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APPENDIX.
NO. 1.
in question.[1] How well they have merited that, degree of confidence is left to the impartial world to determine. To return again to Mr. Maskelyne's account: he, as I think has been already shown, having said and done every thing in his power to the dishonour and discouragement of my Invention, scruples not to sum up his opinion of it in the following terms:
'That Mr. Harrison's Watch cannot be depended upon to keep the Longitude within a degree, in a West India voyage for six weeks, nor to keep the Longitude within half a degree for more than a fortnight,[2] and then it must be kept in a place
- ↑ Not always so, for in the discussions which took place between them and the younger Harrison, the Professors gave much cause to doubt their proficiency as practical astronomers: and it has been shown it was usual to call in Captain Campbell to decide disputed points. The opinion of that Officer, it is remarkable, was always in favour of the Mechanic.—If they ventured, on their return to College, to relate how they were discomfited by this nautical Umpire, it is likely it would produce some scenes which a Sterne, or a Moliere, was wanting to preserve.
- ↑ That Dr. Maskelyne should have suffered this assertion to escape him, and yet without adverting in a note, or otherwise, to the tangible logic, that in two voyages (or four) the Timekeeper had bona fidœ performed with, an accuracy directly at variance with such a declaration may well occasion it to be asked, why philosophers must think it necessary to despise the hearty contempt of the vulgar; when, as it may happen, and as it does happen here; any sailor who had belonged to the Deptford, the Merlin, or the Tartar, though he could neither read nor write, and although his reasoning was confined to the
