The artilce considers the English-Russian Navigation dictionary in the context of its creation. The dictionary evolved from a small appendix to a textbook into a separate edition, which is a part of a multi-volume Marine Navigation Course. The Navigation Dictionary as part of the Marine Navigation Course ed. by Yakov Lapushkin was published twice: in 1947 by Nikolay Rybakov and in 1960 by Tamara Rutkovskaya. The representatives of the professional naval, academic, and scientific community, including the well-known lexicographer Alexander Taube, contributed to this dictionary. A comparative analysis of the sources shows the continuity between these dictionaries in their content, design and structure. The demand for the new 1960 version was explained by a rapid scientific and technological progress, as well as by the requirements to take into account not only British, but also American sources due to the increasing role of the United States in the navigation in this period. The need to create a navigation dictionary, including both special terminology and basic commands, was justified in the textbooks by Nikolay Rybakov, and in the preface to the dictionary by Tamara Rutkovskaya by the role that this language played in professional naval communication. Navigators needed a modern English-Russian dictionary that could be used for reading foreign manuals, for communication with pilots; such professional skills should have been obtained in the course of studies. Nowadays, old dictionaries compiled scores of years ago, remain a valuable source of information on the history of the Russian scientific and technical thought and professional communication.