The Art of Navigation, Resolved Geometrically, Instrumentally, and by Calculation, and by the late Excellent Invention of Logarithms, in the Three Principal kinds of Sailing; with New Tables of the Longitude and Latitude of the most eminent places round the World, from the meridian to the Lizard: And New Exact Tables of the Sun's Declination. Newly calculated; and of the Longitude and Latitude, Declination and right ascension of some Eminent Fixed Stars.
Together with
A Discourse of the Practick Part of Navigation, in working a Ship in all weathers and conditions at Sea.
A new way of Surveying Land by the Mariner's Azimuth or Amplitude Compass; very easy to all sorts of Navigators, Mariners, or others.
The Art of Gauging all sorts of essels; and the Measuring of timber,glass, board, stone, walls, ceilings, and tylings.
The Art of Gunnery…. Astronomy, Geometrical, Instrumental, and by Calculation.
The Art of Dialling by a Gnomonical Scale…
THE VERY SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF THIS POPULAR NAVIGATIONAL WORK
London, Printed by E.Cotes for G.Hurlock etc… 1669, Folio [295 x 200mm],pp Printed title in red and black, engraved additional pictorial title, Engraved Portrait with small repair, [34], 219, [3], 132, [6], 52, [52], [4],11, [3], 13, [1], 14 leaves of plates, many folding, including volvelles and diagrams, numerous other woodcut illustrations throughout, Text illustrated with engraved and woodcut mathematical diagrams, tables, and instruments. Engraved scales are by Walter Hayes. Three of plates have volvelles that depict methods for measuring tides & compass variation; plotting a position at night & computing the movements of the stars. The Title-page is engraved by Thomas Cross and the Portrait of Sturmy is by A. Hertocks. Contemporary mottled calf, rebacked, gilt decorated spine in compartments.
Samuel Sturmy apprenticed to a Bristol sailmaker and thereafter commanded ships sailing out of Bristol, primarily to Virginia and to the West Indies. His experiences formed the core of the Mariner's Magazine, a work produced by him to provide the most up to date and necessary information for sailors. Sturmy wrote in a lively fashion and in the sections pertaining to seamanship the usual commands and responses were set forth as a dialogue between the ship's captain and the crew, parts of which were used verbatim by Jonathan Swift in "Gulliver's Travels".
Sturmy's book was of such importance to sailors that many pirates and buccaneers carried the book with them on their voyages. Captain William Dampier, author of A New Voyage Round the World, and one of the most important British explorers and buccaneers of the 17th century carried the third editon (1684) on his voyages. Dampier was the first Englishman to set foot on Australia, and the first man to circumnavigate the world three times. He described Sturmy's book as "...an instructive and entertaining work, containing a number of receipts and "wrinkles in navigation"." It is from Sturmy's book that Dampier used the recipe ("receipt") for gunpowder.
Sturmy's work also contains what may be one of the earliest complete explanations of the construction of a polar gnomonic chart, presenting a detailed example of a great circle route from the Lizard to the Bermudas. The Oxford Reference states: "The gnomonic chart became popular with the publication by Hugh Godfray in 1858 of two polar gnomonic charts covering the greater part of the world, one for the northern and the other for the southern hemisphere. Although it was generally believed that Godfray was the original inventor of this method of great circle sailing, it is interesting to note that a complete explanation of the construction of a polar gnomonic chart, with a detailed example of a great circle route from the Lizard to the Bermudas, appeared in Samuel Sturmey's Mariners' Magazine, of 1669."
Sturmy is buried in the Church at Easton-in-Gordano, Bristol, where a tablet records his life.
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