Traverse Board

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Guinea 976

     The traverse board was used in dead reckoning navigation to record the course of a ship during a watch period. It consisted of a piece of wood marked out with a compass rose and eight holes bored along each point of the compass. Every half-hour (by sand-glass) a peg was inserted into a hole marking the compass point on which the ship had run. At the end of the watch the mean course during the watch was determined from the positions of the eight pegs.