Portrait of John Harrison by Thomas Kin g, c. 1767
Harrison appeared to be floundering with H3. Now, as the contender appeared to be a watch- and looking much like an ordinary one-they were even less inclined to be lieve it could be successful. Harri son himself complained bitterly: "But they still say a watch . .. can but be a watch . .. and that the pe1formance of mine (though nearly to truth itself) must be altogether a deception. " Considerations of character must a lso be meas ured. Harri son 's humble orig ins, hi s lack of forma l education , hi s accent and hi s lack of soc ial graces must have stood him in poor stead before such an elite as the Board of Longitude, especially as large sums of money were at stake. A further consideration was the popul arity of the lunar di stance method , the other serious contender for the prize. Increas in g ly perfected lunar tabl es presented a mathematica l soluti on which undoubted ly ap pealed more to a Board made up of theoretic ians. Champion of the lun ar method was Nevil Maskely ne , a member of the Board and soon to be appointed Astronomer Ro ya l. As s uch, Maske lyne would become Harri son's nemes is, as Harri son himse lf became more fru strated and paranoid in hi s dealings with the Board. The second test was made in 1764, thi s time to Barbados and back, again accompanied by William Harri son. The trial was an as toni shing success story fo r H4. The average computation put the watch ' s error at just 39 .2 seconds after a voyage of 47 days-this was three times better that the performance needed to win the full ÂŁ20 ,000 longitude prize. Whatever lay in the past, the Board sho uld now have recognized that the prize had been won. Unfortunately, Harri son's trial s we re destined to contin ue. The Board placed further demands on Harri son. Half of the prize would be awarded Harrison once SEA HISTORY 66, SUMMER 1993
he had made full di sclosure ofH4 workings-at which time he must also surrender the four timekeepers. Hav ing no other cho ice, Harri son reluctantly ag reed to the terms. F urthermore, implying that H4 was in fac t a fluke , the Board declared it would awa rd the second half of the prize only after two copies of H4 had been made and tested , a task made doubly difficult since Harrison no longer had the first four. To add insult to injury, it was the man Harrison di strusted most, Nev il Ma skelyn e, now Astronomer Royal , who appea red to carry away the timepieces in an unsprung cart-the sort that could do more damage to Harri son's machines than years at sea! Predictably, one of the timekeepers (HI ) was dropped. A t last, Harrison had half the prize, ÂŁ I 0 ,000. But it was only the whole reward, and the recognition that went with it, that mattered . The aging Harri son, now in his mid-seventies, managed to complete on ly one more timepiece (HS). It was, finally, only through petitions to King George Ill and the Prime Minister, Lord No rth , that John Harri son was fully compen sated. At Harrison's interview with the King, George is said to have remarked," .. . these people have been cruell y wronged ... " and then excl ai med: "By God, Harri so n, I will see yo u ri ghted! " In 1773 John Harrison was awa rded the remainderofthe great longitude prize and recogni zed as having solved the longitude problem-thirty-seven years and a work ing lifetime after submitting hi s first des ign. Within three years, on 24 March 1776, Harri son died at hi s home in Red Lion Square, London. It was hi s 83rd birthday.
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who, in 1783, finally came up with a design that was the most efficient and the simplest to manufacture. Another London watchmaker, John Arnold , and the French maker Pierre LeRoy a lso made notable contributions to a practical marine chronometer des ign. It may be a record in the an nal s of industry that 200 years later, mechanical chronometer des ign differs very littl e from the 1783 mode l. Until about ten years ago, the orig inal design was still in production and the most accurate portable timepiece we had, capable of keeping to within a quarter second per day or less. And it never needed batteries! .t
Mr . Mercer is th e retired Chairman of Thoma s Mercer , Ltd., of St. Albans , Eng land. Th e firm made over 30 ,000 marin e chronometers fi"om 1858 to 1983. Kevin Haydon is an editor/or Sea Hi story. At th e authors' suggestion , inquiries about marine chronometers can be addressed to Jam es Connor, PO Box 305, Devon PA 19333. Recommended reading: John Harri son by Jonathon Betts, (Curator of Horology, Nationa l Maritime Museum) National Maritim e Mu seum Publications, 1993, Greenwich , London.
H4, arguably the most impor/ant timekeeper ever cons1ruc1ed and 1he foundalion s/one of all precision watches
Harri son's timepi eces proved that it was possible to produce a portable, preci se instrument able to withstand the conditio ns of motion , temperature extremes and high humidity that are to be expected at sea. The success of K 1, a copy of H4 made by London watchmaker Larcum Kendall , on both the second and third voyages of Captain James Cook, and Cook 's steady conversion towards belief in the timekeeper, further affirmed the soundness of Harrison 's design. The watchmakers of the world set their sights on the enormous market now opened up, since every ocean-going vessel should now carry a marine chronometer, as these timekeepers soon became known. It was Thomas Earnshaw 23