1 Gurney, William, Minutes of a Court Martial Holden on Board His Majesty's Ship Gladiator, Portsmouth: Mottley, Harrison and Miller, 1809, p. 198Google Scholar.

2 Gurney, op. cit. (1), p. 84.

3 Byrn, John, Crime and Punishment in the Royal Navy: Discipline on the Leeward Islands Station 1784–1812, Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989, p. 3Google Scholar.

4 Ashworth, William, ‘“System of terror”: Samuel Bentham, accountability and dockyard reform during the Napoleonic Wars’, Social History (1998) 23, pp. 63–79, 64Google Scholar.

5 Dunn, Richard, ‘“Their brains over-taxed”: ships, instruments and users’, in Dunn, Richard and Leggett, Don (eds.), Re-inventing the Ship: Science, Technology and the Maritime World, 1800–1918, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, pp. 131–156Google Scholar; and Rozwadowski, Helen, Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea, London: Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 86Google Scholar.

6 For the relationship between astronomy and discipline, see Schaffer, Simon, ‘Astronomers mark time: discipline and the personal equation’, Science in Context (1988) 2, pp. 101–131Google Scholar.

7 Wh. 2970, Edward Massey's Sounding Machine, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK (henceforth Wh. 2970). Other examples consulted for this paper include NAV0673, Sounding Machine, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK; and 1874-68, Hand Lead and Deep Sea Sounding Machine, the Science Museum, London, UK.

8 The Board of Longitude referred to a range of navigational equipment as ‘machines’, a fluid label in this period. For the long history of related terminology see Warner, Deborah, ‘What is a scientific instrument, when did it become one, and why?’, BJHS (1990) 23, pp. 279–305Google Scholar.

9 McConnell, Anita, No Sea Too Deep: The History of Oceanographic Instruments, Bristol: Hilger, 1982, p. 28Google Scholar.

10 Lambert, David, Martins, Luciana and Ogborn, Miles, ‘Currents, visions, and voyages: historical geographies of the sea’, Journal of Historical Geography (2006) 32, pp. 479–493, 485Google Scholar.

11 Bentham, Maria, The Life of Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham, K.S.G, London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1862, p. 251Google Scholar.

12 On the problems associated with producing accurate hydrographic charts in this period see Davey, James, ‘The advancement of nautical knowledge: the Hydrographical Office, the Royal Navy and the charting of the Baltic Sea, 1795–1815’, Journal of Maritime Research (2011) 13, pp. 81–103Google Scholar.

13 John Law's attention to the wind and currents between Portugal and the Canary Islands is exemplary in this respect; see Law, John, ‘On the social explanation of technical change: the case of the Portuguese maritime expansion’, Technology and Culture (1987) 28, pp. 227–252, 236Google Scholar.

14 On the importance of material culture in maritime history see Dunn, Richard, ‘Material culture in the history of science: case studies from the National Maritime Museum’, BJHS (2009) 42, pp. 31–33Google Scholar.

15 These changes are typically explained in terms of processes taking place solely on land, such as education or industrialization. See Anderson, Roger, ‘Were scientific instruments in the nineteenth century different?’, in de Clercq, Peter (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Scientific Instruments and Their Makers, Leiden: Museum Boerhaave, 1985, pp. 1–12, 3Google Scholar; and Morrison-Low, Alison, Making Scientific Instruments in the Industrial Revolution, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007Google Scholar.

16 Rozwadowski, Helen, ‘Small world: forging a scientific maritime culture for oceanography’, Isis (1996) 87, pp. 409–429Google Scholar.

17 Waring, Sophie, ‘The Board of Longitude and the funding of scientific work: negotiating authority and expertise in the early nineteenth century’, Journal for Maritime Research (2014) 16, pp. 55–71, 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Howse, Derek, ‘Britain's Board of Longitude: the finances, 1714–1828’, Mariner's Mirror (1998) 84, pp. 400–417, 415–416Google Scholar.

18 RGO 14/31, Pamphlet Concerning Raines-Baines's Sea Perambulator, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives, Cambridge University Library, UK (henceforth Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives); RGO 14/31, Mr Jennings's Observations upon the New Invented Log, or Half-Minute Glass, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives; and RGO 14/24, Segismund Rentzsch to the Board of Longitude, June 1813, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

19 Jim Bennett, ‘Instrument makers and the “decline of science in England”: the effect of institutional change on the elite makers of the early nineteenth century’, in de Clercq, op. cit. (15), pp. 13–28, 18.

20 Snell, Keith, ‘The apprenticeship system in British history: the fragmentation of a cultural institution’, History of Education (1996) 25, pp. 303–321, 303–304Google Scholar; and Thompson, Edward, ‘Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism’, Past & Present (1967) 38, pp. 56–97, 66Google Scholar.

21 RGO 14/7, Confirmed Minutes, 1 December 1814, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

22 Treherne, Alan, ‘Massey Family (per. c.1760–1891)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press (online edn), 2004Google Scholar; and Class: HO107, Piece: 1519, Folio: 409, Page: 25, GSU roll: 87853, Goswell Street, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851, National Archives, Surrey, UK.

23 For more general histories of the relationship between land and maritime communities see Linebaugh, Peter and Rediker, Marcus, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, London: Verso, 2000Google Scholar; and Drayton, Richard, ‘Maritime networks and making knowledge’, in Cannadine, David (ed.), Empire, the Sea and Global History: Britain's Maritime World, 1763–1840, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 72–82Google Scholar.

24 These are best described by Samuel, Raphael, ‘Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in Mid-Victorian Britain,’ History Workshop Journal (1977) 3, pp. 6–72Google Scholar.

25 Schaffer, Simon, ‘Swedenborg's lunars’, Annals of Science (2013) 71, pp. 2–26Google Scholar; and Bennett, Jim, ‘The travels and trials of Mr Harrison's timekeeper’, in Bourguet, Marie, Licoppe, Christian and Otto Sibum, H. (eds.), Instruments, Travel and Science: Itineraries of Precision from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 75–95Google Scholar.

26 Bentham, Maria, ‘Memoirs of late Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham’, in Papers and Practical Illustrations of Public Works of Recent Construction, London: John Weale, 1856, pp. 41–79, 42–43Google Scholar.

27 RGO 14/31, Edward Massey to the Board of Longitude, 11 September 1807, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

28 Simms, Rupert, Bibliotheca Staffordiensis, Lichfield: Lomax, 1894, p. 303Google Scholar.

29 Ashworth, op. cit. (4), pp. 66–67.

30 Morriss, Roger, ‘Government and community: the changing context of labour relations, 1770–1830’, in Day, Ann and Lunn, Kenneth (eds.), History of Work and Labour Relations in the Royal Dockyards, London: Masnell, 1999, pp. 21–40, 22–30Google Scholar.

31 Bentham, op. cit. (11), p. 251.

32 Illustrated in Figure 2 and described in Hutton, Charles, A Philosophical and Mathematical Dictionary: Containing an Explanation of the Terms, and an Account of the Several Subjects, Comprised under the Heads Mathematics, Astronomy, and Philosophy both Natural and Experimental, 2 vols., London: Rivington, 1815, p. 416Google Scholar.

33 Raper, Henry, The Practice of Navigation and Nautical Astronomy, London: Bate, 1840, p. 92Google Scholar.

34 Hutton, op. cit. (32), p. 416.

35 Bill, Robert, A Short Account of Massey's Patent Log, and Sounding Machine, with the Opinions of Several who Have Made Trials with Them, London: Blacks & Parry, 1806, p. 4Google Scholar.

36 RGO 14/31, Mr Jennings's Observations upon the New Invented Log, or Half-Minute Glass, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

37 Instructions pasted to wooden case, Wh. 2970.

38 Advertisement in Payne, G., An Elementary Introduction to The Nautical Almanac, and Astronomical Ephemeris, London: Charles Wilson, 1842Google Scholar.

39 RGO 14/24, Edward Massey to Board of Longitude, 28 September 1814, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

40 Raper, op. cit. (33), p. 91.

41 van Lottum, Jelle and Poulsen, Bo, ‘Estimating levels of numeracy and literacy in the maritime sector of the North Atlantic in the late eighteenth century’, Scandinavian Economic History Review (2011) 59, pp. 67–82, 71–74Google Scholar.

42 As illustrated by Lave, Jean, ‘The values of quantification’, in Law, John (ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986, pp. 88–111Google Scholar.

43 Glennie, Paul and Thrift, Nigel, Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300–1800, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 319Google Scholar.

44 Glennie and Thrift, op. cit. (43), p. 304.

45 Byrn, op. cit. (3), p. 91.

46 Bill, op. cit. (35), pp. 31–32, italics in original.

47 RGO 14/31, Edward Massey to Board of Longitude, 11 September 1806, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

48 Biden, Christopher, Naval Discipline: Subordination Contrasted with Insubordination, London: Richardson, 1830, p. 317Google Scholar.

49 Phillip MacDougall, ‘The changing nature of the dockyard dispute, 1790–1840’, in Day and Lunn, op. cit. (30), pp. 41–65, 47.

50 Wilkes, John, Encyclopedia Londinensis, vol. 20, London: Adlard, 1825, p. 719Google Scholar.

51 The Examiner, 11 October 1840, p. 652.

52 Cooper, Carolyn, ‘The Portsmouth system of manufacture’, Technology and Culture (1984) 25, pp. 182–225, 194Google Scholar.

53 Wilkes, op. cit. (50), p. 719.

54 Ashworth, op. cit. (4), p. 74.

55 Visibility is a central theme in Michel Foucault's account of disciplinary power. See Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish, London: Vintage, pp. 200–228Google Scholar.

56 Abridgements of the Specifications Relating to Clocks and Other Timekeepers, London: George Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1858, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

57 RGO 14/24, Segismund Rentzsch to the Board of Longitude, June 1813, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

58 RGO 14/31, Peter Burt to Board of Longitude, 27 December 1813, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

59 ‘New patents’, Philosophical Magazine (1827) 2, pp. 237–238, 237; and RGO 14/31, Peter Burt to Board of Longitude, 10 March 1817, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

60 Bryden, David, ‘Georgian instrument patents: some ghosts and spectres’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society (2012) 112, pp. 4–23, 10Google Scholar.

61 Smith, Egerton, Observations on the Principle and Use of the New Patent Sea Log and Sounding Machine, Invented by Edward Massey, of Hanley, Staffordshire, Liverpool: E. & W. Smith, 1805, p. 27Google Scholar.

62 RGO 14/31, Peter Burt to Board of Longitude, 1 June 1815, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

63 This was confirmed during a lighting failure at the National Maritime Museum storerooms.

64 Burt, Peter, Copies of Letters relative to Mr Burt's Buoy and Nipper, London: Bensley and Son, 1817, pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

65 O'Dea, William, The Social History of Lighting, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958, p. 85Google Scholar.

66 In 1838 Massey patented ‘a toothed and notched dial plate, which enables the person heaving the lead in the dark to ascertain the figures marked by the index by merely feeling the said teeth’. However, there is no evidence that this design was ever manufactured. Edward Massey, Ships' Logs and Instrument for Taking Soundings at Sea, Patent No. 7113, London: Eyre and Stoppiswoode, 1857, p. 2.

67 The Queen's Regulations and the Admiralty Instructions for the Government of Her Majesty's Naval Service, London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1862, p. 160.

68 Ashworth, op. cit. (4), pp. 68–74.

69 Cooper, op. cit. (52), p. 193.

70 Schaffer, Simon, ‘‘The charter'd Thames’: naval architecture and experimental spaces in Georgian Britain’, in Roberts, Lissa, Schaffer, Simon and Dear, Peter (eds.), The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation, Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007, pp. 279–305, 280Google Scholar.

71 RGO 14/31, Edward Massey to Board of Longitude, 6 March 1811, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

72 RGO 14/31, Edward Massey to Board of Longitude, 11 September 1811, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

73 Deskilling is a pervasive theme in the history of work; see Joyce, Patrick, The Historical Meanings of Work, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987Google Scholar; and Samuel, op. cit. (24), pp. 6–72.

74 Belcher, Edward, A Treatise on Nautical Surveying, London: Pelham Richardson, 1835, p. 19Google Scholar.

75 Burt, op. cit. (64), pp. 1–8.

76 On the relationship between bodies and instruments see Kapil Raj, ‘When human travellers become instruments’, in Bourguet, Licoppe and Sibum, op. cit. (25), pp. 156–188.

77 Bill, Robert, Second Appendix: A Short Account of Massey's Patent Log, and Sounding Machine, with the Opinions of Several who Have Made Trials with Them, London: Blacks & Parry, 1806, p. 4Google Scholar.

78 ‘Description and Use of a Sea Log, and Sounding Machine invented by Mr. Edward Massey, of Hanley, in Staffordshire,’ A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts (1808) 21, pp. 245–255, 255.

79 Massey's machine weighed approximately five hundred grammes without the leads attached.

80 Towson, J., ‘Navigation – its divisions – the sciences connected with its study: nautical astronomy and dead reckoning – the danger of neglecting either’, Mercantile Marine Magazine and Nautical Record (1854) 1, pp. 179–186, 186Google Scholar.

81 This parallels the use of machines in the rolling mills as identified by Samuel, op. cit. (24), pp. 45–46.

82 Dening, Greg, Mr Bligh's Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 115Google Scholar.

83 Lyon, George, A Brief Narrative of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Reach Repulse Bay, London: John Murray, 1825, p. 106Google Scholar.

84 For the history of sounding in the Arctic regions see Millar, Sarah, ‘Science at sea: soundings and instrumental knowledge in British polar expedition narratives, c.1818–1848’, Journal of Historical Geography (2013) 42, pp. 77–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 For the use of rank in relation to work as a form of punishment, see Foucault, op. cit. (55), pp. 179–181.

86 Cursory Suggestions on Naval Subjects: with the Outline of a Plan for Raising Seamen for His Majesty's Fleets in a Future War, London: F & J Rivington, 1822, pp. 48–49Google Scholar.

87 Glennie and Thrift, op. cit. (43), p. 314.

88 ‘Description and Use of a Sea Log, and Sounding Machine’, op. cit. (78), p. 255.

89 Harrison, Royden, ‘Introduction’, in Harrison, Royden and Zeitlin, Jonathan (eds.), Divisions of Labour: Skilled Workers and Technological Change in Nineteenth Century England, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1985, pp. 1–12Google Scholar.

90 Werrett, Simon, ‘Potemkin and the panopticon: Samuel Bentham and the architecture of absolutism in eighteenth century Russia’, Journal of Bentham Studies (1999), 2, pp. 1–25Google Scholar.

91 Semple, Janet, Bentham's Prison: A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 217–247Google Scholar.

92 The ship, as a contained and separate space, is an exemplar of what Michel Foucault calls a ‘heterotopia’. Michel Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, Diacritics (1986) 16, pp. 22–27, 27.

93 Hannay, David, Naval Courts Martial, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914, p. 108Google Scholar.

94 ‘Description and Use of a Sea Log, and Sounding Machine’, op. cit. (78), p. 255.

95 Byrn, op. cit. (3), p. 178.

96 Smith, op. cit. (61), p. 5.

97 Raper, op. cit. (33), p. 92.

98 Smith, James, The Mechanic, or, Compendium of Practical Inventions, 2 vols., Liverpool: Henry Fisher, 1818, vol. 1, p. 292Google Scholar.

99 Advertisement placed in Payne, op. cit. (38).

100 Smith, op. cit. (61), p. 11.

101 Marie Bourguet, Christian Licoppe and H. Otto Sibum, ‘Introduction’, in Bourguet, Licoppe and Sibum, op. cit. (25), pp. 1–19.

102 RGO 14/24, Segismund Rentzsch to the Board of Longitude, June 1813, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives; and RGO 14/24, Samuel Grimaldi to the Board of Longitude, 2 March 1812, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

103 Bennett, op. cit. (25), p. 77.

104 The Queen's Regulations, op. cit. (67), p. 161.

105 Gurney, op. cit. (1), p. 2.

106 Burt, Peter, Copies of Reports of Experiments Made By Order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, at the Request of the Board of Longitude for the Purpose of Ascertaining the Superiority of Burt's Sounding Buoy and Knipper, London: T. Sotheran, 1819, p. 20Google Scholar.

107 Burt, op. cit. (64), pp. 9–10.

108 ‘Nautical miscellany’, Nautical Magazine (1832) 1, p. 498.

109 Raper, op. cit. (33), p. 92.

110 RGO 14/31, Peter Burt to Board of Longitude, 7 November 1815, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

111 Schaffer, Simon, ‘Easily cracked: scientific instruments in states of disrepair’, Isis (2011) 102, pp. 706–717Google Scholar; and Dunn, Richard and Phillips, Eóin, ‘Of clocks and cats’, Antiquarian Horology (2013) 34, pp. 88–93Google Scholar.

112 RGO 14/31, Peter Burt to Board of Longitude, 1 June 1815, Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives.

113 Burt, op. cit. (106), p. 30.

114 Burt, op. cit. (64), p. 11.

115 Burt, op. cit. (64), p. 11.

116 Millar, op. cit. (84), also discusses the competition between Massey and Burt. Whilst Millar ultimately suggests that Burt was victorious, the reality is that both machines continued to be used well into the nineteenth century. See, for example, Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, Showing the Progress of the Survey During the Year Ending November 1, 1857, Washington, DC: Cornelius Wendell, 1858, Plate 70.

117 Burt, op. cit. (64).

118 Dening, op. cit. (82), p. 114.