From its depression-era roots to its continued success in the age of electronic navigation, Reeds Nautical Almanac has served countless thousands of ships, yachts, and small craft in peace and war. It has saved lives, helped deliver babies, and taught sound navigation skills to generations of sailors. Although hundreds of people have assisted its publication over the years, Reeds Almanac owes its existence to the inspired dedication of one man: Oswald M. Watts. One of the youngest British Merchant Navy officers ever to hold a Masters certificate, Capt. Watts left the sea in 1927. For a time he eked out a precarious living delivering yachts, teaching navigation, and editing Pearsons Nautical Almanac. While working on Pearsons and using it on his deliveries all around Britain, Watts became convinced that he could create a better almanac, designed specifically for the yachts, fishing boats, and small commercial vessels operating in the treacherous waters around the British Isles. In June 1931, Watts came to the Sunderland office of Thomas Reed & Co with a proposal. Founded in 1782, Reeds was one of the oldest nautical publishers in the world. In 1859, the company produced its first textbook for officers taking the new Masters and Mates certificates. Their Reeds Seamanship, first published in the 1830s, sold more than 100,000 copies. How, Watts asked, would they like a chance to publish something even more successful? Watts idea was that he should compile, and Reeds should publish, a standard reference so comprehensive that it would have a place on every yacht and merchant ships chart table. In one volume it would assemble all the knowledge a navigator would need to pilot a vessel in the Home Trade Waters around the British Isles. Reeds editors were enthusiastic. With an agreement sealed by a handshake, Watts returned to London to compile the first issue of the new almanac for publication by January 1, 1932. The reams of data that today are assembled and processed with the help of sophisticated computer programs, Watts then produced by hand, often working alone through the night. To provide comprehensive coverage of Home Trade Waters, he had to draw up a complete list of lights and buoys for British and Continental ports from Brest to the Elbe, including Denmark, the Faeroes, and Iceland. He had to prepare the tidal data for countless ports, calculate course and distances from port to port, and write whole sections on maritime law, signaling, and pilotage. Published in January 1932, the first edition of Reeds Home Trade Nautical Almanac and Tide Tables was 990 pages long and an instant success. Watts immediately began work on the second edition, bolstered by scores of appreciative letters from professional seamen and yachtsmen alike. Many offered helpful suggestions that Watts was able to incorporate into subsequent editions, a tradition of reader feedback that continues today. During the 1930s Watts opened a chandlery off Londons Piccadilly where he continued to compile and edit successive editions of Reeds . When the war clouds began to gather over Europe, Watts started a sea school where yachtsmen could learn what they would need to know to serve in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in the coming conflict. When war finally broke out, the Reeds Nautical Almanac that had been a convenience for sailors became a lifeline for professional mariners. As the bombs fell on London during the Blitz, Watts continued to work on the next years Almanac . In the preface to the 10th edition, he wrote: No new features have been introduced into Reeds Almanac for 1941 for the main reason that the majority of the pages have been prepared in London during night after night of incessant bombing and gunfire, which has made it a physical impossibility. We in London are glad to bear many of the horrors of modern warfare so that some at least may be lifted from the shoulders of our seafarers Royal and Merchant Navy men both. Reeds finest hour came in 1944, when the government ordered 3,000 extra copies of the Almanac for use on vessels involved in the Normandy D-Day landings. After the war, yachtsmen who had served in the Royal and Merchant Navies continued to use Reeds Almanac, which had seen them through the hostilities. The Almanac had become what Watts had promised: as essential as a compass and, aboard many boats, the only reference apart from charts that any navigator ever used. Watts continued to edit Reeds until his retirement in 1981; he died only a few years afterward. Reeds Nautical Almanac has continued to maintain the standard for complete and accurate information set by Capt. Watts. Every edition since World War II has incorporated new features and improvements. Many have been culled from readers suggestions or have reflected new technologies being used on board, while others were simply dreamt up by Watts and the editors who followed him. Signal flags were joined by satellite navigation. Sections on first aid, customs regulations, and lifeboat navigation were added. A doctor friend of Watts even wrote a section on childbirth at sea, which was later used by yachtsman Colin Swale to deliver his wife Rosies 12-lb. baby on board the couples 30-foot catamaran off the coast of Italy. We never thought it would be used, Watts said of the section, which has since been expanded and updated. The first North American edition was published in 1974, and today our Boston, Massachusetts-based publishing company continues to uphold Capt. Watts high standards, while meeting the ever-growing needs of coastal and offshore navigators. By 1993, the amount of essential reference information that did not require annual updates had grown so much that, at the suggestion of many reaers, it was published in a separate reference volume and the first edition of Reeds Nautical Companion was born. In 1994, we published our first Caribbean edition. Cuba, Hispaniola, and the Bahamas had been previously included in the North American East Coast edition, but mariners were clamoring for more. Today the Caribbean almanac covers all the islands and the coastline from Mexico to Venezuela. Creating those tide and current tables would have been a long and dreadfully laborious project for Captain Watts, but since the late 1980s, high-speed computers have been dramatically changing the way Reeds Almanacs are published. Today, sophisticated programs process raw tide and current data through a series of algorithms and result in the tide predictions that appear in Reeds . In 1997, Reeds opened its doors on the World Wide Web at www.ReedsAlmanac.com, now home to a bi-monthly notice to mariner update and newsletter, all delivered electronically. Reader feedback continues to drive improvements to Reeds Almanacs , but suggestions today are more likely to come via e-mail often directly from computers on board readers boats. In an era when laptop computers threaten to eclipse the paper chart, Reeds Almanacs continue to find a home in the nav stations and wheelhouses of serious mariners. With the second edition of Reeds Nautical Companion, we even further extended our commitment to navigation and seamanship education. Growing numbers of sailing and navigation schools now teach from the Companion; the Coast Guard accepts it as fulfilling several federal vessel safety program requirements; and it still covers childbirth!
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Website: http://www.reedsalmanac.com/