Review of: "Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitude," an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich

Stock, Paul

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  Paul Stock Ships, clocks and stars: the quest for longitude  Website entry  Original citation: Stock, Paul (2014) Ships, clocks and stars: the quest for longitude. Criticks: the reviews website of British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (21 Aug 2014) Website.  © 2014 The Author. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.  This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59225/ Available in LSE Research Online: August 2014  LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website.    21/8/2014 BSECS - Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitudehttp://www.bsecs.org.uk/criticks/ReviewDetails.aspx?id=241&type=2 2/4If you know of a relevant event that you would like reviewed, please contact us by clicking here.Fine Art ReviewsShips, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for LongitudeLocation: National Maritime Museum, GreenwichEvent Date: August 2014Review Date: 21st August 2014Event URL: http://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/events/ships-clocks-starsReviewed By: Paul Stock, International History Department, London School of Economics and Political ScienceReview Citation: Paul Stock, review of Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for LongitudeURL: http://www.bsecs.org.uk/criticks/reviewdetails.aspx?id=241&type=2Date Accessed: 21st August 2014 14:25 GMTReview:Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitude, an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum inGreenwich, tells the story of the ‘longitude problem’: the mathematical and navigational challenge of calculatingeast-west position and direction. Without the ability to determine east-west co-ordinates, long-distance sea travelwas imprecise and treacherous, and the problem had, as the exhibition display reminds us, ‘frustrated the greatestminds since the late 1400s.’ The exhibition concentrates on the eighteenth century, during which the challengegained further immediacy thanks to the expansion of mercantile and imperial sea traffic and, crucially, the financialrewards offered by the 1714 Longitude Act for a solution. In some respects, therefore, the exhibition re-presents afamiliar tale – widely-known in recent years from Dava Sobel’s highly-successful Longitude: The True Story of aLone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (1995). Sobel’s account focused on theclockmaker John Harrison, whose series of sea-clocks between 1735 and 1770 allowed time, and hencelongitude, to be calculated more precisely than had previously been possible. Ships, Clocks and Stars, however,takes a very different approach: it is far more interested in the sociability and competitiveness of eighteenth-centuryscientific practice, rather than the themes of personal struggle and individual genius which preoccupy Sobel’saccount.The challenge for this exhibition – perhaps for any history of science and technology – is how to avoid complacently Whiggish narrative.Accounts which celebrate the forward march of progress all too often present history itself as an inexorable parade towards the ultimate goal of(Western) modernity. As a consequence, they cut out much of the complexity and alien richness of the past, instead organising their narrativesas a gradual ascent to the achievements of the present. And yet, flawed as it is, this perspective cannot entirely be dispensed with: ideas about‘progress’ and ‘improvement’ are so deeply a part of Western scientific discourses that to write a history of science without these concepts isto wilfully ignore one of its key articles of self-definition. Navigating this problem is therefore a major dilemma in histories of science: how can21/8/2014 BSECS - Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitudehttp://www.bsecs.org.uk/criticks/ReviewDetails.aspx?id=241&type=2 3/4one acknowledge the centrality of ‘progress’ and its cognate concepts in Western science without becoming entirely bound by (or complicitwith) their assumptions and categories? At first glance, Ships, Clocks and Stars might seem to fall headlong into a standard Whiggish mode: itsintroductory and concluding display captions describe a search for ‘better’, more ‘accurate’ forms of measuring longitude; a ‘quest’ whichushered in the achievements of the modern world: ‘Britain’s territorial expansion, improved trade and communication, and enhanced […]knowledge and understanding of the world.’ In fact, however, the exhibition is far more subtle than these framing comments suggest. It usesseveral strategies to evade triumphal complacency, and to emphasise instead the controversies and frustrations which are so important toscientific methodology.  The exhibition’s first important move is to understand the longitude problem as a scene of competition and dispute, rather than as a lineardisplay of inevitable progress. Having explained what the problem was and why it was important, the exhibition then expounds the variousmethods proposed for its solution. These were much more wide-ranging than Harrison’s celebrated clock method. One proposed solution tracedpatterns in the Earth’s magnetic fields; another used rockets fired simultaneously from known locations; others still calculated longitude fromthe position of the moon or Jupiter. The exhibition heads into technically demanding territory here, but the principle of each solution isexplained concisely in a series of two-minute videos on touchscreens, a highly effective way to communicate complex detail to a generalaudience. By giving space to disparate theories, and abortive experiments, Ships, Clocks and Stars highlights the fractious, incremental, andcompetitive nature of scientific enquiry; it resists the temptation to construct a smooth and triumphant narrative from the rough edges ofscientific labour. One room shows how different methods developed in parallel as rivals for prestige and funding: Half of the room displaysHarrison’s extraordinary and beautiful timepieces; the other discusses the lunar distance method with its redesigned astronomical instrumentsand elaborate tables of lunar observations. The next room – entitled ‘Longitude on Trial’ – reconstructs eighteenth-century debates about themerits of these different approaches, both of which continued to be pursued throughout and beyond the century. Indeed, the exhibitionstudiously avoids suggesting that the longitude problem was ‘solved’, a term which might imply finality and mastery. Despite the achievementsof Harrison and his rivals, navigators still relied on earlier methods and as the exhibition emphasises, ‘the quest for further longitude solutionscontinued.’ The final room shows how these attempts developed further in the nineteenth century: among other topics, it discusses ‘improved’sea-clocks, dividing engines used to automate instrument production, and machines intended to calculate astronomical tables.The exhibition also places a very strong emphasis on the sociability of science. This manifests most obviously in the accounts of debate andcompetition which punctuate its version of the longitude story. But we are also told about the social and professional composition of the Boardof Longitude who distributed the prize money, as well as the dissemination of the problem in newspapers, pamphlets and satirical prints. Thedisplays are replete with the popular culture of longitude, showing that the coffee house was as much a venue for reflection and analysis as theobservatory or the clockmaker’s workshop. This is a crucial point. In some respects, the Longitude Act can be seen as a model of laissez-fairegovernment; a scheme to solve a national problem by means of sub-contracting to private enterprise. While not entirely unpersuasive, thisperspective is also a little misleading: it belies the crucial role of government as a funder, and also obscures the fusion of state and privateobjectives in commercial expansion and empire building. Instead therefore, Ships, Clocks and Stars presents the longitude problem as anexpansive societal concern; an issue which was shaped by, and impacted upon, broad sections of society – from senior military figures to thecoffee-drinking satirist. Longitude is understood as cultural phenomenon as well as an expression of state and mercantile interests.In deference to these wider implications, the exhibition also gestures towards the longitude problem’s later role in empire building. We are toldthat one of Captain Cook’s key objectives was to test new sea-clocks and lunar tables; and also that a Harrison-derived timekeeper was presentduring the mutiny of the Bounty . Here the exhibition displays assorted Cook paraphernalia – navigational instruments, charts, Maori artefacts,paintings by William Hodges. This inclusion is understandable given the National Maritime Museum’s collection strengths, but the recourse to avery well-known topic feels a little under-justified in the context of the assured discussions which precede it. Fortunately, however, theaccompanying book – Finding Longitude by Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgitt – provides fascinating chapters on longitude and Europeanexploration in Australasia, Africa and the Arctic. This material advances the exhibition’s agenda further, showing longitude’s involvement in thedevelopment of the cultural and economic conditions we now call modernity – a culmination which a narrowly Whiggish history would simplycelebrate or take for granted.I also wish to emphasise one especially notable feature of Ships, Clocks and Stars : the highly immersive and imaginative design of the displays.The first room is especially wonderful: low lighting, powerful sound, and a huge screen showing rolling waves combine to envelop the viewer inthe immensity and danger of long-distance sea travel. Similar effects continue throughout the rooms. The next room explains the longitudeproblem in terms of a grid spread over the earth’s surface, and this is illustrated with a giant sphere through which visitors must walk in order toexamine measuring instruments. The section on popular culture and longitude contains floor-to-ceiling hangings which depict coffee-housescenes, as well as tables and chairs containing reproductions of contemporary pamphlets. On the wall is a large map of eighteenth-centuryLondon showing ‘spaces of debate’ – the Royal Society, the Admiralty, famous coffee houses – in which longitude would have been discussed.Best of all, the room called ‘Longitude on Trial’ contains a massive boardroom table onto which are projected images of papers and books. Asone enters the room, a pre-recorded debate begins – supposedly by the Board of Longitude – with different voices corresponding to a different21/8/2014 BSECS - Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitudehttp://www.bsecs.org.uk/criticks/ReviewDetails.aspx?id=241&type=2 4/4chair around the table. As the discussion continues, and different opinions are ventured, the books and papers move, meaning that visitors canpore over the documents as their contents are discussed and argued over. When I viewed the exhibition, some visitors were mesmerised by thisdisplay, listening to the debate several times and moving round the table to study material projected onto different corners. This imaginative staging is one of the exhibition’s most impressive features and also denotes a wider communicative achievement: Ships, Clocksand Stars operates effectively on several levels of engagement. During my visit, several visitors were concentrating on the large summarisingcaptions and the interactive elements like the touchscreens and the boardroom table in order to obtain an overview without wading throughtechnical or specialist detail. For those who want it, however, those details are plentiful: if a viewer wants to know the difference between asextant and an octant, or how to calculate longitude by observing Jupiter’s moons, the answers are easy to find. This is a difficult balance toachieve, especially in an exhibition with a high technical content: too much detail would risk prescriptive staidness; too little and the displayswould patronise their viewers. Ships, Clocks and Stars , however, reaches out to its many potential audiences, and succeeds in engaging with allof them.Ships, Clocks and Stars: The Quest for Longitude is at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, from 11 July 2014 to 4 January 2015.The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Finding Longitude by Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgitt (Collins / Royal Museums Greenwich,London, 2014).Copyright © 1999-2009 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Sitemap / Feedback

Ships, clocks and stars: the quest for longitude

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