CharlesII has gone down in history as the ‘Merry Monarch’ due to his wellknown pleasure-seeking proclivities, but that nickname belies his dedicated patronage of science and the arts during his reign. Yet it was a connection to his pursuit of pleasure that spurred him on to one of his most significant commissions.
In the mid-17th century, many minds were concerned with the ‘longitude problem’. The challenge of finding a ship's precise longitude at sea had haunted sailors for centuries. While latitude – the measurement of distance north or south of the Equator – was known, when out of sight of land, ships’ crews had no method of
