Abstract
The absence of a study of the Board of Longitude has been a notable omission in the history of science. In The Board of Longitude, Alexi Baker, Richard Dunn, Rebekah Higgitt, Simon Schaffer, and Sophie Waring have rectified this with a rich account of the Board's development and activities between the Longitude Act of 1714 and its dissolution in 1828. This volume demonstrates the significance of the Board of Longitude in the British government's rising prominence in the nation's and, indeed, Europe's scientific culture, but also shows how this relationship was complex. The Board's history is not just one of science and the state; it is a story of intrigue and interests, with few likeable individuals, often possessing highly questionable commitments to the pursuit of science and truth.
As the authors show, the Longitude Act of 1714 did not establish the Board of Longitude but rather began the practice of appointing commissioners to adjudicate on schemes for helping to improve maritime navigation and to advise on the dispensing of financial rewards for such work. In Chapters 1 and 2, Baker provides a context for the 1714 Act and shows how it marked a merging of personal, commercial, and political interests, particularly through the lobbying efforts of William Whiston and Humphry Ditton. These were not noble promoters of science but reward-seekers, hoping to gain from the financial rewards promised for practical solutions to the challenge of calculating longitude at sea. The original rewards set in 1714, of up to £20,000, were considerable; these were life-altering sums comparable to the construction of a naval vessel.
What followed was an escalation in ‘projectors’, eagerly pursuing and often harassing commissioners with their schemes. Three things really become apparent through this study of these early decades. First is the diverse range of solutions and projectors who sought rewards, as well as the wide range of motivations. Particularly fascinating are the frequent overlaps between religion and longitude, with both shrouded in mystery; for many projectors, establishing a successful navigation scheme was a matter of faith and, at times, one that promised moral authority. Second, from the very beginning, the relationship between projectors and commissioners was dominated by private interests, with personal connections, social position, and gender crucial to how new schemes were judged. Finally, throughout these early years, the public perception of projectors and their schemes was one of ridicule, with such solutions to longitude likened to the discovery of perpetual motion or the philosopher's stone. This really is a colourful and entertaining story.
Interest continued to define the commissioners’ work throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Commissioners met for the first time in 1737 and held but seven recorded meetings over the next two decades; these constituted boards, as opposed to a single board, of longitude. Only in 1763, with the appointment of a paid secretary and attendance fees, was there an effective Board of Longitude. As Baker and Dunn demonstrate in Chapter 5, this was not so much a radical escalation in the state's patronage of science as a pragmatic moment of consolidation and institutionalization to manage the commissioners’ worsening relations with John Harrison.
Importantly, The Board of Longitude delivers an account of eighteenth-century navigation in which Harrison is not the dominating ‘hero’. As the volume's authors point out, the past historiographical obsession with Harrison as the great solver of the longitude problem has obscured the Board's broader scientific significance. Nevertheless, Harrison was central to the Board's institutional development. The earliest meetings of commissioners, including the first in 1737, were to examine Harrison's proposals and clock mechanisms, and it was the dispute surrounding the performance of his ‘H4’ device between 1761 and 1763 that resulted in the Board's formalization, as well as its practice of requiring verbal explanation and experimental exhibition of any proposed scheme. Yet, while Harrison was central to the Board's activities between the 1730s and 1760s, helping to prove the principle that mechanical timekeeping could provide methods for determining longitude at sea, the replication of reliable timepieces and formation of a practical navigation system was a challenge beyond any single individual. Dunn emphasizes this point well in Chapter 6 by analysing the Board's relations with the watchmaking trade between 1770 and 1821; during this period, the Board fashioned a network of trusted instrument-makers, like Larcum Kendall and John Arnold, to transform Harrison's solution into an affordable, workable system. This marks a significant enhancement of our understanding of the complexities of solving longitude.
The final chapters of this volume are equally revisionary, this time concerning the Board's later years and demise. In the nineteenth century, the Board's activities became increasingly diverse, effectively becoming an institution for the patronage of the natural sciences more generally. Commissioners took the lead in establishing an observatory at the Cape of Good Hope between 1819 and 1829, as Schaffer demonstrates in Chapter 10. In this enterprise, the Board united imperial and utilitarian interests in the pursuit of public-supported astronomy. Waring's subsequent account of the abolition of the Board is particularly significant to this volume's contribution to our understanding of the historical relationship between government and science. Rather than a cost-cutting measure, Waring brilliantly argues that the Board's termination in 1828 was, in fact, a carefully managed transfer of power away from parliamentary scrutiny to the relative obscurity of the Admiralty. The case here is compelling. Under John Croker and John Barrow's leadership, Parliament and the Admiralty moved the Board's responsibilities to three internally appointed resident commissioners, placing its scientific activities under the immediate control of the Royal Navy. Croker and Barrow, through this reorganization, seized control of who sat on the committee and removed it from the sight of reforming, economizing politicians. The expenditure that had once been headed under the ‘Board of Longitude’ now fell under the navy's ‘Scientific Branch’, the budget of which increased after 1828. Such a historical revision matters to the Board's enduring legacy in the long-term development of British-state science.
This is an exceptionally thorough and well-researched volume. It drastically alters traditional assumptions surrounding the Board's history and the eighteenth-century cultivation of accurate maritime navigation. As well as being of interest to readers of this journal, it marks a critical extension to our understanding of the historical intersections between science, the state, and empire.