Atlantic High (19 page)
Authors: Jr. William F. Buckley
But (it transpired) Danny had kept not just a single journal, but a second. And what he told me, the afternoon of his distress, was that he wanted me to have not only the first, but the second. “The second is personal.” I said that was okay, and I appreciated his willingness to let me read it, but that after all I was committed to composing a book. He paused and said he didn’t care how many people knew how he felt about Gloria.
Danny and I flew back to New York two weeks later, the day after landing in Marbella (the others would dribble back over the next days and months). The day after arriving in Connecticut, Pat and I ceremoniously congratulated Gloria (they lived four houses down from us, in a garage apartment). After the Bermuda telephone call Gloria had proudly announced, to Pat and two house-guests already known to her, a) that she would soon be married, and b) that she was expecting a baby. On both counts she was congratulated. When, on my arrival, my son Christopher telephoned me, asking routinely about the passage, I gave him a quick briefing. Quickly we talked about Danny, who had already called Christopher to invite him down from Nantucket (where he was holed up writing a book) for the wedding, which would be held on the Fourth of July, and to invite him to serve as best man. Christopher was glad to do this, enthusiastic as he is about Gloria, in sharp contrast to his dark forebodings about her predecessor at the altar, side-by-side with a love-struck Danny; at which ceremony he had also served as best man.
The Fourth of July was a very beautiful day in Connecticut, and in the morning, dressed in the customary Levi’s and sports shirt, Danny cruised around to my garage office, two documents in hand.
“Here are my journals.”
I thanked him, laying them aside, and we talked about his plans. He would honeymoon aboard my yawl,
Suzy Wong
, taking only the weekend off. The marriage-making justice of the peace was due exactly at one, and Danny’s landlord Peter Starr (an old friend and sailing companion) and his wife Sandy had volunteered their huge lawn, extravagantly decorated, a large awning set up for the lunch. A hundred people had convened, Danny’s parents and grandparents having driven all the way from Florida in a camper.
I forgot about Danny’s journals until the next morning. It was fitting that I should have seen the second journal during Danny’s honeymoon. What it comprised was spurts of objurgative passion, done stylistically as only Danny could: total candor, totally un-selfconscious.
“Gloria, how I love you and miss you. Oh what presents you’ll enjoy, especially—me.” “I want your body against my own …I want this child and you.” “Gloria, it’s Wednesday, the 11th. I physically hurt from missing you so. I wish never to leave you for such a period again lest I die, which I prefer not. I’ve never wanted anyone so much. I feel that we’re truly one person. I know how you feel now and I want to be with you to cry and hold you and love you. I’ll see you in just over 2½ weeks. Can’t wait”
The very night of the mid-ocean party he had managed an entry in his journal, “I
love you Casale [Gloria’s surname]. I’ll always love you, you will be my cutie now and God willing for the rest of my life. Glor, we’ve had such an evening. We’re half way, a party of sorts, God knows how much champagne, wine and booze but I lie in my small and lonesome bunk, wanting one being, you. I close my eyes and feel you, touch you and smell you and for one moment know you are in me and we are together. But that fleeting moment lingers in my mind more than my body can stand. I’m 912 miles away from the nearest point of land. I love you. I look forward to your being ‘Mrs. Gloria Merritt’ …Yes! … She is my
wife.”
The following entry he wrote in the morning, entitling it “Dan’s Prayer.”
“I pray Lord I live a full life with the woman I choose, the being I love so; who is with me now and always, and I pray to the Lord for the blessing you might favor us
.
“I wish to openly make amends for my sinfulness and open my heart to thee and my brothers around me. Please protect that which I love and care for and those who enter my life, help me Lord to be more like thyself. Let me grow as those around me have taught
.
“I believe.”
It is difficult to conceive of a marriage in which the bridegroom, formal theological difficulties to one side, more closely approached a state of grace.
At 1:15 the justice of the peace hadn’t even arrived. Danny and Christopher (Buckley), dressed in white ducks, blazers, and gray silk ties, and looking like college freshmen at a fraternity induction, came into Danny’s living room where the Christopher Littles, Pat, and I were having a glass of wine, waiting for the ceremony to begin. What to do? How to get a justice of the peace at one in the afternoon of the Fourth of July! I called the home number of an old friend, member of a large law firm. He wasn’t there, but his wife was, and she gave me the names of two of her husband’s partners who were, she thought, also justices of the peace. The first one was indeed at home, mowing the lawn. Twenty minutes later he was with us, in full regalia. While the guests were being assembled he chatted. “I’ve been an AA for thirty-three years. But I keep up my license as J/P, want to know why? Under Connecticut law a J/P can lock up a drunk for thirty-six hours, no questions asked. I’m telling you, I use that power every now and again—maybe once a year—and I sometimes prevent real damage, wife beatings, suicide, maybe even murders. Yup.” We were advised that the guests were ready. It was 2
P.M
.—at which moment the original justice of the peace drove in, utterly indignant at a substitute’s having been retained; and completely soused. I turned to Number Two and told him he had a splendid opportunity to use his powers on Number One; but, in the event, they just exchanged a fraternal wave. The latecomer slunk away. Christopher B. had, protectively, sheltered Danny from the hugger-mugger. Danny was by this time properly nervous. He and Gloria exchanged their vows in the midday sun demurely, perfunctorily, rendering quite conventional their passion—as if Romeo and Juliet had grunted out their consent to live as man and wife. After a toast to the bride and groom, the Littles walked back with Pat and me to our house. I felt that our presence, as survivors of that crossing on the
Sealestial
, was somehow obtrusive. Danny’s party lasted until after midnight.
Before recounting my great discovery in respect of star sights, I owe an explanation of the Plath celestial computer. In
Airborne
, when I got around to explaining celestial navigation, or rather to explaining how to navigate celestially (a very different enterprise), I warned that the reader might wish to skip the chapter I was embarking on. What follows here is less technical, and I should think it likely to hold the interest even of someone who never intends to come closer to navigation than to call the ship’s bridge and ask where we are. However, this particular chapter does indeed end—on page 169.
As owner of a Hewlett-Packard 97 I concluded that progress had ended in putting computer technology at the service of the celestial navigator. I was wrong. Along came Plath, and one is dizzy with the wonder of it all. Before I forget, I should add that the HP-97 (a generation back from the HP-41C described above) has two features, one of which Plath doesn’t even try to imitate, the second of which it does, with minimal success. The HP-97 gives you a printout of your calculations. This is marvelous to have for three reasons. The first is that people like me make mistakes in actually punching in the numbers, and the result can be—and this is fortunate—chaotic. You may forget, for instance, to push the minus sign (indicating which hemisphere you are in) and the computer will humorlessly advise you that you are 10,803 miles away from your Assumed Position, on an azimuth of 272 degrees. What on earth did you do wrong? Clearly it was egregious. Did you poke the wrong year? Wrong month? You scan the little piece of paper, and in instants the mistake screams out at you; and you do it again, right. The second advantage of the printout is that you can detach it from the roll, and Scotch-tape or clip it to the log, a vivid
aide-mémoire
. One of HP-97’s programs permits you to request a fresh azimuth to your destination at any longitudinal increment. I felt especially importunate one spring evening in 1979, pulling out of Madeira (Latitude 32-45N, Longitude 17-00W) aboard the Royal Viking
Sky
, and so I commanded my HP to give me a great circle course to our destination in Miami (Latitude 25-45N, Longitude 80-15W, distance 3,289.9 miles), indicating the distance traveled between every degree of longitude, and the new heading on reaching that longitude. I sat back in a pharaonic trance as the HP chugged out my pyramid—seventy-two inches of detailed instructions and data. I arrived at the captain’s dinner looking like a ticker-tape parade, and presented the captain with it. He told me laconically that the
Sky
was not taking the great circle route to Miami, it would be “warmer zee ozzer way.” The third reason for the printout is that it’s fun.
The Navicomp, as I say, attempts no printout, and is therefore one third the size of the large HP (the HP-67 has no printout but is otherwise identical to the 97). It does give you battery life, but here Plath isn’t even in a league with Hewlett-Packard. HPs can run for three hours from a rechargeable battery pack. If you set out on a long journey without shipboard current for recharging, you can take along, for a few dollars, a half-dozen precharged battery packs.
By contrast the Navicomp is wedded to what is most usefully called an “iron lung.” This is a desk case which must
always
be connected to your power supply. It is designed to accept 220V, 110V, or 12V; it can be adapted to other voltages. The drain is about half an amp—not much, and it is surprising under the circumstances how hot it gets. Now you can remove the computer from the lung, and indeed you are expected to do so when you take it up on deck. But if you do not return it to its iron lung within about fifty minutes, it asphyxiates. Everything you have stored in it is wiped out. To be sure, every time you turn off the HP-97 you also wipe out its memory (not so the HP-41C). But the memory of the Navicomp—brace yourself—includes:
A chronometer. Yes, and the day, the month, and the year. Keep it in its iron lung, or return it after not more than a forty-five-minute absence, and it will tick away the seconds, the hours, the days, the months, the years (even allowing for leap years) until New Year’s Eve, 2050. However, you will in fact want to reset it—the work of a half minute—in order to correct the chronometer from time to time. (Plath guarantees the accuracy up to a quarter of a second per day, which means a possible error of eight seconds per month.) Moreover, if you move about a lot or change sextants, you will want to adjust for height of eye or for index error, both of which adjustments are also easy. But the wonders have merely begun.
Let us assume that you are going to take sights with a sextant whose index error is —1.5. And that you will take sights from ten feet above the water. You enter these givens. Then, with the aid of a radio or a chronometer or a telephone number (in New York, 936-1616), you get the exact time. You program this into the Navicomp. Then you enter the month, the day, and the year.
You have made four entries—and you have done two thirds of your work. That two thirds you never have to do again, if you are on the same vessel, using the same sextant, unless you are adjusting your chronometer.
All you now need is: your Assumed Position, and then your Sextant Altitude. The Navicomp gurgles a few seconds and gives you an Intercept (indicating Toward or Away) and an Azimuth. You have your Line of Position (LOP).
Moreover, there is a rubber connector, about four feet long, which plugs into the Navicomp. At the other end is a rubber-encased button. When you have the heavenly body just where you want it, you push the button with the same hand that is calibrating the sextant mirror, and the exact time of the sight is recorded in the computer. You have then only the sextant angle to punch in.
That isn’t all. You have just shot, let us say, the sun, an hour before sunset. The new moon is clearly visible, so you punch in the key for “Moon (lower limb)” which is 102. You look up at the moon and when it is nicely situated on the horizon you depress the button again, and you have recorded the second, minute, hour, day, month, year. You punch in your altitude. You receive the Intercept and the Azimuth for the Moon. Do you go now and plot the two LOPs for a fix? That’s for the proles.
You
merely push “D” and in a few seconds the Navicomp flashes out at you your latitude and your longitude.
Suppose that you are shooting stars. The above also applies. If you shoot a third star, the Navicomp will give you a latitude and longitude based on the last two stars you entered. You like the third star and the first star? Repeat the time of the first star and its sextant angle, and you will get latitude and longitude based on the third and first star—
ad infinitum
.
You have fifty-eight stars to choose from, two planets (Mars and Venus), lower and upper limbs for the sun and for the moon. I asked Plath (via its genial general manager Donald Gilluley of the North American Division in College Park, Maryland) why they didn’t give us Jupiter and Saturn, to which the answer is that when the computer was developed, the relatively eccentric elliptical patterns of those two planets hadn’t been programmed beyond the year 2030, and the Germans wanted to produce a machine that would take us uniformly right up to the year 2050, would you believe it! I would settle for a foreign policy that would take us to the year 2000. Anyway it’s a pity, since they are very bright planets, always in the way. The moon’s pattern is by far the most idiosyncratic, but of course you cannot have a navigational computer without cracking the moon, so the software for it was developed. You have to make do without Jupiter and Saturn (Mercury is too dim to make the effort worthwhile).
In addition to LOPs and fixes, the Navicomp will give you Latitude by Polaris, Geographical Positions of the Celestial Bodies, Great Circle Distances and Directions, Local Time, and Greenwich Mean Time. As you would expect, Navicomp will act as a conventional calculator, providing the usual services—mathematical, geometrical, and trigonometric.
Worth a paragraph’s discussion is the last of its listed services, namely Sunrise/Sunset, Meridian Passage. The promise is obvious, namely that you can ascertain the exact time of sunrise and sunset anywhere in the world anytime before the mid-twenty-first century by merely vouchsafing the time, date, and estimated position. Now, this is a convenience that goes potentially beyond the point of telling you when, roughly, you will be needing to put on your running lights. If you can clock the exact moment when the sun disappears below the horizon you can deduce your longitude, even as clocking the exact moment when the sun passes over the meridian gives you your latitude.
At this point I interrupt to describe a glorious feature of the Navicomp, namely its functional simplicity. In order to work with the star Vega, for example, it isn’t necessary to find, from an inventory of capsules (Texas Instruments) or 1½-inch-long shavings of flexible plastic (HP-97), the item containing Vega, and insert it into the computer. You merely look at a little plastic wallet-size index card under “Vega” and note its code number (49). You depress P, which signals the computer that you are about to orient it toward a particular system, then you depress 49, then you depress D, which is the activator.
The Navicomp, at the left-hand corner of the display bar, will give you a number in response to any rational activity on the keyboard. Depress P, for instance, and the numeral I appears. Whenever you see I, the computer is saying:
“What program do you desire?”
You depress 207, which is your Sunrise/Sunset, Meridian Passage, and push D to activate it.
The number 2 is displayed. Whenever you see 2, there is only one datum the Navicomp is asking for, namely:
“What is your Assumed Latitude?”
If you are at Stamford, Connecticut, you depress 4103 (the little index card also informs you of the relevant protocols in the use of decimal points. None between degrees and minutes. But if you wish finer calculations, you may have them—e.g., 4103.2).
Depress D to enter the datum, and the number 3 flashes. That means:
“Give me your Assumed Longitude.”
You comply (again, from Stamford): —7332. That minus, by the way, is a chauvinistic giveaway. In fact, an American firm (Litton Industries) owns Plath. But it remains a thoroughly German enterprise, and the scientists who designed the Navicomp believe that normal people reside in the eastern hemisphere (Hamburg: Latitude 53°oo’N. Longitude 10°00’E). So that whereas U.S. navigational computers require you to put a minus sign before introducing east longitude, the reverse is the case with the Plath.
Depress D. The number 4 appears. It means:
“Tell me what time it is in Greenwich.”
The theoretical reflexes balk. We are working with a chronometer. Let us imagine that we are making our calculations on May 1, 1979, at 0700 Eastern Daylight Time. When the Number 4 is displayed, the operator has two alternatives. Either he can write in a time which is hypothetical (let us say you desire the time of sunset at Stamford on Christmas Day) or he can log the time at the moment he is doing his reckonings—in this example, as I say, 0700, May 1. He need not bother, in the latter case, to punch out the time—it is always ticking away in the chronometer. So he merely depresses D. The chronometer registers
GMT
11-00-00 (add four hours for zone time). The numeral 5 now appears, always the same thing:
“Give me the month, the day and the year.”
That too is ticking away, prerecorded, so you merely depress D again.
The Navicomp then sets out to calculate. In about ten seconds it displays on the left the numeral 7, which is a so-called Display Numeral. It isn’t asking for anything now, it is telling
you
something. You get alternative displays (at intervals of two seconds) of 452.7 and 1849.8. That means that sunrise will occur (add one hour for daylight time, 1/10 of a minute is six seconds) at 5:52:42. And sunset at 7:49:48. (If you then depress D again, you will be given the time when the sun will pass over your meridian—namely, 11:51:18 or,
EDT
, 12:51:18.)
You are entitled to wonder: Why am I being asked to give the machine the time at the moment I happen to be inquisitive about the time of sunset? Haven’t I already given the machine the Assumed Position? And the date? Why is it relevant to ask me for the time?
I inquired rather deeply into the question, and ended with a cable from Hamburg (and eighteen conversations with Plath). I should interrupt to say that if you know the exact time when the sun disappears at an assumed position, and you clock the time when it actually disappears, the difference will give you your longitude. Hamburg cabled, “As the only time-dependent variable in the formula for sunrise and sunset is the declination of sun, which varies only very slowly throughout the day, it is formally sufficient to key in an approximate
GMT
. For higher accuracy, it is recommended to repeat the calculations for both sunrise and sunset, now using the times achieved during the first calculations (converted from zone time to
GMT).”
We all know that, on May 1, the sun’s declination is gradually increasing. The rate is about nine minutes (nine miles) per twelve hours. So that if you ask the computer for sunset information at seven in the morning, but sunset is at approximately seven in the evening, will your calculations be approximately nine miles off?
We can check by running the program with 7
P.M
. input, as opposed to 7
A.M
.
The answer: Sunrise at 5:52
:06
. Sunset at 6:50:24. (Compare with sunrise 5:52:42 and sunset 6:49:48.)
The difference in seconds for sunrise is 36. Four seconds of time equals one nautical mile of distance. If you take chronometer time at 7
A.M
., you will miscalculate your longitude by eight miles.
Let us therefore try out Hamburg’s instructions, and instead of using 7
A.M
. time, use instead the sunset estimate yielded by the 7
P.M
. time, namely 1849.8. This translates (add four hours) into GMT 22:49:48. What do we come out with?
The results are identical to the hypothetical 7
P.M
. sunset: i.e., 6:50:24.
Let us now go through the agony of calculating the time of sunset for May 1 at the latitude and longitude of Stamford, Connecticut, through the nautical almanac. I get 18:48:08. For an error of 1 minute 40 seconds. An error the equivalent of 25 miles. Unless I missed something, longitudinal navigation by sunset is not possible with the Navicomp. The time of sunset is close enough only to alert you to the approximate time when to begin your star sights. The question, on which others will wish to meditate, is rendered more mysterious by the testimony of Mr. Leroy Dogett of the National Observatory. He advises that the variable effects of barometric pressure on refraction are such that the almanac rounds off sunsets to the nearest minute. Curses! Anyway, you try it.