The British shipwrecked off the coast of Australia at the trial islands on their second voyage along the Brouwer Route. Then, On October 22, 1707 the British Royal Navy lost 1550 sailors as four ships ran aground of the coast of England in the Scilly Naval Disaster.
The root cause of the incident was the inability for ships to determine longitude with acceptable accuracy (though others attributed the loss to faulty compasses…the Navy spot checked compasses at Portsmouth shipyard following the incident and found that only 4 out of 122 were within service tolerance).
Regardless, Parliament issued the Longitude Act in 1714 offering graduating cash prizes for practical methods of determining longitude at sea to increasing degrees of accuracy. The reward was £10,000 for 1 degree or 60 nautical mile accuracy, £15,000 for 40 mile accuracy and £20,000 for half degree or 30 mile accuracy.
