Standard accounts of the Longitude Prize in Britain often begin with the death of Cloudesley Shovell off the coast of the Scilly Isles in 1707, and end with the marine chronometers of John Harrison in the middle of the eighteenth century. As such, these accounts take for granted that the solution to the problem of longitude would be found in high accuracy watchmaking. The Longitude Act of 1714 transformed the British public’s understanding of the problem, and encouraged non-elite artisans and craftsmen to engage in popular debate over navigational best practice. This presentation suggests an alternative history of the relationship between watchmaking and navigation, arguing that the viability of a horological solution to longitude was conditioned by institutional changes within the Board of Longitude and the Royal Society, as well as by increased market demand for timepieces in the eighteenth century and popular enthusiasm for solving the longitude problem. John Harrison’s ultimately successful “H4” watch of the 1760s is thus understood as the culmination of a near century’s long debate over the use of timepieces in calculating longitude at sea.
