An obstinate astronomer and the stubborn watchmaker (Longitude - Dava Sobel)

Name: vikil

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Product:	Longitude - Dava Sobel
Date:	21/07/00 (390 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Concise, well written overview of one of the most important achievements of the Western civilisation.

Disadvantages: The author is obviously biased.

First lets set things straight. Chronometer, the wondrous instrument which changed seafaring for ever is basically a pocket watch. It might have been a very accurate pocket watch for it’s time and undoubtedly the first John Harrison’s pocket chronometer was a work of genius but it is still only a clock. I am not trying to underestimate here the significance of its contribution to the history of navigation but it seems that esteem for the figure of Harrison as well as for the book about him got a bit out of hand.

Dava Sovel is a good narrator. Her book starts with a clearly written and concise background to the longitude problem. This was the basic inability to measure the exact positions of vessels at sea, resulting in countless ships being lost at sea for months on end and whole fleets meeting tragic ends when finding themselves hundreds of miles away from their estimated locations. Several preposterous solutions to the longitude riddle provide a comic interlude, like the brilliant idea to position a string of ships along all the main shipping routs. These were supposed to fire cannon balls every hour to provide fairing fleets with an audio guide to their destinations.

…And then John Harrison enters the stage. The problem with Harrison is that although undoubtedly a genius he is neither likable nor a very interesting character. With all the making of an obsessive maniac he has sacrificed his life as well as those of his family for the lifelong quest for a perfect timekeeper. In the highly entertaining but at the same time highly historically inaccurate dramatisation of the book, Harrison presented as a stubborn rogue who challenged the pompous naval establishment of the day and the pretentious and ridiculous Royal Astronomer, Maskelyne. In fact Maskelyne not only was a competent astronomer, but his Nautical Almanac is being republished to this day and his star charts were used in navigation up to 1905.

On the other
hand Harrison did everything to sabotage his own inventions in the eyes of the longitude committee and took 20 years to build his third sea clock only to dismiss it almost immediately in favour of H-4, his final and finest chronometer. During all this time he relied almost entirely on the Board of Longitude’s allowance to keep him going. Despite all the trouble they gave him with the final prize money (which he didn’t receive in whole during his lifetime), they should still be recommended for supporting him through forty years of stubborn attempts.

The struggle of the titans between Maskelyne and Harrison with the board caught in the middle takes most of the second part of the book. Although Maskelyne is openly presented here as a villain, which did everything to make his lunar longitude measurements preferable to the ‘mechanic’s clock’, it has to be born in mind that his methods there saving lives at sea for thirty years before chronometers became mass produced. Harrison, the obsessive, stubborn loner, eventually got the upper hand (although it was left to his successors to make chronometer a common tool at sea). Endless trials on land and at sea proved him right after all. But still it didn’t make him any more likable.

All in all this is an engrossing, well-written tale but Ms Sobel’s childish fascination with Harrison and his timekeepers make it anything but objective.

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