Larcum Kendall (21 September 1721 in Charlbury, Oxfordshire to 22 November 1795 in London) was a British watchmaker.
Contents |
The Board of Longitude asked Kendall to copy and develop John Harrison's ingenious fourth model of a clock (H4) useful for navigation at sea. The original, the first successful chronometer, had an astronomical price: £400 in 1750, approximately 30% of the value of a ship.
The first model finished by Kendall in 1769 was an accurate copy of John Harrison's H4, cost £450 , and is known today as K1. James Cook tested the clock on his second South Seas journey and was full of praise after initial skepticism. "Kendall's watch exceeded all expectations" he reported in 1775 to the admiralty. It was thus K1 which proved to a doubting scientific establishment that H4's success was no fluke.
Three other clocks, constructed by John Arnold, had not withstood the loads of the same journey. Although constructed like a watch, the chronometer had a diameter of 13 cm and weighed 1.45 kg. K1 accompanied English ships for more than thirty years.
Kendall assured the Board that he would be able to build a similar but simpler clock for around £200. He received the order and presented K2 in 1771. It was given in 1773 to John Phipps for its expedition for the search of a Northwest passage, then it was assigned in North America. It worked less exactly than the original. William Bligh 1787 in his log of HMS Bounty, recorded a daily inaccuracy of between 1.1 and three seconds and that it had varied irregularly. The chronometer attained fame because of the mutiny on the Bounty. It returned to England many years later after an odyssey. The American ship's captain Mayhew Folger rediscovered Pitcairn Island in 1808 and was given the chronometer by the one remaining mutineer there. The Spanish governor of Juan Fernandez Island confiscated the watch. The chronometer was later purchased by a Spaniard named Castillo. When he died, his family conveyed it to Captain Herbert of HMS Calliope, who gave it to the British Museum around 1840.
Kendall's third and last attempt, the K3 in 1774, cost around £100 finished but did not have the required accuracy. Cook carried one in addition to K1 on its last journey. Nevertheless it was still used on Matthew Flinders's journey to Australia, 1801. Kendall was a first-class craftsman but not a technical designer. After K3 Kendall built chronometers to the design of John Arnold.
K1, K2 and K3 are kept in the The old Royal Observatory at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England.