The Longitude Act 1714 was an

Act of Parliament Acts of Parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation, are texts of law passed by the Legislature, legislative body of a jurisdiction (often a parliament or council). In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of ...

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

passed in July 1714 at the end of the reign of Queen Anne. It established the

Board of Longitude The Commissioners for the Discovery of the Longitude at Sea, or more popularly Board of Longitude, was a British government body formed in 1714 to administer a scheme of prizes intended to encourage innovators to solve the problem of finding lon ...

and offered

monetary Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are ...

rewards (

Longitude rewards The longitude rewards were the system of inducement prizes offered by the British government for a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude at sea. The rewards, established through an Act of Parliament (t ...

) for anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east– west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lette ...

. The Act of 1714 was followed by a series of other Longitude Acts that revised or replaced the original.

Background

As transoceanic travel grew in significance, so did the importance of accurate and reliable navigation at sea. Scientists and navigators had been working on the problem of measuring longitude for a long time. While determining

latitude In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pol ...

was relatively easy, early ocean navigators had to rely on

dead reckoning In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating current position of some moving object by using a previously determined position, or fix, and then incorporating estimates of speed, heading direction, and course over elapsed time. ...

to find longitude. This was particularly inaccurate on long voyages without sight of land and could sometimes lead to tragedy, as during the

Scilly naval disaster of 1707 The Scilly naval disaster of 1707 was the loss of four warships of a Royal Navy fleet off the Isles of Scilly in severe weather on 22 October 1707. Between 1,400 and 2,000 sailors lost their lives aboard the wrecked vessels, making the incident ...

which claimed the lives of nearly 2,000 sailors. This brought the problem of measuring longitude at sea into sharp focus once more. Following the Merchants and Seamen Petition, which called for finding an adequate solution and was presented to

Westminster Palace The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parli ...

in May 1714, the Longitude Act was passed in July 1714. For details on many of the efforts towards determining the longitude, see

History of longitude The history of longitude describes the centuries-long effort by astronomers, cartographers and navigators to discover a means of determining the longitude of any given place on Earth. The measurement of longitude is important to both cartography ...

The rewards

The Longitude Act offered a series of rewards, rather than a single prize. The rewards increased with the accuracy achieved: £10,000 (worth over £ in ) for anyone who could find a practical way of determining longitude at sea with an error of not greater than one degree of longitude (equates to at the equator). The reward was to be increased to £15,000 if the error was not greater than 40 minutes, and further enhanced to £20,000 if it was not greater than half a degree. Other rewards were on offer for those who presented methods that worked within 80 geographical miles of the coast (being the most treacherous part of voyages) and for those with promising ideas who needed help to bring them to readiness for trial. Many rewards were paid out over the 114 years of the Board of Longitude's existence.

John Harrison John Harrison ( – 24 March 1776) was a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. Harrison's solution revol ...

received more money than any other individual, with several rewards from the 1730s–1750s, and £10,000 in 1765. Subsequent Longitude Acts offered different rewards. That of 1767 held out £5,000 for improvements to

Tobias Mayer Tobias Mayer (17 February 172320 February 1762) was a German astronomer famous for his studies of the Moon. He was born at Marbach, in Württemberg, and brought up at Esslingen in poor circumstances. A self-taught mathematician, he earned a l ...

's lunar tables and that of 1774Discovery of Longitude at Sea Act 1774 (14 Geo. 3 c. 66) halved the amount offered for any method or instrument achieving the degrees of precision outlined in the original Act (i.e. £5,000 for a degree, £7,500 for of a degree or £10,000 for a degree). The Longitude Act 1818, which completely revised the composition and remit of the Board of Longitude, again changed the rewards, by now offered for improvements to navigation in general rather than simply for finding longitude. In addition, the Act outlined rewards for navigating the

North West Passage The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The eastern route along the Arc ...

, again on a sliding scale from £20,000 for reaching the Pacific through a north-west passage to £5,000 for reaching 110 degrees west or 89 degrees north and £1,000 for reaching 83 degrees north. In 1820 £5,000 was paid to the officers and crews of and under this Act.

Background

The rewards

References

Further reading