Journal of Operations of Party to Observe the Transit of Venus at Peking

Résumé du livre

"On May 30, 1874, three days after the practice sessions ended at the Naval Observatory, the instruments for the Southern Hemisphere transit of Venus stations were placed aboard the USS Gettysburg and shipped to New York. There, on June 7 the parties boarded the USS Swatara, lying off the Battery of New York Harbor, for the journey to the far-flung southern stations. Sailing eastward via Bahia and Cape Town, the Swatara anchored in Three Island Harbor of Kerguelen Island on September 7, and on October 1 discharged the Harkness and Raymond parties at Hobart Town, Tasmania, the first to remain in Hobart Town, the latter to go on to Campbell Town. The next port was New Zealand's Bluff Harbor on October 16, from which C. H. F. Peters led his party to Queenstown over government railway free of charge. Thirteen days later the final southern party, that of Edwin Smith of the Coast Survey, was dropped off on the desolate Chatham Islands. On November 13 the ship anchored back in Hobart Town, to await the transit observations and then retrace its track to return the parties home. Meanwhile, two months after the departure of the Southern parties, the three northern parties departed from San Francisco to Nagasaki by the Pacific Mail steamships. Coast Survey George Davidson's party remained in Nagasaki, while Asaph Hall's party sailed to Vladivostok on the USS Kearsarge, arriving September 9; Professor James Watson's party arrived on the same day in China for the trip to Peking."--Steve J. Dick, http://www.usno.navy.mil/pao/History/ToV_Chapter_7.htm