Where in the World?

The Board of Longitude archive, now housed at Cambridge University Library, is an outstanding record of 18th- and 19th-century attempts to improve navigation at sea.

Up till then, ships had struggled to accurately plot their position meaning voyages could take far longer than expected.
They knew their latitude (their position from north to south) from the location of the Sun but could only estimate their longitude (their position from east to west).

So, a group of experts, later called the Board of Longitude was created to judge and reward inventors and inventions that could measure longitude.

Many applicants tried to find ways to level the instrument through which sailors could measure distances.

Anyone could submit a design. Some were ingenious but, simply not feasible.

Many resemble contraptions that today we would consider in the "steam-punk" style!

Royal Museums Greenwich even hosted a special exhibition, Longitude Punk'd, featuring modern contraptions inspired by the archive: https://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/blog/longitude-steampunk-and-satellites

Some contain fantastical coloured diagrams.

Some are perhaps more colourful in concept and had The Board going round in perpetual circles!

Would you want to try riding this contraption through the waves to the shore?

There was a seemingly never-ending supply of ideas on the horizon.

Some, like John Horner's 'most divine Gospel System', even looked to religion to try and square the circle.

But two methods succeeded...

Eventually they created a nautical Almanac that allowed vessels to accurately plot their longitude.

Captain William Bligh was given a K2 Chronometer (a successor to Harrison's version) to test out onboard the HMS Bounty...

But in the early hours of 28 April 1789, about 30 nautical miles south of the island of Tofua (near Tonga), there was a mutiny and the crew seized control of the ship.

Captain Bligh was forced to leave the valuable chronometer on board with the mutineers, and had to write to the Admiralty to inform them of its loss.

Some of the documents record fateful voyages and lifetimes of commitment to a common cause...

These letters and other documents relating to the life of William Gooch, who The Board of Longitude appointed as astronomer to George Vancouver's expedition to the north-west coast of America.

Sadly, he was killed on the island of Oahu before he was able to join Vancouver's ships, Discovery and Chatham.

These papers, assembled by Gooch's father as a record of his son's life, comprise letters from Gooch to his parents and from Nevil Maskelyne to Gooch's father, and also extracts from Gooch's journal during the voyage.

Gooch describes the 'crossing the line' ceremony performed upon crossing the equator.

Here, he describes their landing at St. Iago (Cape Verde Islands), where he encountered this woman and learnt how the people of St. Iago made bowls from the shells of a melon-like fruit.

This letter, full of optimism of returning to England, was sadly the last letter Gooch wrote home to his parents. It was written just a few days before his death

On 11 May 1792, Gooch joined a small crew that embarked from the ship to trade with the locals and re-supply with fresh water at Waimea on Oahu, in the Hawaiian islands.

The party was attacked by Pahupu warriors on 12 May and Gooch, along with two others, were cut off from the rest of the group and killed.

Another great explorer, Captain Matthew Flinders, led the second circumnavigation of New Holland, which he would subsequently call "Australia or Terra Australis" and identified it as a continent.

In attempting to return to England in 1803, Flinders was detained on the Isle de France (now Mauritius) due to the outbreak of war between the French and English.

Flinders was kept a prisoner there for six years, but this didn't stop him from proposing the name "Australia" to replace that of "New Holland" in this letter to Sir Joseph Banks in 1804.