One, whom you loved of all mankind, A champion killed, or trophy won, Would you not wish his laurels cropt?— The answer may be safely in the negative here. Graham, no doubt, would have been glad to achieve the Longitude, had he been equal to it: whether he wished his laurels cropt, as an abstract question is perfectly immaterial, while such was his conduct towards a rival, whom he could not be supposed to love most of all mankind, for he had never seen him before. Pope and Addison, and divers other celebrated men, were quite unequal to such a conquest over themselves, of which there is even official evidence in the present case. At a Board of Longitude, 16th January, 1741.-'A cer'tificate being read, of the usefulness of a machine invented by 'Mr. John Harrison, for finding the Longitude at sea, by mea'suring time; it being an improvement which he hath made on 'two others which were before contrived by him, but of a dif'ferent construction and considerably less than either of them, 'and Mr. Graham informing the Board that Mr. Harrison hath 'been ten years from first to last employed on the said machine, 'and been at very great expense in employing several persons 'to assist him in making the same, and that, in his opinion, 'it may in all probability effect when completed, the finding 'of the Longitude at sea. But Mr. Harrison representing that 'his circumstances are such, that he shall not be able to com'plete his said machine, unless he can be supplied with the 'sum of £500; but that with such encouragement he will un'dertake to put his machine together, and in motion, by the 'first day of August next, and in a condition by the first day ‘of August, 1743, to be placed on board one of his Majesty's 'ships, in order to the making a trial thereof.—And the Board 'being satisfied that the said machine may be of advantage to 'navigation, in finding out the Longitude, and that therefore 'experiments thereof ought to be made: Resolved, &c.' which answered the purpose just as well as if it had been entirely correct.* On the 27th of January, at five o'clock in the evening, I took the Watch on board the Merlin sloop of eighteen guns, Captain Bourke, who was under orders to sail express for England; and accordingly at five in the morning of the 28th, they weighed and sailed out of the harbour of Port Royal. [Here the writer notes in their order, the Islands of Navasa, Hispaniola, Cuba, Tortuga, Hencago, Achilles's Keys, Fortune and Crooked Island, and continues] In the evening, February 10th, we saw Bird Island; and from that time till the 24th of March we saw no land, nor did we expect to see any, and we then, according to my reckoning by the Watch, made the Lizard within ten miles of what I expected. I have already observed to you, that the Watch made an error of two minutes and thirty-six seconds in going to Jamaica; which error I could easily account for, as it is not in so perfect a state as we could make it; but the Commissioners† wanted to know * Being writing to a person not much conversant with the subject, he has not mentioned and deducted the rate of going for the time. + If we understand, by this word, the predominant party at the Board, which would be proper enough, their motives for wanting "to know what the Watch would do in its present state," although the young man does not appear to question them, at this time, were not very candid; for if they desired the trial should succeed to the fullest extent, would they not have advised the Candidate to make his work as perfect as he could. Had the Timekeeper, from some imperfect adjustment, failed to come not only within the least, but the greater limits prescribed, they would have congratulated him on its performance being so nearly within the terms of the Act, and expressed their belief that, but for the circumstance mentioned, it would have become entitled to £20,000; but then they would have sung out, that since it had resulted otherwise, it was out of their power to offer him more than another trial when he should be prepared for it. Now it turns out that, about this time, the reverend Nevil Maskelyne, B. D. afterwards (at Barbadoes) the avowed rival of the Candidate, was making a private voyage to St. Helena, in a merchant brig, furnished with Professor Mayer's Tables, which had been imported in 1756, to find the Longitude by the Moon—a step then unknown to the Harrisons, and which it becomes exceedingly difficult to acquit the mathematical Com what it would do in its present state. This error was occasioned by the motion of the ship causing the balance of the Watch to vibrate somewhat slower, which would affect its going in proportion. It was a part that we had not quite adjusted, as we declared to the Commissioners before I went to Jamaica, so that they as well as ourselves believed it would go somewhat too slow, when at sea: and consequently the more the ship was tossed, the slower it must go, if its going was uniform in other respects. And as we had the most turbulent passage home that was possible; in consequence it went slower than in the voyage out; I supposed that would be about double as much, and accordingly found it so. But to all in the ship it was the greatest miracle that it kept going at all; for I was obliged to place it in the cabin, quite astern, upon the seat or counter; and when we lay to, which we were very often obliged to do, under a balanced mizen, it received such a shock from the breaking of the waves under the counter, that it was just the same as if I had taken the box in my hand and thrown it from one side of the cabin to the other. Had I placed it nearer the midship, it would not have undergone what it did with respect to motion, but then it would have been worse upon another account; for it would have proved impossible for me to have kept the salt water out of it, which was the reason of my placing it where I did. For that, as the Captain told me, was the driest place in the ship; yet it was far from being dry, for sometimes when a sea struck us, the water would spurn [spume] in at every seam, and it was not rare to have two feet of water upon our deck, and six inches in the Captain's cabin. Seven or eight times we sprung a leak, but through God's mercy we as often got it stopped, though sometimes we had a great deal of pumping first, and it was as much as we could do to keep our ship above water. We broke our rudder in a hard gale, but missioners of contributing to the expenses of, out of the funds at their disposal, unless some unknown scientific character was assisting in this cross-purpose; for there is no voucher that the young Astronomer's private fortune was likely to encourage him to such an enterprize. it pleased God to send us three or four hours of moderate weather to mend it again. And then came on the heaviest gale that ever man on board had seen; we had nothing to look to, but that every wave, as it came, would carry us to the bottom; but thank God, it was not to be so. We were near six weeks without an inch of dry deck; and half that time never had a topsail set for two hours together; and all that we could do was to lie to under a balanced mizen and reefed mainsail, or to scud under a reefed foresail, our topgallant masts and yards being taken down, and our topmasts lowered, with our topsail yards upon the cap.-I could give you a longer history, but time will not permit, as I am very busy getting a Committee. [He means a Board of Longitude.] No. 4. A LETTER FROM LIEUTENANT A. HOWE, ON THE COMPARATIVE MERITS OF THE LUNAR PROCESS, FOR FINDING THE LONGITUDE, AND THAT BY CHRONOMETRY. As it occurred to the Author, a fresh water sailor (like Mr. Croker) that improvements in the instruments, and increased facilities in practice, may have made Lunar observations more available than when this pamphlet was published, above sixty years ago; with a view to be better informed of the present state of these concerns in the Navy, he wrote to an intelligent Officer (Lieutenant Alexander B. Howe) whom he knew to be of great experience. The following extract from the answer of that Gentleman, written in December, 1830 (see page 183) treats the question distinctly, and may be thought to set it at rest: except with those few who can no more be expected to part with a preconceived opinion than an old scholiast would to undervalue the logic of Thomas Aquinas. 'In reply to your enquiry, I have much pleasure in stating, 'that in the opinion of the most able, scientific and successful 'navigators, the invaluable invention of Mr. John Harrison 'stands unrivalled by any other mode of ascertaining the Lon'gitude at sea, and that for the best reasons. In the first place there are many men of great science who, from some personal 'imperfection, cannot accurately measure the distance between 'the moon and the sun, or a star, where a trifling error is of 'great consequence; when he must of course depend for accu'racy on another. You will at once see how far this goes in 'comparison; and it is not unusual for the nicest observers to 'express their doubts on that point; and in a fleet, the result 'of the observations on board different ships will often vary 'from thirty to forty miles, under the most favourable circum'stances. Besides it not unfrequently happens in tropical climates, that the best practical observer is unwell and cannot 'act, when the desired object becomes very uncertain; but not 'so with the chronometer, for any person who can take an alti'tude, can determine the Longitude; and I have never known 'a navigator, who had any opinion worth notice, that has not "expressed his entire confidence in those admirable machines, and depended on his Lunar observations in proportion to their 'approach to the Timepiece, to which he has always looked as 'his surest guide. 'This I am quite sure is not only my opinion, from positive 'experience, but that of every Officer in the Navy, who has 'witnessed the amazing accuracy of the chronometer, and the ́ease with which it is kept.-In a conversation I once had on 'the subject, with the then oldest Captain in the East India 'service, he expressed his apprehensions that the rising Officers ' in that service would be induced to lay aside their astronomical 'acquirements altogether, as the chronometer rendered naviga |