The octant has an ebony frame and limb with a brass index arm, fittings, and a brass stop for the index arm. It also has inlaid ivory plates on the crossbar and on the back of the frame. A tangent screw is positioned on the front of the index arm and the clamping screw is on the back. The octant has three socket shades, two red, and one green. Index-glass adjustment is made by a screw and on both horizon glasses by levers, wing nuts and milled clamping knobs. The sight vane has two pinholes and a swivelling shutter, which is missing, whereas the back sight vane has one pinhole. A pencil or screwdriver is missing from the crossbar. The octant is contained in an oak keystone box, containing a handwritten note ‘This quadrant was presented to me in October 1844 on my leaving Greenwich school; by Admiral Sir Robert Stopford G.C.B. then Governor of Greenwich Hospital and schools, telling me he had found it a very good instrument. [Signed] George Heather Retired Captain RN September 13 1912’.

The instrument has an inlaid ivory scale from -2° to 99° by 20 arcminutes, measuring to 90°. The octant has an ivory vernier measuring to 1 arcminute, with zero at the right.

The reason Governor Stopford (died 1847) presented this octant to Heather is not yet clear, though doubtless for some personal merit in the Hospital School. It was old-fashioned by 1844, when Greenwich Hospital was already giving sextants (and other instruments) to senior boys nominated to fill naval training vacancies; see NAV1195, NAV0004, NAV0005. Unlike these official presentations, however, this instrument is not so inscribed. It may therefore have been Stopford’s last working instrument, used mainly before he reached flag rank in 1808. In this case his opinion of it, as reported by Heather, is specifically as much as a general comment on the type.