Pilot's Instruments

A brass-bound leather case holding a pilot’s working tools: a lodestone compass set in a gimballed housing, a mariner’s astrolabe, a cross-staff for taking the altitude of sun or star, a pair of brass dividers, a parallel rule, and waxed charts of coast and river. Ship-masters, river pilots, and caravan navigators rely on such kits to fix a heading, sound a depth, or reckon a landfall. A veteran pilot’s instruments are calibrated to his own hand over long years of use, and the charts in his case are often annotated with private marks — shoals, currents, and landmarks known only to him.