![]() Or at least, he is infamous as the hot-tempered, violent and uncontrollable naval commander whose unprovoked attacks on Dutch shipping and seizure of Dutch goods were directly responsible for starting both the second and third Anglo-Dutch wars. Quite the contrary: Major Robert Holmes, as he was at the time of the Guinea sea-trials, was somewhat notorious, as a notable villain. The problem is that Sir Robert Holmes (as he later became) was not known as a person of integrity. Right down to the present day, it is the spectacular success of these trials which is invoked as the crucial evidence, on the basis of which Huygens’s pendulum-clock timekeepers take their place as a significant step along the path from the theoretical aspiration to determine longitude at sea using a precision clock, to the realisation of that dream with John Harrison’s longitude timekeeper. It formed the basis for Huygens’s determined efforts to secure a patent for his ‘longitude clock’ in Holland, France and England. The same account translated into Dutch eventually featured as the unique account of a sea-trial of pendulum clocks to be included in Huygens’s landmark book on pendulum clocks, the Horologium Oscillatorium, published in 1673. I say almost verbatim, because at several points in the narrative phrases have been inserted: ‘having there adjusted his Watches’, ‘having a great confidence in the said Watches’. ![]() Moray’s account of Holmes’s remarkable success with the pendulum clocks was published immediately, almost verbatim, in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions and in French in the Journal des sçavans, together with extracts of his letter to Chapelain. The Estates General want to see the clock at their Assembly. But since these have already been so successful, and that the others are even more precise, I feel entitled to believe that the discovery of true longitude will shortly reach its final perfection…. I could never have imagined that clocks of this first, preliminary mode of construction could have succeeded so well, and I had reserved my principal hopes for the new ones. On his return, Captain Holmes has lodged his report concerning the usefulness of pendulum clocks, which goes far beyond my expectations. On 5 February Huygens wrote to a close friend, Jean Chapelain, to tell him of his successful application to the States General for a Dutch patent for his longitude clock, based on Holmes’s testimony. 3 Huygens had written repeatedly to Moray for news of the trials, hence that ‘At last’ at the beginning of Moray’s letter. These had been undertaken by Robert Holmes on a voyage to the Guinea Coast of Africa sponsored by the Royal African Company. For over a year he had been awaiting the outcome of a series of sea-trials of his clocks, to establish whether they might keep time with sufficient precision to allow an horological solution to the calculation of longitude. 2Ĭhristiaan Huygens was the man who patented that great breakthrough in accurate timekeeping, the pendulum clock, in 1657. And because the Captain had total confidence in the clocks, he insisted that they continue in his proposed route, and the following morning the Island of Fuego appeared just as he has judged would happen. For the Captain calculated using his pendulum clocks that he was hardly more than 30 leagues away from the Island of Fuego, which is one of the islands of Cape Verde, from which the three Pilots estimated that they were still at a considerable distance. In pursuit of which the Captain, having brought them all together with their Journals they were found to be at odds with the calculations of the Captain, one by 80 leagues, the other by 100 and the third by 120. But when he had sailed four or five hundred leagues in this direction, the Masters of the three ships under his command, fearing that they would run out of water before they reached their pretended destination, proposed that they should steer a course towards Barbados. In order to pick up the correct wind for his return he was obliged to steer towards the West and to sail for six hundred leagues without changing his course, after which, finding a favourable wind, he steered towards the coast of Africa, heading directly North North-East. ![]() He left the island of Saint Thomas, which is under the Line, accompanied by four vessels. ![]() ![]() On 13/23 January 1665 1 Sir Robert Moray, courtier and confidant to King Charles II, and sometime President of the Royal Society in London, wrote to the talented young mathematician and horologist Christiaan Huygens at The Hague:Īt last Captain Holmes has returned, and the account he has given us of the experiment with the pendulum clocks leaves us in absolutely no doubt as to their success. 3 Never Trust a Pirate: Christiaan Huygens’s Longitude Clocks ![]()
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