Scilly Isles Disaster 2

1707

The Scilly naval disaster of 1707 was the loss of four warships of a Royal Navy fleet off the Isles of Scilly in severe weather on 22 October 1707. More than 1,400 sailors aboard the wrecked vessels lost their lives, making the incident one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of the British Isles. The main cause of the disaster was the navigators' inability to accurately calculate their positions.

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Led by the Commander-in-Chief of the British Fleets, Sir Cloudesley Shovell, a fleet of twenty-one ships left Gibraltar on 29 September, with HMS Association serving as his own flagship.

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The passage was marked by extremely bad weather and constant squalls and gales. As the fleet sailed out on the Atlantic, passing the Bay of Biscay on their way to England, the weather worsened and storms gradually pushed the ships off their planned course. Finally, on the night of 22 October 1707, the squadron entered the mouth of the English Channel and Shovell's sailing masters believed that they were on the last leg of their journey.

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The fleet was thought to be sailing safely west of Ushant, an island outpost off the coast of Brittany. However, because of a combination of the bad weather and the mariners' inability to accurately calculate their longitude, the fleet was off course and closing in on the Isles of Scilly instead. Before their mistake could be corrected, the fleet struck rocks and four ships were lost - HMS Association, HMS Eagle, HMS Romney and HMS Firebrand.

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One myth associated with the disaster alleges that a common sailor on the flagship tried to warn that the fleet was off course but Sir Cloudesley Shovell, had him hanged at the Yardarm for inciting mutiny. The story first appeared in the Scilly Isles in 1780 with the common sailor being a Scilly native who recognised the waters as being close to home.

HMS Association founders on the rocks

Sir Cloudesley Shovell

Image: RMG/Wikipedia • Believed to be in the Public Domain (Age - Copyright expired)

The Longitude Act

The Longitude Act was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed in July 1714 at the end of the reign of Queen Anne. It established the Board of Longitude and offered monetary rewards (Longitude rewards) for anyone who could find a simple and practical method for the precise determination of a ship's longitude.
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In 1730, John Harrison designed a marine clock to compete for the Longitude Prize and this was developed into the Marine Chronometer which successfully overcame the Longtitude calculation problem. Finally in 1773, when he was 80 years old, Harrison received a monetary award in the amount of £8,750 from Parliament for his achievements, but he never received the official award (which was never awarded to anyone). In total, Harrison received £23,065 for his work on chronometers. This gave him a reasonable income for most of his life (equivalent to roughly £45,000 per year in 2007, though all his costs, such as materials and subcontracting work to other horologists, had to come out of this). He became the equivalent of a multi-millionaire (in today's terms) in the final decade of his life.

Lloyds of London

In the 17th century, London's importance as a trade centre led to increased demand for ship and cargo insurance. Edward Lloyd's coffee house became known as the place to go to obtain marine insurance and this is where the Lloyd’s that we know today began. From those early beginnings in a coffee house in 1688, Lloyd’s was to become a pioneer in the world of insurance and is now the world’s leading provider of specialist insurance.

Lloyds must have been pleased with Harrisons' work as it probably saved

them an awful lot of money!

Source: wikipedia.org