‘Compared with that of Banks, Mr. Green’s equipment was comparatively modest. On May 5th, 1768, at a meeting of Council of the Royal Society it was resolved that the instruments for the use of the Observers of the South Latitudes be the following:
Two [2] reflecting telescopes of two [2] foot focus…[1] brass Hadley’s sextant, [1] barometer bespoke of Mr Ramsden, [1] Journeyman’s Clock bespoke by Mr Skelton, two [2] Thermometers of Mr Bird, [1] Stand for Bird’s Quadrant, [1] dipping needle bespoke by Mr Ramsden’. H.C. Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1966
Who was Mr. Green? Charles Green was former Assistant to James Bradley and Nathaniel Bliss, Astronomer Royals of Greenwich Observatory. He was engaged by the Royal Society to represent them and assist Lieutenant James Cook RN observe and record the Transit of Venus due to take place at Tahiti on 3rd June 1769.
‘John Harrison, the man who solved longitude in 1759’. Peter Ackroyd, Macmillan, London, 2016
Why was Harrison’s marine chronometer ‘H-4 bolted to a window seat in the [Greenwich] Observatory’ when Green set off for Tahiti aboard HMS Endeavour with Lieutenant James Cook. See: Captain Cook, John Harrison, Charles Green – Three Yorkshire Men Walked Into A Bar
‘H-4 [was] bolted to a window seat in the Observatory’. Dava Sobel, Longitude, Fourth Estate, London, 1998
No doubt H-4 sat under the watchful eye of Rev. Nevil Maskelyne. Britain’s fifth Astronomer Royal. Maskelyne had been elected to that high post in 1765 on the death of Rev. Nathaniel Bliss. Maskelyne held a conservative stranglehold over the position until 1811.
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