Charting Your Course: Cutting Edge Navigation and Seafaring


How can human innovation and ingenuity change the world? John Harrison’s quest to solve the problem of calculating longitude is one such example. Until 1767, sailors and navigators had no reliable way to measure longitude at sea, leading to lost lives, time, and investments. When the British Longitude Act of 1714 offered an impressive £20,000 reward to anyone who could solve this problem, a young British carpenter named John Harrison devoted his life to finding the solution. After decades of trial and error, Harrison invented the marine chronometer, a revolutionary advancement in the science of navigation.

In an exhibition that ran February 24 through May 11, 2024, Pequot Library’s copy of The Principles of Mr. Harrison’s Time-Keeper; with Plates of the Same (London: W. Richardson & S. Clark, 1767), which documents Harrison’s invention, was paired with exemplary materials from the history of marine navigation—including 16th century works of Ptolemy and Apian. School workbooks in which 18th and 19th century students in Fairfield County learned the principles of navigation illustrated how navigational discovery and learning allowed coastal Connecticut to participate in global trade, which shaped its culture and economy in ways that are still felt today.

This project is supported by funding through CT Humanities.

 

John Harrison, The Principles of Mr. Harrison’s Time-Keeper; with Plates of the Same, (London: W. Richardson & S. Clark, 1767), Pequot Library Special Collections 

John Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker, spent his entire life pursuing a solution to the problem of finding longitude at sea, a solution for which the British Board of Longitude was offering a prize of £20,000. In 1761, at the age of 68, he completed a successful prototype, which the Board put to several trans-Atlantic tests. The Principles of Mr. Harrison’s Time-Keeper, published by the Board, describes the innerworkings of this masterpiece of clockwork, and is the centerpiece of the exhibition. Harrison received his final payout in 1773, at the age of 80. 

 

Claudius Ptolemaeus, Geographicae Enarrationis, Libri Octo (Lugduni: apud Hugonem à Porta, 1541) Pequot Library Special Collections

This work by Ptolemy, originally written in 150 CE, was translated into Arabic in the 9th century helping to inspire and advance geographical knowledge and cartographic traditions of the Islamic world. Along with the work and discoveries of those Islamic scholars, Ptolemy’s work spurred scientific and intellectual advances in Medieval and Renaissance Europe after it was translated into Latin in 1406 or 1407. This 1541 edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, edited by Spanish Renaissance humanist, cartographer, and theologan Michael Servetus, helps contextualize later works in the exhibition. 

 

Petrus Apianus and Gemma Frisius, Cosmographia, sive Descriptio (Antwerp: Ex Officina Arnoldi Coninx, 1584) Pequot Library Special Collections

The works of Apianus were incredibly influential in his time. His manuals included “volvelles,” or interactive paper charts with rotating parts, based on expensive metal instruments called astrolabes. The volvelles helped readers calculate dates, astronomical events, and positions of starts and planets, all of which aided in navigation. 

This edition of Apian’s work is expanded upon by Gemma Frisius, a mathematician and cartographer who applied mathematics to navigation in new ways. He created or improved many instruments, including the cross-staff, the astrolabe, and the astronomical rings and was the teacher of Gerardus Mercator.

 

James Atkinson, Epitome of the Art of Navigation; or, a Short, Easy, and Methodical Way to become a Compleat Navigator (London: Printed for W. and J. Mount, T. Page and Son, on Tower-Hill, 1762), Pequot Library Special Collections

Epitome of the Art of Navigation was first published in 1686; this edition is contemporaneous with John Harrison’s development of the H4—his marine chronometer—and provides an example of the manuals that students of navigation were using in the late 18th century. 

 

Nathaniel Bowditch, The New American Practical Navigator; being an Epitome of Navigation (Newburyport, Mass: Edmund Blunt, 1807), Pequot Library Special Collections

Bowditch was an American mathematician who became intensely interested in the mathematics involved in celestial navigation. He expanded upon John Hamilton Moore’s London-published Navigator (which will also be exhibited) and shared his work with Moore’s U.S. publisher, but eventually decided to publish a manual of his own. The result, pictured here, is still in publication today.

 

“Geometrical Definitions” School Workbook kept by Hull Sherwood, Fairfield, 1809; Pequot Library Special Collections. 

PL holds four workbooks in which students in late 18th and early 19th century Fairfield learned the related fields of geometry, surveying, and navigation. The exercises come directly from navigation manuals such as those written by Atkinson and Bowditch.

 

“Geometry” School Workbook kept by Hull Sherwood, Fairfield, 1809; Pequot Library Special Collections. 

While most of the workbooks in which students learned navigation focused on sailing the open sea, Hull Sherwood also learned how to navigate Connecticut’s coastline and rivers through exercises like the one pictured here. 

 

Atlas Designed to Illustrate the Geography of the Heavens (Hartford, F. J. Huntington, 1835), Pequot Library Special Collections

This atlas of the celestial realm, printed in Connecticut in 1835, helped students learn principles of astronomy, a science intricately tied to navigation.