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From a short article on the history of the  longitude problem in the Journal
of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada --  after outlining the early
stages of the quest for longitude, the author  writes:
"Meanwhile, more and more ships ploughed the seas in dismal  ignorance of
their positions. Not only were valuable cargoes forever being lost  in
shipwrecks, but the toll in lives was appalling. There was Sir Cloudsley  Shovel, for
instance, returning to England from Gibraltar in 1707 and running  into heavy
weather. His navigators all agreed the fleet was off Ushant, although  an
ordinary seaman had the temerity to advise his superiors that he reckoned
otherwise. While he was being sentenced to swing from the yardarm for his  mutinous
attitude, the fleet sailed in accordance with the navigator's decree,  ran
head-on into the Scilly Isles and lost four ships and two thousand lives,  Sir
Cloudsley's among them. Some solution had to be found."

And from  there, the author describes how this tragedy influenced Parliament
to offer the  Longitude Prize. I am posting this because it was written in
1974  --TWO  DECADES before Sobel's "Longitude". Just a little documentation to
support my  comment that I had heard the story, told in much the same way, over
25 years  ago. Note that this was not my source from back then. It's yet
another  re-telling.

The rest of the article is interesting. You can find it on  ADSABS by using
"Cloudsley" as a search  term.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/advanced_fulltext_service.html

And if  you use the more common spelling "Clowdisley", you will find two very
nice  articles "Navigation and Astronomy - II: The Last Three Hundred Years"
from 1981  by Derek Howse, which I've read before, and "The Board of Longitude
1714-1828"  from 1989 by Peter Johnson, which I haven't seen before.

-FER
42.0N  87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars

   

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