II Contains:
As much as it is a part of history, Bowditch is not a history book. In this edition, as in past editions, dated material was dropped and new methods, technologies and techniques added to keep pace with changes in the practice of navigation. The changes are intended to ensure Bowditch remains the premier reference work for modern, practical marine navigation.
CHAPTER 1, MATHEMATICS once again includes sections on basic arithmetic including: expressing numbers, significant digits, addition, subtraction, rounding off, reciprocals, multiplication and division. Likewise, the expanded chapter includes discussions on calculus and differential equations. Though rarely used today, an in-depth discussion on logarithms returns to this chapter. This topic is supplemented by the inclusion of haversine tables (found in Appendix B), which makes this publication perhaps the last in existence to provide this esoteric data, should the need arise to perform complex calculation manually.
CHAPTER 2, INTERPOLATION includes discussion on single, double, triple and nonlinear interpolation (with Bessel's formula included).
CHAPTER 3, NAVIGATIONAL ERROR was greatly expanded and updated by Johns Hopkins University-Applied Physics Laboratory.
CHAPTER 4, CALCULATIONS AND CONVERSIONS summarizes the formulas the navigator depends upon during voyage planning, piloting, celestial navigation, and various related tasks.
CHAPTER 5, COMPASS CONVERSIONS contains information on magnetic compass error, deviation table, applying variation and deviation, along with several example problems.
CHAPTER 6, COMPASS ERROR examines the process for determining compass error using Pub No. 229 - Sight Reduction Tables for Marine Navigation.
