a previous familiarity of the work). I do not recommend the Kindle version (sent to a DX anyway) if it is to be used for initial familiarization of navigation.

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:


Very Helpful  Jan 10, 2001
This is a wonderful book to have on your desk if you do anything that has to do with navigation, figuring out the curviture of the earth, locating two ships and their locations compared to one another, plotting courses, etc. It is a wonderful reference. This is not the type of book that you sit down and read for the fun of it.

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