Longitude

"Dirty weather," Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell called the fog that had dogged him twelve days at sea. Returning home victorious from Gibraltar after skirmishes with the French Mediterranean forces, Sir Clowdisley could not beat the heavy autumn overcast. Fearing the ships might founder on coastal rocks, the admiral summoned all his navigators to put their heads together.

The consensus opinion placed the English fleet safely west of Ile d'Ouessant, an island outpost of the Brittany penninsula. But as the sailors continued north they discoverd to their horror that they had misguaged their longitude near the Scilly Isles. These tiny islands, about twenty miles from the southwest tip of England, point to Land's End like a path of stepping stones. And on that foggy night of October 22, 1707, the Scillies became unmarked tombstones for two thousand of Sir Clowdisley's troops.

The flagship, The Association struck first. She sank within minutes, drowning all hands. Before the rest of the vessels could react to the obvious danger, two more ships, the Eagle and the Romney, pricked themselves on the rocks and went down like stones. In all, four of the five warships were lost.

Only two men washed ashore alive. One of them was Sir Clowdisley himself, who may have watched the fifty-seven years of his life flash before his eyes as waves carried him home.

~~"Longitude" by Dava Sobel

Poor Admiral Clowdisley. Supposedly a woman combing the beach where he washed ashore fell in love with an emerald ring the Admiral wore. She killed him for the ring.

And all because in those days sailors could not find their longitude.

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