He recommended him, however, to
make his machine before again applying to the Board of Longitude.
Harrison returned home to Barrow to complete his task, and many
years elapsed before he again appeared in London to present his
first chronometer.
The remarkable success which Harrison had achieved in his
compensating pendulum could not but urge him on to further
experiments. He was no doubt to a certain extent influenced by
the reward of 20,000L. which the English Government had offered
for an instrument that should enable the longitude to be more
accurately determined by navigators at sea than was then
possible; and it was with the object of obtaining pecuniary
assistance to assist him in completing his chronometer that
Harrison had, in 1728, made his first visit to London to exhibit
his drawings.
The Act of Parliament offering this superb reward was passed in
1714, fourteen years before, but no attempt had been made to
claim it. It was right that England, then rapidly advancing to
the first position as a commercial nation, should make every
effort to render navigation less hazardous. Before correct
chronometers were invented, or good lunar tables were
prepared,[7] the ship, when fairly at sea, out of sight of land,
and battling with the winds and tides, was in a measure lost. No
method existed for accurately ascertaining the longitude. The
ship might be out of its course for one or two hundred miles, for
anything that the navigator knew; and only the wreck of his ship
on some unknown coast told of the mistake that he had made in his
reckoning.
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