Marine chronometer by John Fletcher, London, c. 1850

Dealer description — Howard Walwyn

A fine mid-Victorian two-day marine chronometer by John Fletcher , Maker to the Admiralty, retaining its original case and outer mahogany deck box, The case has a plaque with the name of a second distinguished Admiralty maker, Reid & Sons of Newcastle upon Tyne, who examined the timekeeper before it went to sea. The three-tier case is of brass-bound mahogany, the hinged lid fitted with inset brass carrying handles to each side. The chronometer sits within a gimballed brass bowl, secured by a brass locking screw, its bezel glazed, and it retains its original winding key. Attached to the front is an ivory plaque that reads Examined by Reid & Sons, Makers to the Admiralty, Newcastle on Tyne, 2239 , the number matching that on the dial. The 3 ¾ inch silvered dial has Roman hour numerals and an outer minute track. There is a subsidiary dial below XII for state of wind marked DOWN and UP and graduated to show the number of hours in reserve. There is a further subsidiary seconds dial above VI. The dial is signed John Fletcher, Maker to the Admiralty, 48 Lombard St, London, 2239 , and the chronometer retains its original gold spade hands. The two-day (56 hour) movement is, consistent with Fletcher’s documented work of this type. It has a free-sprung full-plate movement with chain fusee and Harrison’s maintaining power. It is regulated by an Earnshaw-type spring detent escapement and a compensated balance with blued steel helical spring. Date: circa 1850 Case: 7 in square (17.8 cm) *John Fletcher (1802–1882) was born in Rainhill, Lancashire, where he trained as a pinion maker before moving to London and working as a chronometer escapement maker from 1832. He later took over the Davies Street and Berkeley Square premises of Dwerrihouse (1845–49), before moving to 48 Lombard Street (previously occupied by John Sweetman Eiffe) where he traded through the 1850s. He moved on to Leadenhall Street in 1858, retired in 1880, and died two years later. His workshop briefly employed the young Thomas Mercer , who later recalled that the sight of a marine chronometer in Fletcher’s shop window persuaded him to abandon plans to emigrate to America and ask for work there instead. Mercer went on to found his own celebrated chronometer firm in Islington in 1858. The Newcastle plaque records a second notable maker involved in this chronometer’s history. Reid & Sons , founded in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1788 by the silversmith Christian Ker Reid, became Makers to the Admiralty in their own right, submitting chronometers for trial at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, between 1844 and the 1890s, coming second in 1844. It is recorded that the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton carried a Reid & Sons chronometer on his Antarctic expeditions. HW6683