Marine Chronometers, Lemons, Longitude, And Charles Darwin's High Body Count In 'Voyage Of The Beagle'
Stop! You must not clock that fox.
I’m a big fan of the idea that we should all read primary texts before forming an opinion of the ideas attributed to their authors. This is an ambitious idea since if you don’t read Latin a lot of stuff is out of bounds immediately. I would love to be able to tell people that I actually read all three volumes of Newton’s Principia Mathematica but I have not, although if I wanted to fib and tell people I had, I doubt anyone would be able to fact check me because I don’t know anyone with a reading knowledge of Latin. (There are actually two people I know of who can read Latin; one is a child psychiatrist and the other teaches Classics at Georgetown. Neither of them are even slightly interested in watches).
I have, however, read Einstein’s Relativity, The Special And General Theory, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time, and, about ten years ago, I sat down and read Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species. To those who would correctly note that both Einstein’s book and Hawking’s are popular explanations, not primary technical expositions, I can only say, mea culpa, and reply that given my lack of a decent grasp of the necessary math, a popular explanation from the horse’s mouth is as close as I am going to get. (Next lifetime, maybe).
On The Origin Of Species impressed me very much. Darwin comes across as a humble, humane, and diligent researcher whose greatest attributes were keen observation and a willingness to follow data to its logical conclusion. It was published in 1859, but about twenty years earlier, Darwin became famous for a different book: The Voyage Of The Beagle, which is his account of the five-year journey around the world of the HMS Beagle, commanded on its second survey voyage by Captain Robert FitzRoy.
I had always had a general impression that the primary purpose of the voyage of Beagle was the observation of various species, and their characteristics and distribution by Darwin, as well as geological surveying, but I found out while reading the book that Beagle was after somewhat different game.
The main purpose of the expedition was not to gather information about speciation; rather, the main job was to improve the state of navigation charts, through hydrographic surveys and also through checking the longitude of certain key locations around the world. For this purpose the Beagle carried – hold onto your knickers, Gertrude – a total of 22 marine chronometers, (and six barometers) which at the time she set sail with Darwin aboard, on December 27, 1831, were just starting to become affordable enough to be widely issued.
The Nautical Magazine’s 1833 issue is a good indicator of just how indispensable marine chronometers were, and what a blessing it was that their manufacture was well understood enough for them to be made affordably, and in large numbers. The article, “Hints On Chronometers” begins, grandiloquently:
“The concern which every one interested in nautical affairs must necessarily feel on the subject of chronometers, and their vast importance to nautical men, had induced us to enter rather largely in the present number, considering our confined limits, into some particulars relating to them. Important as the chronometer is to the several wants of the seaman and the astronomer, much yet remains to be discovered towards improving a machine which may be considered the noblest and most useful specimen of human ingenuity.”
“The ruinous prices at which chronometers have hitherto been kept up, cannot be otherwise than detrimental to the best interests of the country. Applied, as they are, to a purpose paramount to all others, that of protecting life, and, next to that, the advancement of science, and the advancement of commerce, he certainly confers a benefit on society at large, who will break through the spell of years, by reducing the price of the chronometer, whilst he leaves its merits unimpaired, and thereby enables every commander who goes to sea, to supply himself with so desirable a means of preserving his vessel from wreck.”
The article goes on to commend the partnership of Dent and Arnold, who provided some of the chronometers used on Beagle:
“And that our readers may see that he [Dent] set to work in earnest, as soon as he became the partner of Mr. Arnold … in reducing the price of chronometers; we have extracted from the observations of Captain Fitz Roy [sic] now commanding HMS Beagle, the result given by one which was purchased of him in the summer of 1831, for £50. The number of this chronometer is 633, and of the twenty-two chronometers embarked with Captain Fitz Roy, in the Beagle, it has given the longitude of Rio within one minute in space of the mean resulting from the whole number. So close an approximation attained with a moderate price, is a convincing proof, that when chronometers go forth from the hands of the first makers, a reduction in their price is no reduction in their merit.”
“When Lord Howe sailed from Spithead, previous to the memorable first of June [a naval battle in 1794], it is said that a chronometer was not to be found in his fleet. Some of His Majesty’s ships sailed about the same time, for the protection of the trade in the East Indies. These were the Centurion, the Orpheus, and the Resistance, on board of which vessels no chronometer was to be found; and, instead of making the passage to Madras in ninety or a hundred days, a circumstance which is now of every-day occurence, it cost them more than six months. Since those days, however, great changes have taken place in the whole science of navigation. Chronometers, from being scarce, and immoderately expensive, are now become plentiful and cheap; they are liberally supplied by the government to the ships of the state; and, in proportion as their number has increased, so has a knowledge of their use been cultivated.”
Nowadays we tend to look back at mechanical marine chronometers and say, ah the Golden Age of the past, there were giants once on Earth, etc. and so forth. Of course, marine chronometers did not become irrelevant or disappear. Instead, they simply kept improving – accurate clocks are still indispensable for navigation, perhaps more than ever, and behind every accurate GPS fix are atomic clocks.
It is against the austerely grand ambitions of this mission in the national interest, that Darwin’s memoir is set. I was expecting to read a closely observed account of the ups and downs of voyaging around the world in the 1830s, with all its perils and occasional pleasures, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that even in his twenties, Darwin had an acerbically entertaining pen.
The word “miserable” gets a workout; here is Darwin on the Falkland Islands:
“The Beagle anchored in Berkeley Sound, in East Falkland Island. This archipelago is situated in nearly the same latitude as the mouth of the Strait of Magellan. It covers a space of about 120 by 60 geographical miles, and is a little more than half the size of Ireland. After the possession of these miserable islands had been contested by France, Spain, and England, they were left uninhabited. The government of Buenos Ayres [sic] then sold them to a private individual, but likewise used them, as old Spain had done before, for a penal settlement. England claimed her right and seized them. The Englishman who was left in charge of the flag was consequently murdered. A British officer was next sent, unsupported by any power: and when we arrived, we found him in charge of a population, of which more than half were runaway rebels and murderers.”
One thing, though, you do have to get used to if you read The Voyage Of The Beagle – and I mention this for the benefit of anyone with a tender heart and a belief that, no matter the species, love of life is common to us all – is that Darwin is absolutely remorseless in collecting specimens of birds, reptiles, diverse mammals, insects, arthropods – anything unfortunate enough to blunder into his path and attract his insatiable curiosity. No sooner does he mention that a particular creature is an exotic and beautiful rarity with feelings not unlike our own, a creature of uncommon intelligence, revered as a divine sign of good fortune by the locals, and moreover on the verge of dying out, than he has shot several and examined their entrails for clues as to what they had for lunch. (The words “shot” and “miserable” show up exactly the same number of times in the book, in fact). You start to feel that if Darwin saw a unicorn he’d shoot it and dissect it – not out of any malice of course, just in the cold-blooded spirit of pure scientific objectivity.
The single greatest example of zoological zeal triumphing over sentimentality, though, is this anecdote about a hapless fox.
“In the evening we reached the island of S. Pedro, where we found the Beagle at anchor. In doubling the point, two of the officers landed to take a round of angles with the theodolite. A fox of a kind said to be peculiar to the island, and very rare in it, and which is an undescribed species, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching their manoeuvres [sic] that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer. This fox, more curious or more scientific, but less wise, than the generality of his brethren, is now mounted in the museum of the Zoological Society.”
The effect of the advent of widely available marine chronometers is expressed by Darwin in the final chapter when, after five years away, he returns home and reflects on his voyage as a whole.
“ … it is evident that the real grievances (excepting from accidents) of a sea life are at an end. The short space of sixty years has made an astonishing difference in the facility of distant navigation. Even in the time of Cook, a man who left his comfortable fireside for such expeditions, underwent severe privations. A yacht now with every luxury of life might circumnavigate the globe.”
Beagle, a sloop-of-war, was not much bigger than a yacht. She was a member of the Cherokee class, of which 115 were built (she was given her name thanks to the dog breed’s keen hunting senses and the fact that she was fitted out as a survey vessel). At 90 feet, and with a crew of 65 men with six supernumaries (of which Darwin was one – a self-funded gentleman naturalist and geologist) she nonetheless completed a voyage which, while not without danger (she was once nearly capsized in a violent storm) never in Darwin’s account, had any moment in which the ship was in danger from navigational error, or poor understanding or management of the vessel. This is partly a credit to the captain and crew but it’s also a sign of what a sea change, so to speak, the marine chronometer made in navigation and in both naval operations and merchant shipping. By the time Beagle sailed, the behavior of marine chronometers was well understood, as well as the disturbing affects which external forces could have on them – as an example, in order to reduce magnetic interference with the chronometers, Captain FitzRoy had her iron cannons replaced with brass guns at Rio.
And it is thanks to Darwin that we have a vivid picture of what life was like on board an ocean-going sailing ship, in the age when reliable celestial navigation and the determination of longitude became routine. The other great achievement contributing to routine, lengthy sea voyages was, of course, the elimination of scurvy. The fact that citrus fruit could cure scurvy was well known decades before Darwin set sail and by the time Beagle sailed from Plymouth Sound in December of 1831, a system for distributing lemon juice in the Navy was well established. Accurate clocks and lemons – without them, who knows if an eager young would-be parson turned naturalist, gadding around the world on his own dime, would ever have had a chance to knock a fox on the head, and establish one of the great pillars of modern science while he was at it.
Beagle landed at Falmouth on October 2, 1836. The weather is recorded as stormy. Charles Darwin, after five years abroad, set out for home immediately by coach. He arrived at his family home, The Mount House, in Shropshire, on October 4. On seeing him his sisters assured him that he did not look the least different, but his father exclaimed, “Why, the shape of his head is quite altered.”
Darwin was at least impartial on whom he conducted research. In South America he allowed a blood-sucking insect to gorge on him in order to observe its feeding habits, as a result of which he may have contracted Chagas Disease – one hypothesis for his physical deterioration and chronic illnesses later in life.
My first thought on reading they had 22 chronometers…
“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.“
Probably his head shape was altered by a fantastic Mr Fox who was good with a hammer as well🤣