I find it striking how our understanding of the early Board of Longitude is defined as much by the absence of evidence as by its presence. For example, there is the perennial question: Was the gathering of 30 June 1737 truly the first official communal meeting of the Commissioners to have ever taken place? There are reasons to question whether or not this is true. Sources including the private papers of Nevil Maskelyne show that other formal (and informal) meetings of the Commissioners took place besides those entered into the ‘official’ minute books – although so far none are known to have occurred before 1737.
The existing records of the activities of the Board may have also been shaped and reshaped by the ways in which they were produced and compiled. For example, the minutes were often based upon the notes or later summaries of one meeting attendee – in many cases Maskelyne until his death in 1811. They were also later compiled and in some cases recopied at different times and for different reasons, in the process of which some errors were made. The selection and presentation of the extant Board minutes may have been further shaped by the later Astronomer Royal George Airy, who collected, reorganized and had them bound in 1858.
Eoin found a lovely quote from Airy regarding the end of this enterprise: ‘The Papers of the Board of Longitude are now finally stitched into books. They will probably form one of the most curious collections of the results of scientific enterprise, both normal and abnormal, which exists.’ You can see in the photo below a note written by Airy which is bound alongside the earliest surviving minutes in volume RGO 14/5 (now at Cambridge). How much did Airy’s rearranging and labeling of such documents (for example, as ‘impractical’ schemes) affect historians’ views of the Board? Could Airy or an earlier archivist also have disposed of some of the records which he deemed unimportant to the ‘official’ history of that body, for example from before the ascendance of John Harrison?
Some documents which are vital to understanding the history of the Act of 1714 and of the ‘Board’ have definitely fallen through the cracks. For example, there appears to be no extant copy of the famous petition to Parliament of 25 May 1714 from ‘several Captains of her Majesty’s Ships, Merchants of London, and Commanders of Merchant-men’ which is thought to have truly started the ball rolling towards the establishment of a longitude reward. Without knowing more details about its contents than have survived in the records of the House, there is so much which we can’t discern.
Was the petition truly an unprompted outpouring of concern from the nation’s maritime interests, or was it directly instigated or perhaps even scripted by William Whiston and Humphry Ditton? Whiston and Ditton had started lobbying for a longitude reward by 1713, and there are certainly similarities between the summarized contents of the petition and the contents of these two projectors’ publications. And could the contents of the petition have directly informed a draught Parliamentary bill now in the United States, which would have levied a duty on all shipping in order to provide British vessels with the means of finding the longitude?
If we go back further, even the original events of the early history of ‘the Board’ were marked by an absence of information. As I explain at greater length in an upcoming article, the Act of 1714 did not actually establish a standing body or ‘Board’ – but some percentage of contemporaries did not know this. We have not yet come across evidence that the detailed contents of the Act of 1714 were ever widely publicized, for example through the spread of handbills. Jane Squire, the only female longitude projector known to date, had to ask the Attorney General to read the text of the Act to her in 1731. As a result, it is not just longitude projectors but also the Commissioners themselves who expressed some confusion during the ensuing decades about their legislated nature and about the intended conduct of the longitude contest.
When eight Commissioners met together at the Admiralty on 30 June 1737, it seems to have received limited coverage, which did not necessarily mention the Act of 1714. For example, the London Evening Post simply reported that these ‘Persons of Distinction, view’d a curious Instrument for finding out the Longitude, made by Mr. Harrison’. When Squire wrote to Sir Charles Wager four years later to continue her decade-long campaign to have the Commissioners consider her proposal, she was not aware that the officials had ever met communally.
Photo credits: Cambridge University Library.
I always feel slightly vertiginous when I start thinking about how we construct stories with so little of the full picture available to us! It’s very instructive, though, that the historiography has given such a prominent place to the petition and original act, when they were obviously much less prominent in minds of the 1730s. The question of who really signed/supported/promoted the petition particularly intruiges me – and alongside that, was this a constituency who felt that the Royal Observatory had failed to deliver what was originally expected?
Comment by Rebekah Higgitt February 6, 2012 @ 11:32 am
I think that it’s mainly that there so far seems to have been so little publicity for the *details* of what went on in the House, and of what was specified in the the text of the Act, as compared to the basic existence of large new rewards and new funding. Occasionally you even see commentators getting the £20,000 figure incorrect! While of course the later RGO and Admiralty archivists always included the Act of 1714 as the starting point of their ‘accounts’ of the longitude story, thinking back, I actually don’t remember most (if any) of them mentioning the merchants’ and sea captains’ petition specifically. I’ll have to double-check that. However, the petition — whether actually another piece of Whiston & Ditton lobbying or not — *did* directly prompt the formation of the House committee to consider establishing a reward.
Comment by Alexi Baker February 6, 2012 @ 3:42 pm
With regards to the Observatory – Hmmm. I’m not personally sure how much ‘sea captains’ and ‘merchants’ or the general public would have gleaned about the foundation and legislated mission of the Observatory, or if they would have widely thought that it had failed to produce the desired results. It seems to have been pretty common knowledge amongst eighteenth-century longitude commentators that the Astronomer Royal was working on lunar observations and later on the lunar-distance theory specifically. Some longitude projectors also specifically said that Halley should not be granted so much authority amongst the early Commissioners, when he had not yet been able to make the lunar approach work. But I’m not sure if there were also outright accusations of the RGO having ‘failed’! (If anyone does know, please post….)
Comment by Alexi Baker February 6, 2012 @ 3:59 pm
Many thanks for that Alexi – very useful to know about the comments regarding Halley. Do you know of any relating to Flamsteed? He was, of course, the observer apopinted to rectify the tables so as to find out the much desired longitude (etc) and had been at it for about 40 years by the time of the Longitude Act. Obviously, we know that Flamsteed came in for much criticism for not having published, but we know about this mostly from the astroomical theory side. Did he also get criticised for not having solved longitude, or did ‘the public’ mostly take Flamsteed’s approach that this was a (very) long-term project, on which the ROG was only supply one strand.
Comment by Rebekah Higgitt February 9, 2012 @ 3:01 pm
I don’t currently remember any direct criticism of Flamsteed in the longitude-related sources which I’ve examined. However, Katy recently mentioned to me that the projector Robert Browne of Wapping interacted with Flasmteed as well as Halley, so I’ll go ask her to weigh in if she knows anything.
Comment by Alexi Baker February 9, 2012 @ 3:17 pm
Weigh in I shall Alexi … I always think it’s interesting how many of the pamphlets published with longitude schemes are dedicated to the Commissioners by individual name and office rather than as ‘the Commissioners’ and never ‘the Board.’ Equally I found one from 1735 by William Ward and Caleb Smith that gets some of the Commissioners’ names wrong!
It seems that around the mid-1730s some longitude projectors were getting vocal about the lack of attention they were getting from the Commissioners. Robert Browne (as Alexi mentioned) is one, who in 1732 complained that Halley had cheated him, and specifically pointed out that most of the named Commissioners from 1714 were dead, and suggested Parliament reconstitute the Act. So it seems some details of the Act were better known than others.
As far as Flamsteed goes, people like Whiston and Browne who discuss the lunar distance method mention Flamsteed’s catalogue and how long it took him to publish, but I haven’t come across any specific criticisms. In fact Browne compares Halley’s treatment of himself to Newton’s treatment of Flamsteed! Halley does complain in the Philosophical Transactions that there are gaps in Flamsteed’s observations despite spending 18 years at the ROG?
Comment by Katy Barrett February 9, 2012 @ 4:15 pm