In all fairness, Maskelyne is more an antihero than a villain, probably more hardheaded than hardhearted. But John Harrison hated him with a passion, and with good reason. The tension between these two men turned the last stretch of the quest for the longitude prize into a pitched battle. Maskelyne took up, then embraced, then came to personify the lunar distance method. The man and the method melded easily, for Maskelyne, who put off marrying until he was fifty-two, enslaved himself to accurate observation and careful calculation. He kept records of everything, from astronomical positions to
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