Dear Frank, To add to Kevin's reply I have a contact at Greenwich Observatory who replied to my amazement that there were that many chronometers on board, and said:
Dear Doug, Yes there were that many, not all were government, if I remember properly 5 were Fitzroy's own, 2 were loaned by makers who wanted them trialled in effect and 16 were government. Beagle was on a long trip of which surveying was one of the prime objects. Surveying vessel if a way for years ( in the South American surveys some 14 years was spent doing them and vessels were away years (7). I can give you more exact data when I am in the Observatory plus my own books on surveying. Remember they used to rate them by the astronomical methods when doing in shore surveying with shore bases set up. I can relate some of things that were done when the Australia coast was surveyed by Stokes (served in Beagle for 14 years on surveying and took Beagle to Australia) I have the definitive books on the Australian surveys (a lot of coast line!!).. Best Regards, Peter I can add that almost certainly some may have been on test and although chronometers are generally reliable, some could well fail on a long trip. Regards, Doug On 23 Jun 2011, at 09:51, Frank Evans wrote: > During Darwin's famous voyage aboard the "Beagle", Captain Fitzroy had 22 > chronometers aboard, no doubt to obtain accurate longitudes. This seems > pretty excessive and I'm wondering how many (or few) chronometers would have > reduced his time errors to an acceptable level. Any thoughts? Poisson > distribution, perhaps? > Frank 55N 1W > --------------------------------------------------- > https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
