Marine chronometer by Barraud, Cornhill, London, c. 1825–1830

Dealer description — Howard Walwyn

A rare and historically interesting rosewood 8-day marine chronometer by this eminent London maker to the Royal Navy. The silvered brass dial is engraved with Roman numerals and signed Barraud, Maker to the Royal Navy, 41 Cornhill, London and numbered 1555. There is a subsidiary seconds dial below XII and Barraud’s typical inset power reserve below the centre. The dial also has two gilt brass applied crests. One shows the Royal Coat of Arms and the other the fouled anchor for the British Admiralty. It also retains its original tapered white gold spade hands. The high-quality 8-day chain fusee movement has Harrison’s maintaining power, an Earnshaw-type spring detent escapement, and a free-sprung split bimetallic compensated balance with cylindrical weights, timing screws and blued steel helical hairspring with diamond endstone. It also features a special middle temperature compensation balance, invented by Lund, which was probably fitted in the 1840’s. The chronometer movement is housed in its numbered brass bowl and held in its brass gimbal within the box. The exhibition quality three-tier rosewood case is neatly bound in brass with reinforced corners and brass stringing. The lid has an inset brass cartouche engraved H. Thurburn Esq and a glazed observation panel to the inner section. The front of the middle tier has an unsigned mother-of-pearl name plaque, and the sides are fitted with concealed brass carrying handles. The interior is lined in green felt and arranged to house the chronometer bowl which is numbered 1555 , within its brass gimbal ring. Height: 8 in (20.5 cm) Width: 7 ¾ in (19.5 cm) Depth: 7 ¾ in (19.5 cm) *The firm of Barraud was founded by Paul Philip Barraud (1752–1820), a distinguished maker of chronometers who became Master of the Clockmakers’ Company in 1810-11. Associated with Arnold and Earnshaw, his marine chronometers were notable for their durability and dependability. His three sons followed him into the business, and the firm continued at 41 Cornhill as Barraud & Sons. In 1838 the chronometer-maker John Richard Lund was taken into partnership and the firm was subsequently styled Barraud & Lund, remaining in business until the early 20th century. A major part of the firm’s trade was the exportation of clocks and watches to China and India. Barraud chronometers were supplied to the Royal Navy and are represented in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Paul Philip Barraud is recorded on page 43 of Brian Loomes’s Watchmakers & Clockmakers of the World: Complete 21st Century Edition . The present chronometer bears the inscription H. Thurburn Esq on a brass cartouche to the lid and can be identified with the instrument described by Hugh Thurburn in his paper ‘Notice of a Meteorological Journal kept at Alexandria’, published in The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London , Volume 22, 1852, pp. 128–131. Hugh Thurburn was a member of the prominent Scottish Thurburn family, long established as merchants in Alexandria, Egypt, where his kinsman Robert Thurburn had served as British Consul. Between 1847 and 1849 Hugh Thurburn conducted three uninterrupted years of daily meteorological observations from a private observatory at his dwelling-house on the great square of Alexandria. In the absence of any public clocks in the city, he obtained precise solar time using a Dent dipleidoscope and transferred this to his Barraud chronometer, which served as the sole reliable time standard for the entire programme of observations. The results were communicated to the Royal Geographical Society in February 1852 by Captain the Hon. H. A. Murray, R.N., F.R.G.S., and the original manuscript journal is preserved in the archives of the Society.