Longitudes – News, Research and Analysis – The Conversation

Navigator Frank Worsley, left, works with scientist Reginald James to take an observation by the stern of the Endurance. Frank Hurley/Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge/Getty Images

March 10, 2022

Endurance captain Frank Worsley, Shackleton’s gifted navigator, knew how to stay the course

Daniella McCahey, Texas Tech University

Accurately calculating a ship’s position by hand in 1915 was easy compared to what the New Zealand-born navigator Frank Worsley had to do next.

Mayflower ashore on the banks of the Thames in 1624, being broken for parts. Dr Mike Haywood (used with the kind permission of The General Society of Mayflower Descendants)

September 17, 2020

Mayflower 400: the science of sailing across the ocean in 1620

Jonathan Ridley, Southampton Solent University

When a shipload of puritan colonisers set sail for the New World, maritime science and navigation were fairly unsophisticated.

July 25, 2014

From sea clocks to antibiotics: how the Longitude Prize became about the battle against bacteria

Stephen Pumfrey, Lancaster University

The British public voted for the £10m Longitude Prize to go towards funding scientific research to solve the urgent global problem of rising resistance to antibiotics. The problem of bacterial resistance…

Time will tell when it comes to finding longitude. Greenwich time, that is. Flickr: nicksarebi

July 18, 2013

The longitude problem: how we figured out where we are

Emily Lindsay Brown, The Conversation

Right now if you want to know where you are, your smartphone map will tell you instantly. But these technologies only exist because of the efforts of 18th century geographers, explorers, astronomers and…

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