Of folk music, cucumbers, and John Harrison

06 Apr 2011

I'm lucky that my friends and family seem to be taking the longitude project to their hearts, and are sending me bits and pieces that they read or hear and think might be interesting to us. So, in a parallel discussion to my last post on themes in A Rake's Progress - both Hogarth's and Stravinsky's - I here share two pieces of modern day culture that continue eighteenth-century discussions about 'science' and particularly the clock maker John Harrison.

The first comes courtesy of my uncle. In 2001, Dick Gaughan the folk singer released a song titled John Harrison's Hands, with lyrics by Brian McNeill. You can listen to a cover version of this by Stephen Knightley here. The lyrics in full are:

Cold falls the night,
Cold rolls the ocean 

And colder blows the breath of fate

That sends the roaring gale.

The stars give their light 

For duty or devotion,

But a sailor's heart needs more than prayer 

When eye and compass fail

And more than hope to guide his lonely sail.

By sea and land 

John Harrison's hands

Made sure for ever more

That sailors could find longitude

To bring them safe ashore.

Your work was long, 

Your days were driven.

You knew that you could build a clock 

To marry space and time.

But your one great wrong 

Was never forgiven -

For to be better than your betters

Was worse than any crime,

And their envy was a hill you would not climb.

By sea and land 

John Harrison's hands

Made sure for ever more

That sailors could find longitude

To bring them safe ashore.

And the prize of thirty thousand pounds 

Was more than just a prize.

It was dignity and justice 

Over bitterness and lies - 

And the longer they denied you,

Attacked you and decried you,

The more you saw the weakness in their eyes.

How many lives,

How many talents,

Were tainted by the poisoned well 

Of power from which they drank?

But the wind that drives 

The bold topgallants

Was harnessed by a man with

Neither privilege nor rank,

And the sailor lads, 

they knew and gave their thanks.

Obviously, this picks up on the theme of Harrison vs the Board of Longitude that was propounded by Dava Sobel in her book Longitude, six years before. But it also interestingly picks up on questions of 'natural' genius in how Harrison was perceived in the eighteenth century. By both the Commissioners of Longitude and the newspapers he was envisioned as 'nature's mechanic' - someone who had developed a natural mechanical ability that was unrelated to mathematical or 'scientific' knowledge as the Commissioners understood these. This was no doubt part of any communication difficulties between Harrison and the Board. There is also an interesting double use of 'hands' in discussing both Harrison's own manual work and dexterity, and also the hands on his time pieces, marking his mechanical control over time. As McNeill's lyrics put it so beautifully he 'married space and time.' Similar discussions over instruments, mechanical knowledge and skill took place in the eighteenth century, as Alexi partly discussed in her post.

My second piece of modern day culture comes via my mother, and treats - by association - of cucumbers again. Harrison is known for inventing the bimetallic strip which compensates for changes in temperature that effect balance springs in clocks. Compensating for this temperature problem was one of the main concerns of clockmakers seeking to solve the longitude problem in the first half of the eighteenth century. This bimetallic strip, however, was also the precursor of the modern thermostat and therefore, among other things, allows greenhouses to be kept temperate in cold climates. It is thanks to Harrison that we are able to grow tender salads, fruits and vegetables in England. So, perhaps cucumbers aren't such an odd link to the history of science after all.