This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G
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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Chronometers and Chronometry on British Voyages of Exploration, 1819-1836 Emily Jane Akkermans Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh School of GeoSciences 2020 Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed by myself and that no part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree of qualification. The work described is my own unless otherwise stated. Emily Jane Akkermans November 2020 i Dedication In memory of my father, Frans Akkermans ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I am extremely grateful to my supervisors, Charlie Withers, Richard Dunn and Megan Barford for their invaluable advice, continuous support and patience during my doctoral studies. I could not have wished for better supervision during the writing of my thesis. Each have provided superb academic support and subject specific knowledge. In particular, I have to thank Charlie and his red pen, which I hope has made me a better writer; Richard for his patience and support when I felt lost in the literature and Megan for her practical advice and encouragement when I felt swamped by the burden of writing. I also wish to thank Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) for supporting me throughout this project. Special thanks in particular to Louise Devoy, for her support and encouragement throughout, particularly when combining the research with my work commitments proved more challenging than I had anticipated. Thanks also to Stuart Bligh and the research team in general for their understanding and allowance to continue this project alongside my work commitments. Thanks to Sally Archer, for her great work in the coordination of the Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) programme. Thanks also to Megan and Erika Jones, for being great team members and supportive colleagues. I am also very grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for the funding which enabled me to pursue this degree. These thanks are extended to the British Society for the History of Science for providing funding to travel to the Mystic Seaport, in the United States to attend a course in nineteenth-century celestial navigation. Thanks also to Frank Reed, the course instructor, who helped me interpret the navigational notebooks of the nineteenth century. The astronomy team at Mystic Seaport were particularly kind when I arrived at the museum. Thanks also to Rory McEvoy for aiding me in setting up a iii chronometer rating experiment, Lucas ‘Clocks’ Marijnissen for giving me the opportunity to restore a nineteenth century chronometer, and Niko van Keep for introducing us. Thanks to the library and archive staff at The National Archives, the Caird Library, The United Kingdom Hydrographic Archive, the Scott Polar Research Institute, the Royal Society and the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office. In particular, thanks to Penny Allen, Stawell Heard, and Martin Salmon at RMG for wonderful chats in times when archival research was quite isolating and to Ann-Marie Fitzsimmons, Ian Killick, Sian Padgett and Adrian Webb for the warm welcome and good company I always received during my visits to Taunton. In addition, Mike Dryland, Dorothy Mellor and Sarah Wood, as RMG horology volunteers, for their chronometric assistance. Finally, a big thanks to my fellow PhD colleagues, Cha Young Wha, Sarah Heaton, Jennifer Thomson, Shafrina Wan Mohd Jaafar, who helped share the burden. I also could not have done this without my friends and family, both at home and abroad. Last but not least, special thanks to James for his continued love, support, and much needed sense of humour. iv Abstract This thesis demonstrates how a historical geography of the chronometer can inform our understanding of the production and circulation of scientific knowledge at sea. The history and development of the marine chronometer has been a topic of considerable research. Yet few studies have focused on their actual use at sea, particularly during the first half of the nineteenth century. This thesis aims to understand how officers, charged with the use and care of chronometers at sea, took up the use of these instruments and developed practices for the purpose of determining longitude at sea that would later become widespread. The thesis draws upon work in the history and historical geography of science and the history of technology and of navigational instruments to provide the context to its detailed empirical content. The thesis examines the use of chronometers on Royal Navy vessels by considering four detailed case studies of voyages and navigational practice between 1819 and 1836. These are William Edward Parry’s three attempts to find a North-West Passage; William Owen’s survey of the east coast of Africa, Henry Foster’s scientific expedition in the Atlantic and Robert Fitzroy’s survey of South America and circumnavigation. The research presents a detailed analysis of a broad range of archival material, including navigational notebooks, chronometric data books, journals, correspondence, published travel narratives and navigational manuals. The thesis pays attention to the social and institutional networks in which the users of these instruments operated, including a consideration of the role of the State, the Royal Society and the Admiralty. It considers how reforms within the Royal Navy during this period shaped the role of naval officers, who turned to scientific pursuits to further their naval careers and to their close associations with scientific societies. The thesis argues that we should not consider ‘longitude by chronometer’ as a single instrumental measurement easily v achieved, but, rather as a complex interaction of instruments and methods whose manipulation invoked questions of credibility and tolerance, in the instruments and in their users. By learning and adopting observatory techniques, officers integrated chronometers and astronomical techniques into established practices of navigation. This was not achieved through straightforward textbook instruction: these skills were learnt at sea, with the help of skilled astronomers. This thesis shows that techniques of data management were transported from the observatory to the ship between ship and shore. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich aided the emergence of standardised systems of numerical reduction that were required when using large numbers of chronometers and in order to ‘test’ one device against the another. The thesis contributes to the history of the chronometer, the history of navigation and the history of exploration by considering how this particular instrument was used on particular voyages and how its use was shaped by the navigational practices of naval men, the aims and ambitions of astronomers, and by the limitations of the instruments themselves. The methodology pursued through the detailed examination of observational records and data workbooks affords significant new insights in the practice of science at sea in the early nineteenth century and shows how navigational knowledge derived from chronometers was constructed through agreement and negotiation. vi Lay Summary This thesis examines the use of chronometers in the early nineteenth century. Chronometers, or marine timekeepers, were specifically designed to provide accurate timekeeping at sea to assist in the determination of longitude. Scholars have examined these instruments at the point of their invention and their technical development, and have examined the first voyages that were charged with testing these instruments on board ship. Little is known, however, about how chronometers were used in the Royal Navy in the early nineteenth century, specifically between 1820 and 1850, a period in which chronometers were considered to have become widespread in use. This research examines the practices that were adopted by Royal Navy officers in the use and management of chronometers at sea. It does so by considering four scientific expeditions that took place between 1819 and 1836. Due to their complicated and delicate mechanisms, chronometers were inherently temperamental and unreliable devices and they responded in different ways to the unstable environment of the ship. Despite this, officers were required to use them to take and record reliable navigational and longitude measurements at sea. Part of their use thus involved the management of the instruments on board ship, the training of officers in the astronomical and mathematical concepts and procedures that underlined their use, and instructions in how to record and manage the data that chronometers produced. The thesis shows that these practices differed as some officers, who were offered command of prestigious voyages, were issued