History Series / Longitude

Meanwhile, in the 20th century, horologist Rupert Gould is recovering from a mental breakdown as a result of his time in World War I. He takes a volunteer position in the royal museum in order to restore Harrison's timepieces, now in a state of corrosion and disrepair. The work consumes him, straining his marriage and his emotional state as England again approaches the eve of war with Germany.

As transoceanic voyages became more common in the AgeOfSail, fleets saw numerous losses due to the inability to accurately determine one's longitude at sea. Unlike latitude, longitude lines are not parallel, and once away from land sailors had to rely entirely on celestial navigation (which was not always adequate). The best way to determine longitude was to know the time at one's present location and the time at another fixed point, but pendulum clocks were useless aboard a swaying, yawing ship. The matter came to a head after the loss of four ships and over 1500 men under Sir Admiral Cloudsley-Shovell off the isles of Scilly, thanks to poor navigation. In the wake of this disaster, the British government announced a competition for the invention of a timepiece that is functional and practical for shipboard use.

* OneSceneWonder: Creator/StephenFry appears as Sir Kenelm Digby, whose proposed solution is a form of sympathetic magic involving dogs, a knife, and a powdered irritant. It drives Halley from the room, near to vomiting.

* RecycledSet: Unsurprisingly, Granada and A&E reused sets (such as the replica ship ''Grand Turk'') from ''Series/{{Hornblower}}'', which they were filming at around the same time. The two productions also share several cast members. The only thing they don't share is the costuming, since the events of ''Longitude'' take place in the 1700s, while ''Hornblower'' is set in the 1800s.

* EverybodysDeadDave: Campbell, now an officer, turns up to inform Harrison that most of the sailors he met during the London-to-Lisbon test died of scurvy when they ran out of fresh food due to a navigation error that took them out of sight of land.

* EverybodysDeadDave: Campbell turns up to inform Harrison that most of the sailors he met during the London-to-Lisbon test died of scurvy when they ran out of fresh food due to a navigation error that took them out of sight of land.
->'''Lt. Campbell:''' I sailed in the company of 961 men, sir. 203 returned to England. Of the 760 who died, only 48 were killed by enemy action.
->'''John Harrison:''' And the rest?
->'''Lt. Campbell:''' Disease. Despair. We were lost: weeks on end without sight of land, fresh food, water... Although much of the time we were within 6 hours' sailing of Juan Fernandez; but we mistook our position... didn't know it. I saw more men die than any Roman emperor. Men who you'll remember, and who remembered you: John Sprague; Lieutenant Draper; the messboys, Ned and Sed, didn't even make 14. We all heard about the Orford and how your machine performed, as we sailed hopelessly on, heaving man after man over the side.

* EverybodysDeadDave: Campbell turns up to inform Harrison that most of the sailors he met during the London-to-Lisbon test died when they ran out of fresh food and water due to a navigation error. "I saw more men die than any Roman emperor."

* EveryonesDeadDave: Campbell turns up to inform Harrison that most of the sailors he met during the London-to-Lisbon test died when they ran out of fresh food and water due to a navigation error. "I saw more men die than any Roman emperor."

* HeroicBSOD: Harrison detects a flaw in his clock that causes it to lose time, causing himself to lose heart. Campbell comes to visit him, and talks of how hundreds of men in the fleet he was sailing on died of thirst when an error of navigation made them sail away from land. So regardless of how Harrison feels, he really can't afford to give up.

** The Lunar Method favoured by the Royal Society is not a practical method because you need to see the Moon in the first place. Too bad if conditions are cloudy or there's a New Moon.

* CallingTheOldManOut: A quiet one after John berates and shoves William in the halls of the Society following a particularly contentious interview with the board. He simply informs his father that his dedication to horology has been motivated by hoping that the love John has for clocks will fall onto his son as well.

** The Lunar Method favoured by the Royal Society is not a practical method because you need to see the Moon in the first place. Too bad if conditions are cloudy or

* DidNotThinkThisThrough: The plan to determine longitude by stationing a line of rocket-firing barges across the Atlantic Ocean. As the board member points out, how would you feed the sailors manning the barges, and where would you find people willing to spend 365 days a year on a barge in the middle of the ocean anyway?

* EveryoneHasStandards: The Royal Society is unrepentant in their efforts to discredit the Harrisons. However, they are visibly uncomfortable when they overhear John berating William and Maskelyne is awkwardly polite calling William back in. (Not that they stop being ObstructiveBureaucrats.)

* DarkestHour: Harrison detects a flaw in his clock that causes it to lose time, causing himself to lose heart. Campbell comes to visit him, and talks of how hundreds of men in the fleet he was sailing on died of thirst when an error of navigation made them sail away from land. So regardless of how Harrison feels, he really can't afford to give up.

* DarkestHour: Harrison detects a flaw in his clock that causes it to lose time, causing himself to lose heart. A sailor who saw the original test comes to visit him, and talks of how hundreds of men in the fleet he was sailing on died of thirst when an error of navigation made them sail away from land. So regardless of how Harrison feels, he really can't afford to give up.

* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: The narrator's voiceover says that John Harrison did ''finally'' get his prize by act of Parliament before passing away in 1776, that William married and gave up clockmaking, and that Rupert Gould became a BBC panelist and museum curator before his death in 1948.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Admiral Sir Clousdlsey Shovell has a man ''hanged'' simply for doing his own navigation and trying to warn that the fleet isn't where the officers think it is.

As transoceanic voyages became more common in TheAgeOfSail, fleets saw numerous losses due to the inability to accurately determine one's longitude at sea. Unlike latitude, longitude lines are not parallel, and once away from land sailors had to rely entirely on celestial navigation (which was not always adequate). The best way to determine longitude was to know the time at one's present location and the time at another fixed point, but pendulum clocks were useless aboard a swaying, yawing ship. The matter came to a head after the loss of four ships and over 1500 men under Sir Admiral Cloudsley-Shovell off the isles of Scilly, thanks to poor navigation. In the wake of this disaster, the British government announced a competition for the invention of a timepiece that is functional and practical for shipboard use.

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: Reverend Nevil Maskelyne is the darling of the Longitude Board
who despite being talked of as a brilliant astronomer, has a great deal of difficulty with the calculations and can't match William's success.

* LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain: Rather than acknowledge that they nearly made the same deadly mistake which started the Longitude Act, Captain Man and the admiral decide to hush it all up. This creates a huge problem when Harrison has to defend his chronometer without the testimony of any officers of the ship it was tested on. Fortunately, the ship's master is moved by conscience to present his own, private testimony declaring that the Harrison chronometer did exactly what it was supposed to.

* TerribleIntervieweesMontage: Sir Edmund Halley (yes, the one the comet is named after) endures a number of longitude proposals that range from impractical to crackpot to ''horrifying''. He ends it before Harrison's turn, but happens to run into young William and changes his mind.

TheAgeOfSail, with its transocean voyages, saw numerous losses due to the inability to accurately determine one's longitude at sea. Unlike latitude, longitude lines are not parallel, and once away from land sailors had to rely entirely on celestial navigation (which was not always adequate). The best way to determine longitude was to know the time at one's present location and the time at another fixed point, but pendulum clocks were useless aboard a swaying, yawing ship. The matter came to a head after the loss of four ships and over 1500 men under Sir Admiral Cloudsley-Shovell off the isles of Scilly, thanks to poor navigation. In the wake of this disaster, the British government announced a competition for the invention of a timepiece that is functional and practical for shipboard use.

* EveryoneHasStandards: The Royal Society is unrepentant in their efforts to discredit the Harrisons. However, they are visibly uncomfortable when they overhear John berating William, and Maskelyne is ''somewhat'' tactful afterwards (although it doesn't last).

* KnowNothingKnowItAll: Reverend Nevil Maskelyne, who despite being talked of as a brilliant astronomer, has a great deal of difficulty with the calculations and can't match William's success.

''Longitude'' is a 2000 miniseries made by Granada and A&E. It is based on the book by Dava Sobel, which covers two stories.

UsefulNotes/TheLongitudeProblem had been a knotty one during the Age of Sail thanks to the difficulty of celestial navigation and the inability to accurately keep time at sea (pendulum clocks not being much use on a swaying ship). The matter came to a head after the loss of four ships and over 1500 men under Sir Admiral Cloudsley-Shovell off the isles of Scilly, thanks to poor navigation. In the wake of this disaster, the British government announced a competition for the invention of a timepiece that is functional and practical for shipboard use.

Meanwhile, in the 20th century, horologist Rupert Gould is recovering from a mental breakdown as a result of his time in World War I. He takes a volunteer position in the royal museum in order to restore Harrison's timepieces, now in a state of corrision and disrepair. The work consumes him, straining his marriage and his emotional state as England again approaches the eve of war with Germany.

----

* ShellShockedVeteran: Rupert Gould, a naval officer in the first World War, who tells the curator that "I had what is popularly known as a nervous breakdown." He has a second as Europe plunges towards World War II, putting him in the hospital for several months.

UsefulNotes/TheLongitudeProblem had been a knotty one during the Age of Sail thanks to the difficulty of celestial navigation and the inability to accurately keep time at sea (pendulum clocks not being much use on a swaying ship). The matter came to a head after the loss of four ships and over 1500 men under Sir Admiral Cloudsley-Shovell off the isles of Scilly, thanks to poor navigation. After the loss of four ships and over 1500 men, the British government announced a competition for the invention of a timepiece that is functional and practical for shipboard use.

* MarriedToTheJob: Rupert is at the museum to the late hours of the night more often than not, and doesn't realize that his obsession with restoring the Harrison chronometers is driving his wife away until she files for divorce.

* RecycledSet: Unsurprisingly, Granada and A&E reused sets (such as the replica ship ''Grand Turk'') from ''Series/{{Hornblower}}'', which they were filming at around the same time. The two productions also share several cast members.