The sextant has a black-lacquered bronze straight-bar pattern frame and a wooden handle with a brass-lined hole for placing it on a stand. The tangent screw and clamping screw are on the back of the index arm. The instrument has four green shades and three green horizon shades. Index-glass adjustment is made by a screw and on the hinge-mounted horizon-glass by a capped milled screw.

Attached to the sextant is a magnifier on a 75mm swivelling arm with a frosted glass shade and a brass tube for holding a light. There is also a threaded telescope bracket in two parts, fitted for correcting collimation error. It has perpendicular adjustment by a rising-piece and a milled knob. The telescope is 232 mm in length with an inverted image, which is focused by a milled knob. An extra drawtube is 49 mm long with an inverted image and two parallel cross wires. A second telescope is 84 mm long with an erect image (star finder). It has two green shaded eyepieces, an adjusting pin and a light for the scale, the latter of which is missing.

The instrument has a polished bronze limb with an inlaid gold scale from -5° to 154° by 10 arcminutes, measuring to 129°. The sextant has a platinum vernier measuring to 10 arcseconds, with zero at the right.

The sextant is contained in a square fitted box with an inlaid plate that is now missing from the lid. The lid contains a Class A National Physical Laboratory certificate of examination, dated May 1914.