Regimes of service and repair: Exploring itineraries of Royal Navy chronometers at scale c.1820-1890.

Higgitt, Rebekah

Regimes of service and repair: Exploring itineraries of Royal Navy chronometers at scale c.1820-1890.

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Abstract

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Higgitt, Rebekah

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Abstract

Drawing on recently transcribed data, this paper will offer some insights into regimes of service and repair of chronometers belonging to the British Royal Navy over more than a century. It draws on work begun as part of the AHRC-funded Tools of Knowledge project (2021-2023). This project had focused on the remodelling, augmentation and representation of an existing data set, held by Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG), about scientific instrument makers and their businesses.9 However, it also considered whether data about the makers’ products might be represented in a similar way, creating timelines, or itineraries, to track the movements and interactions of instruments over time, through their creation, use, repair, storage and/or disuse. The team working on this theme– Alex Butterworth (University of Sussex), Sarah Middle (then National Museums Scotland, now University of York) and the author – considered how to represent the itineraries of objects from NMS collections, individually and in small groups, and data on a large number of instruments, trackable over several decades or more. That data was extracted from the Admiralty’s Chronometer Ledgers, kept at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, from 1821 to 1936. Partially transcribed by volunteers at Greenwich, the information in these volumes has now been more fully extracted through a crowdsourced transcription project, Voyages in Time, set up on the Zooniverse platform. Online volunteers recorded details from the Ledgers about the movements of thousands of individual instruments that were checked and rated at the Observatory and then issued to naval vessels, ports and personnel as well as for use on scientific expeditions and surveys. The chronometers were also regularly sent to their makers, or other chronometer making businesses, for servicing, adjustment and repair. Information from the Ledgers has already been used by researchers interested in particular instruments, voyages or makers. Some of the insights gleaned were used by Alun C. Davies alongside the business records of key makers to tell the story of the rise and demise of the chronometer trade. Davies (1978) argued against earlier assumptions about “entrepreneurial decline”, to show that the end of the trade was due to the “static technology and extreme durability” of chronometers, which meant that they rarely needed to be replaced. That durability was ensured through servicing and repair, activities that were thus an essential part of the chronometermaker’s business model. Now, with data from the Ledgers fully transcribed, it is possible to gain insight into patterns of repair and to better understand the long-term relationship of chronometer making firms with their own products and, in some cases, those made by other makers. The Ledgers therefore also indicate relationships between certain firms, and between makers and the Royal Observatory or Admiralty.