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Re: Clowdisley Shovell and the Isles of Scilly
From: Herbert Prinz
Date: 2006 May 2, 02:19 -0400
From: Herbert Prinz
Date: 2006 May 2, 02:19 -0400
Frank, You mentioned a short article on the history of the longitude problem in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and continued to say >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. > > Of course it is. It's a re-hashed version of a few paragraphs in chapter VIII, on "Longitude", in _The Story of Maps_ by Lloyd A. Brown. The book was written in 1949. Although the the author of the article gives no reference, he makes no attempt to disguise his source as he copies verbatim whole phrases and sentences from Brown. The latter attributes his own quotes relating to Shovel diligently to Gould, _The Marine Chronometer_, 1923 (!). So this is the ONE source where it all comes from in regular intervals of 25 years. I don't remember what sources Gould uses and I don't have his book handy. I would be much surprised if he did not go back to the primary ones that there are. I will check this when I get a chance. As regards the hanging of the seaman, Gould only says that "A story was current, long afterwards, that [...] " and Brown reports it exactly that way. Many derivative accounts omit the indirection, making the hanging look like a verified fact. Sobel beats them all when she tells us what the sailor thought. Herbert Prinz