When the book Longitude was published in the UK in 1995, it went on to earn its author, Dava Sobel, the 1997 British Book of the Year award and a fellowship of the American Geographical Society. Adapted as TV drama by Channel 4 in 2000, starring Jeremy Irons and Michael Gambon, it brought to popular culture the story of John Harrison, a clockmaker from Lincolnshire who defied all odds and went on to win the Longitude Prize thanks to his simple, elegant logic and precision clockmaking.
Harrison’s discovery and journey to recognition was blighted by hostility to his pragmatic calculations, conflict of interest within the royal Longitude Board and prejudice against scientific discoveries by self-taught working class craftsmen. The contrast of his brilliance with the resistance met at institutional level is pure gold for an underdog drama with a happy ending. No surprise many adaptations followed the book, but the musical by Kaz Moloney, which premiered at fringe theatre Upstairs at the Gatehouse on June 13th, is a first and is a true wonder.
Until Harrison’s method was eventually endorsed by The Longitude Board, seamen could determine their latitude at sea by measuring the height of the sun, but had no reliable way of measuring how many meridians east or west of Greenwich they had travelled. The problem of longitude’s accuracy and reliability was intractable and lives were lost at sea to a scale unimaginable today. Harrison’s solution was to calculate longitude not by calculating nautical distance but by calculating the time difference between noon in Greenwich and noon wherever a ship happened to be.
By having on board two clocks, one always set to Greenwich time, and one reset every day to local noon, as indicated by the sun, the calculus was simple. Earth revolves 360 degrees in 24 hours, so a one hour difference of the onboard local time clock to the Greenwich time clock equals to a 15-degree difference with the Greenwich meridian, be it east or west. As a clockmaker, Harrison was also able to manufacture a small and precise enough clock that could be reliable in the roughest of seas, a not insignificant hurdle until then.
Moloney’s lyrics and music draw out the ridicule and vacuous self-importance of the members of the Longitude Board with catchy tunes such as We, The Board of Longitude, Why Do We Do This? and Commoners. Moloney is brilliant also when she crafts lyrics to address the toll of Harrison’s quest on his own health in his wife’s song, Promises, and the enthusiasm and support of his children with the foot-tapping coral Dear King. A notable mention is reserved for Imogen Opie, whose daughter’s song, This Girl is On Fire, is a brilliant feminist anthem, and for Abigail Broadie, whose standout performance as the First Sea Lord and Chair of the Board of Longitude, as well as of the nutty King George III, is nothing short of astonishing.
Longitude is a little gem of a musical. Its perfectly accomplished lyrics and music and the mix of psychological, scientific and historical elements have the potential to become an enduring hit with low-budget high-school projects as well as a successful production capable of filling one of the larger West End theatre.
• Book future shows at Upstairs at the Gatehouse here