Kendall's Longitude

By John Bendall

LOST AT SEA: EVERY MARINER'S FEAR. Maritime navigational tools could find latitude, but finding longitude remained elusive until Harrison developed the reliable sea clock, H4. Building on H4's success, Kendall made a series of nautical timekeepers, K1, K2 and K3. This is the story of the K2 timekeeper; its adventurous voyages, the people it touched, and its place in history. K2's first voyage, accompanied by the young Nelson, was nearly its last in the crushing Arctic ice. The next two expeditions saw it survive kidnappings, nautical intrigue, and gunpowder plots of the American revolutionary wars. The slave coasts of Africa followed. Bligh took K2 on the Bounty, but lost it in a fight with the mutineers in 1789. It was recovered by an American Quaker from Nantucket, only to be stolen by the Spanish. It rode on mules along the Andes before sailing into the Opium Wars. K2 finally returned to Greenwich in 1963. DRAMATIC, THREE NATION 'STORY OF TIME'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528953962

John Bendall

John Bendall. A background in economic history, political science and marketing and is now an independent researcher living in Greenwich. John has a long-standing love of the Royal Observatory and National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, including the Caird Library. He is a member of the Society for Nautical Research and Nantucket Historical Association, which have both provided interesting material, as has the National Archives in West London. This book was inspired by American author Dava Sobel's renowned 'Longitude', covering Harrison's timepieces in revolutionising maritime navigation. John has researched a fascinating follow-up story of Larcum Kendall and the K2 timekeeper. John is also a director of an English language school in Canterbury and a document management services company. His supportive wife, Jane, worked at the NMM for many years and is founder of the Flamsteed Astronomy Society. Mike Dryland. Mike retired from a career in industry in 2001 and has since been spending time as a voluntary curatorial assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, where he specialises in tours and talks about the Harrison marine timekeepers (sea clocks) and the history of the Observatory. He studied physics and has a long-time interest in astronomy, horology and naval history. Mike contributed two chapters and the appendix for this book, and helped generally with navigation and horology issues.

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Copyright Information

Copyright © John Bendall (2019)

The right of John Bendall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Chapter 2, 3 & Appendix Copyright © Michael Dryland (2019)

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume, and hereby disclaim, any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

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ISBN 9781528920759 (Hardback)

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To my wonderful wife, family and friends.

KENDALL’S LONGITUDE

The Times and Voyages of K2 – The Bounty Watch

‘The sea life of K2…encompasses some of the most famous voyages in the annals of the oceans’

Dava Sobel, Longitude, 1995, p 154.

Referring to K1, K2 and K3 ‘…their performance was remarkable and set a standard for subsequent makers to aim for’.

Peter Poland, The Travels of the Timekeepers, 1991, p 18. President of Woollahra History and Heritage Society, 2017

‘This work is perhaps long overdue and will be a welcome addition to many a library’.

Rory McEvoy, Curator of Horology,

Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 2017.

THE PEOPLE, PLACES AND POLITICS

Preface

Between 1770 and 1774, a London watchmaker called Larcum Kendall, working at the behest of the Board of Longitude, made a series of three ‘marine timekeepers’ in the form of large watches, now known as K1 (K for Kendall), K2 and K3.

Kendall’s craftsmanship was superb, but his watch designs themselves brought little innovation to the technology; K1 is a copy of H4, John Harrison’s famous 4th marine timekeeper. K2 and K3 are simplified designs, quicker and cheaper to manufacture.

What makes Kendall’s watches intriguing is their career history. They travelled from the Arctic Circle to the South Pacific taking in North America, Australia and Africa on the way. K1 sailed with Captain James Cook to the Pacific and then with Arthur Phillip in the First Fleet to Botany Bay. K3 also sailed with Cook and later, George Vancouver.

Most remarkable in its travels was K2, Kendall’s 2nd marine watch. It went to the Arctic with a young Horatio Nelson, on a voyage which nearly led to the two ships being crushed by Arctic ice. This close escape was followed by two voyages to North America, at the beginning and end of the American Revolutionary War. The British warship Asia, with K2 on board, landed troops to support Major Pitcairn’s attack on Lexington in 1775. It was also the initial target of the first submarine attack in history. The next commission towards the end of this American war was under Rear Admiral Digby with royalty on board, and the venture was equally dangerous.

After all these adventures and an exploratory voyage to the slave coasts of West Africa, the K2-timekeeper was issued to the Bounty under Lieutenant William Bligh bound for Tahiti on a fateful voyage that resulted in the legendary naval mutiny. There was trouble ahead.

This is the story of K2, the Bounty Watch, and the adventures of many of the people whose lives it touched. As Dava Sobel wrote in her acclaimed book Longitude:

The sea life of K2…encompasses some of the most famous voyages in the annals of the oceans.

¹

The Bounty Watch remained on Pitcairn’s Island for over 18 years until it was rediscovered by an American sealer captain from Nantucket, which as Dava Sobel added:

It launched K2 on yet another round of adventures.

²

Being a power in the South Pacific, a Spanish governor decided to flex his muscles by holding the American sealer in Chile and ‘confiscating’ K2. This is truly a three-nation story. It took the help of a friend of Charles Darwin in the Andes and an Opium War with China, before K2 came back to Britain. There were many more moons before K2 joined the Kendall timekeepers K1 and K3, where they can now be seen at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

This book focuses on the people, places and politics around K2, which witnessed so many adventures on its worldwide journeys in the hands of three maritime nations. It also tells how the three Kendall timepieces played a valuable part in finding longitude at sea in the story of time.

Foreword

By Rory McEvoy

Today’s visitors to the National Maritime Museum can enjoy seeing all three of Larcum Kendall’s marine timekeepers in our galleries. The first and the third of this series stayed within the Admiralty’s hands until recent times, when the Museum formally acquired them. The second, however, was famously lost to the Mutineers aboard the Bounty and its survival and repatriation is nothing short of a miracle. It is a distinct pleasure to be invited to write a foreword for John’s book, which charts the extraordinary journey of Kendall’s watch, known as K2. This work is perhaps long overdue and will be a welcome addition to many a library.

2014 saw the tercentenary of the Queen Anne Longitude Act, and the Museum marked the anniversary with a touring exhibition, entitled Ships, Clocks & Stars, which looked at the history of the Board of Longitude and the associated endeavours to enable mariners to place their longitude while at sea. Within the exhibition, Kendall’s timekeepers toured the east coast of the United States, before debarking for Sydney, Australia. In total, the show was enjoyed by almost a quarter of a million visitors during its three-year duration, and the timekeepers added an estimated 25,000 miles to their travel history. At the time of writing, all three of Kendall’s watches are in the Museum’s horological conservation studio for condition assessment and treatment following their return from the exhibition and ahead of display in the forthcoming Pacific and Exploration galleries at the National Maritime Museum.

K2, the subject of this volume, is a substantial watch, 124mm wide; in an impressive silver case with a protective outer shell, known as a pair case, which is hallmarked for London 1771-72 by maker ‘P.M.’ Peter Mounier of Frith Street, Soho. The watch has what is known as a regulator-type dial, so-called as it resembles those found on the accurate pendulum clocks used by astronomers. The most significant hand marks the passage of minutes, making a full rotation in one hour; the two subsidiary dials indicate hours and seconds. The advantage of this layout is two-fold: the user can get an accurate reading of the time at a glance; and the placing of the dials in this manner simplifies the gearing behind the dial, which reduces friction and therefore helps the watch to run reliably.

The Board of Longitude commissioned Larcum Kendall to make his first watch at the cost of £450, paying him an additional £50 for the months he spent adjusting and perfecting its timekeeping. This watch, known as K1, was famously used by Captain James Cook on his second voyage of discovery (1772-5). Despite Kendall’s doubts as to the durability of the design, the watch performed so well that Cook referred to it as his ‘never failing guide’ and in so doing, put the rubber stamp of approval on the timekeeper method of determining longitude at sea. Here was indisputable proof that the success of Harrison’s watch on the two voyages to the West Indies had not been down to chance.

At £500, this design was too expensive, and so the next challenge was to produce watches that could perform just as well but at a lesser cost. Kendall agreed to make a second timekeeper for the Board of Longitude for £200. This timekeeper closely followed Harrison’s design but omitted the complex rewind mechanism. Kendall’s artistry as a watchmaker was second to none, but he was not an innovator. His subsequent watches did not live up to the high standards of H4/K1 and are famed instead for their life stories.

When Captain Thomas Herbert presented K2 to the Royal United Services Institute in 1843, he had the inner case engraved This Timekeeper belonged to Captain Cook R.N… Herbert was wrong – that honour belonged to Kendall’s first longitude watch, K1. In fact, the lengthy history inscribed on the silver case is decidedly unreliable.

This book will hopefully set the record straight and add clarity to the extraordinary history of this significant navigational watch that goes beyond the mutiny of the Bounty.

Rory McEvoy,

Curator of Horology, Royal Observatory, Greenwich. 2017

Part One: K2 Before Pitcairn

Chapter 1: Pitcairn’s Island – Lost at Sea, 1767

On 2 July, 1767, Lieutenant Philip Carteret commanding the sloop Swallow, sighted an island in the South Pacific Ocean. Upon approaching it the next day, it appeared like a great rock sticking out of the sea. It was not more than five miles in circumference and seemed to be uninhabited. It was, however, covered with trees and we saw a small stream of fresh water running down one side of it. I would have landed upon it, but the surf, which at this season broke upon it with great violence, rendered it impossible.³

Carteret had not seen land for six days and needed more water, so sportingly offered a bottle of brandy to the first person to see land. At last, an island was sighted: It was so high that we saw at the distance of fifteen leagues; and it being discovered by a young gentleman Robert Pitcairn who was son of Major John Pitcairn of the Royal Marines, is why we called it Pitcairn’s Island.

Pitcairn Island Rendered Impossible to Land

Carteret logged the position of this island as ‘latitude 25° 2’ south, longitude 133° 21’ west and about a thousand leagues to the westward of the continent of America’. Unfortunately, his longitude was wrong by nearly 200 miles which would be repeated on future naval charts. Most mariners subsequently looking for Pitcairn would not easily find it. As will be seen, this error would be a blessing to the mutineers from the Bounty who are part of the story of Kendall’s marine timekeeper or ‘sea clock’ K2.

Lieutenant Philip Carteret RN was an experienced seaman who had already circumnavigated the globe. He plays an important part in this historic longitude saga, but arguably for the wrong reasons. Thanks to his reliance on outdated methods of navigation, most of the locations he reported for his discoveries – were inaccurate.

While he probably thought he was the first European to discover Pitcairn, the island was, in effect, still lost at sea.

Carteret’s previous circumnavigation was under Captain John Byron (known as ‘Foul-Weather Jack’) who was the grandfather of the poet. Following Carteret’s return from Byron’s voyage in 1766, he was invited to be captain of the Swallow on this exciting global voyage of discovery, accompanying the frigate Dolphin under the overall command of Captain Samuel Wallis.

When they sailed in 1767, Carteret was dismayed by the condition of the Swallow compared to Wallis’s larger ship. The Swallow had difficulty keeping up and they got separated after passing through the Straits of Magellan.

The Dolphin and The Swallow

Carteret was suspicious that he had been abandoned by the leading ship while Wallis later blamed the weather. Fortunately, Wallis had the foresight to give Carteret sealed orders – to go on alone, in the event of separating.⁴

Sailing with Byron in April 1765, Carteret had visited the Juan Fernandez Islands in the Pacific to boost the crew’s health. Scurvy had set in and the crew needed rest, fresh vegetables and meat, which the islands could provide. Goats and seals were plentiful but Byron identified another threat; the sea abounded with sharks of an enormous size, which, when they see a man in the water, would dart into the very surf to seize him. One of them upward of 20 feet long came close to one of our boats and having seized a large seal, instantly devoured it as a mouthful.⁵

Once Carteret had cleared the Straits of Magellan, he repeated his earlier voyage by heading straight for the Juan Fernandez archipelago. They stayed on the islands of Mas Afuera until the crew were cleared of scurvy. It was noticeable that crews generally suffered more from scurvy than officers and gentlemen. These islands would, coincidentally, also play a part eighteen years later in the story of the K2 watch as the scene of Spanish government piracy.

Carteret then sailed west and on 2 July 1767 had his historic chance encounter with Pitcairn’s Island. After logging Pitcairn, he continued his voyage by heading in a north-westerly direction to pick up favourable winds and to discover more territory for Britain. He was anxious to find islands where he could easily land, since they always needed more fresh water and food to ward off scurvy. To make matters worse, the Swallow was springing leaks.

On 12 August 1767, he came across a group of islands which he named Queen Charlotte’s Islands. They actually appeared to have been the Solomon Islands, which the Spanish had already discovered in 1568. There was time for some repairs, but a party ashore under the ship’s master, Mr Simpson, started chopping down a palm tree for fresh coconuts, which was a diplomatic disaster.

The Polynesians were initially friendly but began remonstrating with the visitors and events escalated, leading to shots and hand-to-hand fighting. Seven of the Swallow’s crew were injured, partly by arrows fired from bows the size of medieval longbows.⁶ Four sailors, including the thoughtless Mr Simpson, died of their injuries and were committed to the deep. Carteret was furious about this completely unnecessary incident and sulked for days.

By the end of August 1767, Carteret reached New Britain and discovered it was two islands instead of the one, as believed by the 17th-century explorer Dampier. After a week’s rest, the journey continued and Carteret added to his list of islands: New Hanover, Portland and on 15 September, Admiralty Island.

The southern end of the Philippines was home to hostile inhabitants so they sailed to Macassar in the Dutch East Indies only to find the Dutch equally hostile. Eventually, he reached Batavia, which after major repairs, he left in September 1768, rounding the Cape of Good Hope in December and arriving back in England in March 1769.

Most of Carteret’s chart locations were wrong because the problem of determining longitude at sea had not yet been cracked. Adding to the difficulties for navigators, some positions were deliberately changed on maps to deceive competitors.

Who really first discovered Pitcairn? American historian Walter Hayes states that it was still shown on some charts as Encarnacion de Quiros, after the sixteenth century Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who had chosen a prettier and more evocative name which exemplifies his own reaction: Sagittaria⁷. This is still debatable, but if the island was Pitcairn, the date recorded was 13 February 1606.⁸

Quiros was Portuguese, but he sailed under the Spanish flag in a Spanish ship and was largely funded by Spanish and Papal purses. If he really did find Pitcairn, it must surely be defined as a Spanish discovery. His permission, support and finance were dependent on all claims being on behalf of Spain⁹. He had sailed from Callao on 21December 1605 with two modest ships and a small launch, entering the Pacific from east to west via the Straits of Magellan.

The obvious candidates for first discovery are the Polynesians. The native Tahitians accompanying the Bounty mutineers in 1790 quickly confirmed that Pitcairn had been inhabited by their own people. Subsequent studies indicate their previous residency went back hundreds of years.

One glance at a map of the Pacific Ocean highlights the minuscule land mass of the scattered islands, inhabited primarily by Micronesians, Melanesians and Polynesians. According to author David Lewis, it was the Polynesians who journeyed the widest and visited or occupied the vast majority of those remote specks of land¹⁰.

Western explorers were generally really impressed with both the outriggers and double canoes of the Polynesians and their navigational skills. These skills appear to have been passed down through generations by memory and