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REVIEWS Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius W ho Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel (Walker & Co., New York NY, 1995, 224pp, biblio, index , ISBN 0-80271312-2; $19hc) Tracking the story of how the problem of finding a ship 's longitude at sea was solved by the obscure amateur clockmaker John Harri son, this lively account tackles a subject beset by technical difficulties and historical obscurities with admirable clarity and coherence. Against all odds, Harrison 's clocks proved accurate enough for safe navigation and rugged enough to survive long-distance ocean voyaging. Ms. Sobel follows the development of alternative methods such as determining east-west position from changes in the magnetic variation of the ship 's compass-a solution that occurred to Christopher Columbus on his Atlantic crossing of 1492. But variation, though it does change with east-west position on the face of the globe, is too irregular to give useful results. The astronomical solution, long sought, was reliably determined by Harri son's rival, the brilliant, Cambridge-educated Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne. Maskelyne 's " lunar distances" solution depended on tracking the moon 's relati vely swift progress across the skies against the timeless stars, to arrive at a standard time on earth, which, compared to local time, would give you your di stance from the position where local time matches the standard time. The concept of the moon moving like the hand of a clock against the fixed background of the stars is elegantly simple- but unfortunate! y the extreme! y precise observations required were not. As many as seven observations had to be taken to be reasonably sure of the data, and translating the data into standard time demanded elaborate calculations. It took a skilled astronomer (not an ordinary ship's navigator) four hours or more to get the longitude from a lunar sight. The idea that a clock could be made to keep a standard time to compare with local time seemed plainly fantastic, particularly when that clock would have to weather changing temperatures and humidity , amid the leanings, jounces and crashes inseparable from ocean voyages in sailing ships. Also, to a sophisticated mind like Maskelyne 's, it clearly seemed improper to rely on a mechanical sol ution to a problem that could be
resolved by mathematics. Such leading philosophers as Galileo and Isaac Newton had bent their minds to this leading problem, which became acute with the opening of the ocean world to longdistance voyaging. Thi s business of locating a ship' s position on the spinning globe seemed to fall in the same order of business as determining Earth 's place in the solar system. And as the aging Newton pointed out (he died in 1727, three years before Harrison brought his first nautical clock to London), with the mechanical solution once the longitude was lost-if the clock stopped for any reason-it cou ld not be recovered . But with accurate observations and the C011'1putational geni us of the human mind, the longitude could be determined anew, direct from the observable clock face of the universe. Much more satisfactory! Some such reflections as these may explain Maskelyne's dismissive treatment of Harrison, and his actual maltreatment of Harri son's clocks as they came to the Royal Astronomer for judgment. The author wisely makes allowance for this, suggesting that Maskelyne was not so much the villain of the story as the anti-hero. He was an intensely focused person who simpl y could not recognize the facts of proven performance based on an alien system of ideas and di sciplines. But Captain Cook, an extraordinarily able navigator, perfectly capable of finding his longitude by lunars, swore by the versions of Harri son 's clocks which he took on his second and third global voyages. With Ms. Sobel's sympathetic grasp of the interplay of character among the actors in thi s long-drawn drama before Harrison's achievement won full recognition, toward the end of his life, it is startling and distressing to find an egregious error early in this otherwise distingui shed work. By an almost unbelievable misconception of the di sciplines of the Royal Navy of the day, she reports that a sailor aboard the Association, just before she was wrecked off the Scillies, presented an accurate but contradictory reading of the ship 's position to Admiral Shovell, who thereupon summarily hanged the sailor for mutiny. This never happened, nor could it have happened as the author describes. Under the rules of the " wooden world" that was the Royal Navy , even actual mutineers had to be tried with legal representation before a board of officers SEA HISTORY 77, SPRING 1996