The following is an entry in the
list of supplies granted by Parliament in that year: "June 14.
To John Harrison, as a further reward and encouragement over and
above the sums already received by him, for his invention of a
timekeeper for ascertaining the longitude at sea, and his
discovery of the principles upon which the same was constructed,
8570 pounds 0s. 0d.
John Harrison did not long survive the settlement of his claims;
for he died on the 24th of March, 1776, at the age of
eighty-three. He was buried at the south-west corner of
Hampstead parish churchyard, where a tombstone was erected to his
memory, and an inscription placed upon it commemorating his
services. His wife survived him only a year; she died at
seventy-two, and was buried in the same tomb. His son, William
Harrison, F.R.S., a deputy-lientenant of the counties of Monmouth
and Middlesex, died in 1815, at the ripe age of eighty-eight, and
was also interred there. The tomb having stood for more than a
century, became somewhat dilapidated; when the Clock-makers'
Company of the City of London took steps in 1879 to reconstruct
it, and recut the inscriptions. An appropriate ceremony took
place at the final uncovering of the tomb.
But perhaps the most interesting works connected with John
Harrison and the great labour of his life, are the wooden clock
at the South Kensington Museum, and the four chronometers made by
him for the Government, which are still preserved at the Royal
Observatory, Greenwich.
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