NavList:

Bill,

The question of chronometer testing is an interesting point regarding somewhere like Kew Observatory, which, as I mentioned, I was fairly sure was an Admiralty testing/repair facility. I find it difficult however to consider your idea/suggestion that only pocket watches were checked - i.e. so-called 'deck watches' is correct.

The procedure might well have been different for checking between a deck-watch and a pukka marine chronometer with spring detent movement, but surely with the hundreds of chronometers the Royal Navy would have had in use, if Kew was the facility for repair/testing then they must have been 'geared-up' for both. It is highly unlikely the Admiralty would have a separate place for marine chronometers and another for deck-watches; - they don't like spending too much money on anything - let alone separate facilities for the same task.

This kind of question is what I would like to have found out definitively about the Kew Observatory but is not, it seems, readily available in any handy historical text.

I do know the in the past I have come across Kew Observatory being mentioned on a number of occasions regarding Admiralty marine chronometers, compasses and sextants.

Any further information is to be welcomed. I suppose the only way to find out is to do sme research at The National Maritime Museum, or call Johnathan Betts the curator of the Greenwich horological section.

Douglas Denny.
Chichester. England.
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