The Caird Library

 Finally at the end of the day we visited the library and got to look at illustrations of some of Cloudesley Shovell's victories and the log book from one of the surviving ships from the night of his death. The log book mentioned some of the harsh conditions the sailors faced.

One of the surviving ship's logs from the fatal night
of October 22nd, 1707

Photographing a picture to be featured in the film

We also got to see the consolatory letter sent by the Reverend at St Paulinus Church, Crayford to Lady Shovell in her time of grief. It was this national tragedy of the loss of her husband that saw the Longitude act being put in place to prevent anything like this happening again.

An illustration of the defeat of the French fleet by Sir Cloudesley Shovell

Interviews

When they finished filming Harrison's clocks they filmed the interview with Dr Richard Dunn, a curator of the Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition, who provided us with a lot of great answers. We also found out that at the time France had been in the process of attempting to calculate Longitude using the stars and moon. If Britain had not found how to work out Longitude, would have France eventually found the solution through their method?

After that they interviewed John Harrison who spoke about how Captain Cook took the K1 (a copy of the H4) on board and navigated successfully aided by this pocket watch from the tropics to the Antarctic. 

John Harrison is sat in front of the Queens's House for filming with
Greenwich Royal Observatory in the background

Harrison also spoke about the poor treatment of himself on behalf of the board of Longitude as he never received his prize money, even after meeting their requirements for the prize. It was only after his son appealing to King George III that he finally received part of what was rightfully his.

The New Longitude Prize

The groups took turns recording each other asking what they wanted the new Longitude prize (worth £10 million) to be for and why. They were given a list and had to choose from:

• Flight - How can we fly without damaging the environment?
• Food - How can we ensure everyone has nutritious sustainable food?
• Antibiotics - How can we prevent the rise of resistance to antibiotics?
• Paralysis - How can we restore movement to those with paralysis?
• Water - How can we ensure everyone has access to safe and clean water?
• Dementia - How can we help people with dementia to live independently for longer?

Filming Outside the Queen's House

The group decided where they wanted to film their interview
 with John Harrison and set up the cameras

Checking the white balance

When interviewing John Harrison we discovered that when he came to London for the first time he met the Astronomer Royal Halley. He was very supportive of Harrison's invention and solution for the Longitude prize. We also learnt that despite creating such an advanced device, that would seem could have only be made by a rich scholar or scientist at the time, Harrison had actually started out his career merely a carpenter.

Harrison did not get on with the new Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne who disregarded his work and in addition, took the H4 which greatly angered him.

After changing locations we were told by Harrison that even the greatest scientist at the time, Isaac Newton, did not believe that the clock would be the solution to finding Longitude. Newton had a stronger belief in the astronomers and thought that calculating Longitude from the stars and moon would more likely be the solution to their problems.