Mystic — A new exhibit that features artifacts such as original sea watches used by Captain James Cook on his three Pacific expeditions, an original manuscript from Sir Isaac Newton and even the actual beaker and bowl that Captain William Bligh used to ration food to his 18 men who were set adrift in a small launch after the mutiny aboard the Bounty, opened Saturday at Mystic Seaport.

There are also some exact replicas of the intricately designed early clocks, watches and chronometers used to measure longitude. Fashioned out of gleaming brass, jewels and thousands of parts, some of resemble works of art as much as instruments of navigation.

“Ship, Clocks, & Stars: The Quest for Longitude” — on loan from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, and sponsored by the United Technologies Corp. — tells the story about the quest by clockmakers, astronomers and others to develop an accurate way to measure longitude beginning in the early 18th century.

It will remain on display in the R.J. Schaefer Building until March 28, 2016, when it will move to the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. The only other location where it has been displayed outside Greenwich was at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

“The longitude story is a great one, but the quality of the artifacts in this exhibit are really remarkable,” said Seaport spokesman Dan McFadden.

During a tour of the exhibit last week, Senior Curator Richard Dunn from the National Maritime Museum said the exhibit was created over three years to mark the 300th anniversary of the British Longitude Act of 1714. The act offered a prize worth $45 million in today’s money to the person who could develop an accurate and practical way to measure longitude from a boat. Before then, the French and Dutch had been stymied in their efforts to solve the problem.

He said that with ships going around the world for coffee, tea and other goods, they needed to sail swiftly and safely. Longitude was also essential for charting coastlines.

“The longer it takes to get somewhere, the more costly and dangerous it becomes,” Dunn said. “So effective navigation is a key thing.”

While mariners could chart their latitude (or north-south position), measuring longitude (east-west position) was imprecise. Ships used crude measurements involving throwing a rope overboard to measure speed and a compass.

The greatest minds of the time such as Galileo and Newton tried to solve the mystery of longitude, with the latter saying that thinking about it often gave him a headache.

The British government offered the prize to anyone who could make a six-week voyage from England to the West Indies and arrive within a half-degree of predicted longitude. A commission was set up to analyze the methods and their success.

The exhibit examines the use of clocks and celestial observations along with complex calculations and tables used to come up with a solution.

Dunn said 20 years went by before any real progress was made.

“It seemed like it was going nowhere. People began to think it was one of the world’s great unsolved problems,” he said.

But Dunn said English carpenter and clockmaker John Harrison was “a game changer” with his development of three extremely accurate and complicated pendulum clocks, and later sea watches. The exhibit also features sextants, octants and chronometers. His original H4 sea watch is on display as well as working replicas of his clocks.  

It was almost 100 years from the announcement of the prize to the time when longitude devices were mass produced and widely used.

j.wojtas@theday.com

Twitter: @joewojtas