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THE HISTORY OF THE MARINE CHRONOMETER. BY OHARLES FRODBHAM, F. R. A. 8. Passing over without any special notice the effects of Galileo the younger, and other of the earlier philosophers who directed their studies to the laws of the isochronism of the pendulum, it may suffice to mention Christian Huygens, a celebrated Dutch mechanician, who especially devoted himself to this matter. Commencing with the dictum of Galileo, he so throughly ex- perimented on the pendulum as to bring its vibrations under the ascertained and acknowledged authority of specific and recognized isochronous laws. Both he and our own learned countryman, his con- ‘temporary, Dr. Hooke, constructed time- keepers with the express purpose of reckon- ing and ascertaining the longitude by mariners on their voyages. ‘Their experi- ments were made, in the firstinstance, with instruments moved: by the pendulum. ‘This arrangement being proved by repeated ex- perience to be ill adapted to the requirements and circumstances of a sea-going vessel, recourse was had to the spiral balance-spring, which was at this date substituted for the pendulum. ‘This balance-spring was soon found to have an isochronism otf its own as its inherent property, in which the tension bore a proportion to the ares of inflection. It thus became a suffivient motive power on which the maker of the instrument could depend for securing the accurate measure- ment of time by the regular succession of its vibrations. ‘The prolonged ard persever- ing efforts of Huygens’and Hooke with this new isochronous force were of great value. Although they did not attain the promised rewards, yet they indicated the needed path of improvements and gave brighter omens of eventual success. ‘he subject was too important to be lost sight of, and still con- tinued to exercise the wits and to animate the energies of that singular galaxy of foreign and of English mechanicans which so pre-eminently distinguished the end of the seventeenth and the commencement of the eighteenth centuries. Julien and Pierre la Roy, Berthoud, and Sully, in France— Tompion, Graham, Mudge, Earnshaw, and Arnold, in England—all devoted their talents and time to attain the consummation so devoutly and generally wished for. The beneficient problem was at last solved, and the large Government reward attained by one who, in his first start in life, could have little anticipated so great a triumph. ‘To John Harrison, the son of‘a humble York- shire carpenter, and himself in his vouth an itinerant mender of clocks, was reserved the discovery which so many illustrious men had toiled for in vain. In 1735 Harrison constructed a large watch or chronometer so accurate uncer all variations of climate in keeping its time as to enable the longitude of any place to be correctly determined, It may be interesting to the reader to see in Harrison’s own words the principles he acted on and the object he had in view: “The longitude of any place is its distance east or west trom any other given place; and what we want isa method of finding out at sea how far we have got to the east- ward or westward of the place we sailed from. ‘The application of a timekeeper to this discovery is founded upon the following principles: ‘The earth’s furface is divided into 360 equal parts (by imaginary lines drawn from north to south,) which are called degrees of longitude; and its daily revolutions eastward round its own axtis is performed in twenty-four hours; con- sequently, in that period, each of these imaginary lines or degrees become successi- vely opposite to the sun (which makes the noon, or precise middle of the day, at each ofthese degrees,) and it must follow that from the time any one of those lines passes the sun till the next passes, must be just four minutes: For 24 hours divided by 360 will give that quantity; so that for every degree of longitude we sail westward it will be noon with us four minutes later, and for every degree eastward, four minutes the sooner; and so in proportion for any greater or less quantity. Now, the exact time of day at the place where we are can be ascertained by well-known and easy observa. tions of the sum, if visible at any time fora few minutes, from his being ten degrees high till within an hour of noon, or from an hour after noon till he is only ten degrees high in the afternoon. If, therefore, at any time when such observations is made, a timekeeper telle us at the same moment what o’clock it is at the place we sailed from, our longitude is clearly discovered.’’—see “Letter to Doctor Maskeleine,”’ the Astrono- mer Royal at Greenwich Observatory tor upwards of forty vears, Permitted to sailto Lisbon in one of the Government ships, he had the satisfaction of correcting an error in the ship’s reckoning by one degree and wtalf. On his return he received £5,000 from the Government. In 1761 he made a yet more complete chrono- meter, and again obtained permission to make another experimental voyage on board a man-of-war. On this occasion the care and superintendence of his instrument was intrusted to his son, on account of his own advanced age. Mr. William Harrison had on this occasion the increased satisfaction of proving the correctness of his chronometer, and brought the. vessel to Port Royal, in Jamaica, on the eighty-first day of its voy- age, against the convictions and almost the opposition of its captain, who was proved to be wrong in his recknoning by a uegree and a half, or by the distance of ninety miles. On his return he was adjudged to have complied with all the conditionsot the Act of Par- liament, and received on account of his father the full reward of £20,000 oftered by the legislature of his country. . This success of John Harrison,- however great.a step in advance of his predecessors, was only a partial triumph. ‘The exceeding costliness of his chronometer (£400) ex- cluded it from gencral use. A farther pro- blem yet remained, viz., the production of a timekeeper the price and, at the same time, the excellency of which should enable it to be included in the necessary equipments of every well-found ship. This great desi- deratum was quickly accomplished by the skill, learning, and mechanical science of some of his eminent contemporaries. Messrs. Mudge and Earnshaw, and more particularly Mr. Arnold, introduced, almost simultane- ously, several important improvements, com- bining greater simplicity of construction with a large diminution of cost, and thus bringing the instrument within the reach of a general usage. Of these improvements the most notable was the famous Arnold- Earnshaw compensation balance, con- structed of brass and steel, which secured a greatec uniform action of the chronometer in all temperatures, and which obtained for its respective authors a participation in the bounty of the English Parliament. So universally important is the accuracy of chronometers acknowledged to be that even to this day the Government of this country (to its credit be it spoken) continues to offer money prizes of considerable amount for the good preformance of individual chro- nometers., ‘The trial of them at the Observa- tory at Greenwich, under immediate per- sonal auspices of the Astronomer Royal, in- cludes their exposure to the extremest. vari- ations of atmosphere. They are tested by cold as severe as the polar iceburg, as well as by the heat of gas-stoves or ovens. ‘Two of Charles Frodsham’s chronometer watches, after a submission to this severe ordeal in the year 1830, were only found to vary, the one the 86-100th of a second, and the other the 57-100th part only. This eventful perfection and marvelous precision of the chronometer—produced, as it has been, after many failures and dis- appointments, elaborated through the course of two centuries, at an infinite cost of time, money, labor, and perseverance, and finally executed with such harmonious consistency with known and isochronous laws as to be able to indicate to the lonely mariner by day or night, in storm or calm, in heat or cold, the very spot on which his ship floats on the vast expense of the trackless ovean—may well be regarded as one of the greatest booms ever secured to his race by the inge- nuity of man, and as one of the proudest triumphs of human reason, To be continued. CAPTAIN WEATHERBRACE STORM PROPHETS, The searcher for cyloiies walked out to the end of the wharf, where he tound old Captain Weatherbrace sitting in his shirt- sleeves and half asleep. “Larboard watch, ahoy!’’ yelled reporter in the sleepy Captain’s ear, «‘Larbourd be darned,” growled Weather- brace. ‘That's a landlubber’s song anyhow ON the Why the bobstay dont you say port watch? But lemme ’lone; I’m in the dog watch and *tain’t eight bells yet.’’ “Oh, wake up! I want to ask you about the storm.” “What storm ?”? grunted the old tar; “that blew off Rio, when a frigate-bird, fell on the forehatch o’ the Sarah Ann, with her tail feathers all blowed out so she wouldn’t mind her helm? That was in ’63”— “No, no. I mean the biggest storm since old Noah’s time. It was due to-day, and I’m looking for it.’’ “Well, you’ll strain your eyes, first thing you know.’’ “But Prof. Wiggins predicted it, and I’ve got to findit. Now, look here, you old barnacle on the bottom of creation; don’t you see any signs of the worst blow in the world coming on?” “Im the ghost of a dead fish if [ do. Never seen smoother water this time o’ year since I fust holystoned adeck. I'll bet a month’s rations of grog some weather cuss has been spinning yarns in the papers. Them lubbers can’t predict when noon’s coming without a clock. Why, when I was up on the lakee—during a little frog- pond cruising to get the barnacles off—some professor predicted a mighty blow and warned us to put springs on our cables and look out for dirty weather. I put out into the pond all the same, and salt me down for navy junk if we didn’t strike the deadest calm I ever see. We Jaid there a week and whistled till our lips got so’ puckered we had to poke grub into our mouths with marlin-spikes and drink out ot the hose, but we couldn’t get a breath of wind. You can tell for yourself how calm it was when you know that the smoke from. our pipes wouldn’t go over the rail but just settled down in acloud on the deck. We had to take brooms and sweep gangways through the smoke, when we wanted to walk about the deck. Don’t you believe all you hear, young chap. These weather prophets lie like ‘l'urks.”’—Bostoa Globe. - THE NEW LINE, The proposed new line of steamers be- tween Hamilten, Montreal and Quebec is contemplated to counteract the influence which the Grand Trunk Railway has at- tained over the St. Lawrence route through the Richelieu and Ontario Navigation Com pany. There are said to bea number of prominent English capitalists interested in the new company, but its stock is mainly held by the railroad companies hostile to the Grand Trunk, including the Canadian Pacific and its connections and the great American Vanderbilt system. The company is to be organized with a very large capital, and will be entirely independent of the St. Lawrence Steamboat Company, or any other existing steamboat line. The steamers will be of the composite order with steel hulls and wooden upper works, and the hulls are actually now in course of construction in some of the Clyde ship yards. These hulls are being fitted, will be brought over to this country in sections, and be immediately put together and fitted with the woodwork and thachinery. Some of the first of the bulls ure expected to arrive shortly, and the remainder will tollow clostley after. In the meantime arrangements are being made for securing a number of hired steamers to open the service, should some hitch occur in the arrangements, and the new steamers not be ready in time. The company’s lines will cover the same routes as those of the Richeliue Company, namely from Hamilton to Montreal to Quebec, with additional service east of Quebec, and to the southern parts of the lakes, and the probability of another to the extreme west of the Lake system. ‘These steamers will be run both for passengers and freight, and cutting rates all along the line will be the result. —_—_ —— MARINE LAW. NEGLIGENCE—PERSONAL INJURY—DAMAGES,. istrict Court, E. D. New York. June 3, 1882. , In an action for damages for personal in- juries sustained by an employ engaged in storing c&rgo, fafling through a hatch in the between-decks of a vessel, held, that it was negligence in those having charge of the vessel in, leaving the chain-locker hatch open and unprotected, and ina dark place, after the first officer had said the vessel was ready for stowing the cargo. On the eleventh of September, 1879, the libellant was employed in loading the steam- ship Helios, He, was working under a foreman, who in turn was under the head stevedore. The loading of the lower hold being completed, the toreman asked the first officer of the steamship if they could pro- ceed to stow the between-decks. He replied that everything was ready. ‘The foreman then instructed a gang of men, among whom was the libellant, to go below and close the hatches in the between-decks, and then stow the “‘oil-cake’? in the between-decks, ‘The Helios was a steamer fitted for grain carry- ing, and had a number of small hatches in her between-decks, in addition to the four main hatches. It was about ten o’clock a. mn, and a bright clear day. ‘The first whipful of cargo for the between-decke was hoisted over the side and lowered into the between- decks through the forward hatch. It con- sisted of several bags of oil-cake, large and heavy. The first bag was siezed by two men, One the libellant, as it was lowered and dragged foreward to be stowed against the bulkhead. ‘There was no light foreward except what came down the fore-hatch, which was about five by seven feet. About sixteen feet from the forward hatch was a small hatch without coamings, leading to the cabin lockers. ‘This hatch was not used for cargo and was open. ‘The oil-cake was to be stowed some tive or six feet beyond this small hatch. ‘The libellant did not know of it, and as he went forward with the first bag he fell down it receiving the injuries to recover for which this libel was filed. ‘The libellant asked for no artificial light to work by, nor was any furnished, and after the accident the stowing went on without any. There was evidence that lights were supplied to stow cargo by, in the port of New York, only if.demanded by the workman. Brown, D. J. Icannot entertain any doubt that it was negligence in those having charge of the Helios in leaving the chain-locker hatch open and unproteeted, as the evidence shows in this case. It was nota hatch for the usual stowage of cargo, such as stevedorer must at their peril look out for and are presumed to know about. It had no reference to the cargo, and the stevedores had no business with it, as the evidence shows. When the first mate told the stevedore the vessel was ready for him to proceed to stow the . cargo, that was a virtual warranty all such traps in the darker parts of the ves- sel, which could not be or would not be perceived in the ordinary course of stow- age. The evidence doubtless show some exaggerations, but on nothing which tends to create any doubt as to the evident fact that this hole was left open and unguarded, in a dark place after the first officer had said the vessel was ready for stowing the cargo. Decree tor libellant, with costs, and ref- erence to compute the damages. CLEVELAND, The case of Paul C. Ford and others against the owners of the tug Fanny ‘Tuthill and the schooner Wawanosh is on trial in the United States District Court before Judge Welker. It seems that as the schooner Exile was being towed down the river by the tug Fanny ‘Tuthill, when near ‘the Viaduct the tug swung the stern of the Exile with such force us to cause her to eatch in the Wawanosh which was then lying at the dock, her mast and mizzen mast were broken off, and the bow of the Wawanosh was damaged to a considerably extent. It is claimed that the tug was towing the Exile ata too rapid rate, also that the Wawanosh had her bow in the way It further claimed asa reason her bow was so far in the way was that she was lapping the stern of the schooner Crawford, which was lying at the dock. ‘The arguments are expected to begin soon. One of the most important improvements in the ship building line at Bay City, is the rebuild of the steambarge Benton. ‘The Benton was built asa passenger propeller in 1866 at Buffalo and then ranked at the head in her class of vessels. She is well known to Bay City people, having in later years, run upon the Cleveland route as a com- panion boat to the propeller Bertschy, and in opposition to the propeller Robert Ifol- | reputation as being fast at one ti land and steambarge Porter Chamberlin. She always minded her machine nd had a i me,