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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: starboard, that LARBOARD was changed to PORT. Try to imagine "All
larboard bowlines on deck!" being shouted down into the forecastle
of a present day ship. Yet that was the call used on the Pilgrim
to fetch Dana and the rest of his watch on deck.
The chronometer, which is merely the least imperfect time-piece
man has devised, makes possible the surest and easiest method by
far of ascertaining longitude. Yet the Pilgrim sailed in a day
when the chronometer was just coming into general use. So little
was it depended upon that the Pilgrim carried only one, and that
one, going wrong at the outset, was never used again. A navigator
of the present would be aghast if asked to voyage for two years,
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