Ships, Clocks And Stars At The National Maritime Museum — londonist.com

It’s deucedly easy to get lost at sea. All that water and sky and lack of landmarks. Imagine trying to cross the ocean without any accurate way of knowing how far east or west you’d gone. That was the challenge facing ships in the age of empire and exploration. Many went astray; many didn’t make it home. The quest to measure one’s way around the globe is a story that has been told many times, most notably in Dava Sobel’s 1995 bestseller Longitude. The tale is also a mainstay of the Royal Observatory, where John Harrison’s marine chronometers are on permanent display. So what fresh material is brought to the captain’s table by the National Maritime Museum’s latest exhibition on the subject?

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