All works in Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum

Edward Massey

Sounding Machine

London, 1810

Object data

brass

height 21.5 cm × width 17.2 cm × depth 7.5 cm

Inscriptions

  • inscription, below the dial: Edw,, Massey
  • monogram, below the dial: L L L
  • inscription, below the dial: Patentee / LONDON / 1444

Provenance

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

Object number: NG-MC-1234

Copyright: Public domain

Entry

Mechanical device that consists of a brass plate with a rotating vane that drives a counter by means of a worm screw; on one side the dial reads fathoms, on the other side tens of fathoms. A circular blocking device automatically stops the vane from rotating when it touches the seabed.

Edward Massey’s (c. 1768-1852) mechanical deep-sea sounding machine was patented in 1802. It was not the first mechanical machine that was patented by the Englishman John Christopher Van Berg back in 1636, but Massey’s was the first to become a commercial success.1 The Board of Longitude awarded Massey £ 200 for his invention and recommended the British Navy to buy five hundred of them.2

Massey’s sounding machine was an improvement on the commonly used hand lead (NG-MC-1330), and was based on the same design principle as his rotating log for the measurement of the ship’s speed.

All Massey’s sounding machines are uniquely numbered. This specimen bears the number 1444. Two identical sounding machines in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and Het Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam, are numbered 6432 and 1331 respectively.3

Literature

J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1234; A. Treherne, The Massey Family, Newcastle under Lyme 1977; R. Dunn and R. Higgitt, Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude, exh. cat. London (National Maritime Museum Greenwich) 2014, p. 178

Citation

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Edward Massey, Sounding Machine, London, 1810', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.245046

(accessed 28 December 2024 01:10:24).

Footnotes