There the captain fixed his position and used a chronometer to calculate his longitude, which he double-checked against his previous observations of hour angles.
" My watch? A family watch, monsieur, which has come down from my great–grandfather! It doesn't vary five minutes in the year. It's a perfect chronometer, look you" .
Sir, he answered me, I have chronometers variously set to the meridians of Paris, Greenwich, and Washington, D.C. But in your honor, I'll use the one for Paris.
Of our instruments none were saved but the compass and the chronometer; our stock of ropes and ladders was reduced to the bit of cord rolled round the stump of the mast!