Essential Information

Location

21 Jan 2013

The eagle-eyed among you might have spotted on the up-coming events list on the front page of this site that most of the Longitude Project team will be in California this week for a conference we have co-organised with The Huntington Library. The programme can be found here [PDF], and the title is Oceanic Enterprise: Location, Longitude and Maritime Cultures 1770-1830.  It aims to place the work of the Board of Longitude in navigation and voyages of scientific exploration in wider and international context. Papers will consider the methods, techniques, and interests of oceanic travel and position-finding in a period of economic, political, and social change.  They will offer comparative and detailed analyses of other cultures’ projects in maritime travel and its reliability in the period. There will be two papers coming from our side of the project. Eoin Phillips will speak on The Economization of Time in the  Pacific: Traditional histories of marine timekeepers in the Pacific, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, have tended towards implying that their performance was prescribed before going on ship. This talk will seek to situate and trace the performance of British state-sponsored timekeepers within a complex and developing system of maintenance and repair, which acted as a sort of continual 'extended-manufacture' beyond the artisinal workshop. Accordingly, this talk will suggest that the timekeeper's product – time – served as much as a representation of the means of production onboard a ship, as it did an external signifier of a ship's relationship with the metropole. The talk will demonstrate that the value of this product was a real concern for the Board of Longitude and Admiralty in its dealings with Voyages of Discovery, Royal Navy ships and East India Company vessels in what was a lengthy and drawn-out development of the marine timekeeper. Furthermore, it will highlight the related and integrated ensemble of instruments and forms of representation (sextants, log books etc.) that were mobilised and developed alongside this manufacture of time and timekeepers in the Pacific. Richard and I are offering a joint paper on Lists, Letters, and Longitude: Expeditionary Astronomy in Theory and Practice: This paper contrasts the ideal and the reality of undertaking scientific work on 18th-century voyages of exploration. As Astronomer Royal and a Commissioner of Longitude, Nevil Maskelyne controlled the activities of astronomers sent on British voyages of exploration, playing a more significant role than has been revealed in existing literature on such voyages. Maskelyne’s own experience of astronomy in the field and on board ship ensured that he was aware of potential problems and ambiguities but, nevertheless, in the process of drawing up instructions, issuing lists of instruments to be taken on board and selecting observers, much of this was smoothed over. The day-to-day experiences of one expeditionary astronomer, William Gooch, therefore mark a distinct contrast with the way in which his role had been defined and described. The problems of controlling such activity at a distance are revealed clearly by the effort Maskelyne was required to exert in order to bring to a close the sadly short chapter of Gooch’s life. We look forward to putting the work of our project alongside papers that look at Russian, French, colonial, Pacific and other contexts. Many thanks to the Huntington for their support in enabling this conference.