18th Century Tidalists

 

Bernoulli, Daniel

Cook, James

Euler, Leonard

Ferguson, James

Holden, Family.

Holden, Richard (1718-75) born in Slaidburn to the yeoman, Francis Holden and Hanna Prockter. He then appeared apprenticed to a feltmaker in Liverpool in the 1750s, at which time he married Esther Gouldson. By the 1760s Richard turned to school teaching in Castle Street, when he became involved with William Hutchinson [q.v.] and James Ferguson [q.v.]. Richard, with the 'lunar distance' method of finding longitude,  taught at the cutting-edge of navigation. In 1773, Richard, moving his school to Rainford, taught a wide curriculum in English, Latin and Greek.

Holden, George (fl.1755-d.1793) Richard's nephew George married Jane Brooks of Bentham on 20th September 1755, where he had been appointed under master at the Grammar School. Relinquishing his teaching position in 1758, George took up an appointment as curate at Pilling. There he mounted a sun-dial on the chapel wall in 1766. George also taught the lunar distance method of finding longitude. In 1767 George returned to Bentham, where he remained. Receiving probate in 1793, his will lists: "my three book cases with all my Latin and Greek books, my mathematical books, either printed or in manuscript, my Hadley's quadrant sector and scales, and all the books and instruments useful in navigation, and ... all my books, papers, and instruments used in calculating the Liverpool Tide Table, upon condition that he will give to my daughter Alice Holden all the profits of the Tide Tables for the two first years after my decease.

Hutchinson, William (1715–1801), mariner and writer on seamanship, presumed to be a native of Newcastle upon Tyne, was at a very early age employed on colliers, as cook, cabin-boy, and beer-drawer for the men. He gradually worked his way through all the most active employments as a seaman.

Hutchinson referred to his various experiences in his later book on seamanship, beginning with his time as a ‘forecastle man’ on board an East Indiaman in 1738–9, and making the voyage to China; he was also mate of ‘a bomb's tender in Hyères Bay’ with the Royal Navy about 1743. His later experiences included a time cruising in the Mediterranean, prying on French shipping in the employ of Fortunatus Wright, merchant and privateer, and Hutchinson was himself in command of a privateer in 1747.

In 1750 Hutchinson commanded the Lowestoft, an old twenty-gun frigate sold out of the navy and bought by Wright, and in her traded to the West Indies and the Mediterranean. At some unspecified date his ship was wrecked, Hutchinson and his men escaping in a boat. They were without food, and cast lots to determine which one should die for the others. The lot fell on Hutchinson, but at the last moment he was saved by a vessel coming in sight. To the end of his life he kept the anniversary as a day of ‘strict devotion’. In 1759 he was appointed a dock master at Liverpool, afterwards also water bailiff and harbour master, posts he held for more than twenty years, part of the time in conjunction with a younger Fortunatus Wright, a kinsman of his old companion.

In 1763 Hutchinson set up the first parabolic reflectors on the Bidston light. These were made up from sheets of tin soldered together and lined with pieces of mirror-glass; he afterwards had larger reflectors made, up to 12 feet in diameter, plastered inside to a smooth bowl and similarly lined with glass. These reflectors were so successful that Hutchinson was asked to procure examples for the Dublin harbour authorities' lighthouses.

Prompted by a friend, the astronomer James Ferguson, Hutchinson began in 1764 to observe the times and heights of tides flowing at the old dock gates in Liverpool, and fixed a tide-pole in the bed of the river itself, to gauge the lowest point of the ebb. On plotting the readings he found that they formed a parabolic curve, and he attributed the difference between his observed measurements and the predictions given by tide-clocks to lunar effects which had not previously been properly considered. Hutchinson's data was incorporated in Holden's Tide Tables, published in 1773. His record of tides, barometer, weather, and winds, 1768–93, was presented to Liverpool Public Library. In 1777 he published a Treatise on Practical Seamanship, which dealt also with the proper form and dimensions of merchant ships. This contained autobiographical material, and it ran through several enlarged editions.

Hutchinson was one of the founder members of the Liverpool pilot committee, founded in 1766. In 1779 he and some companions set out on horseback to find a refuge for the pilot boats, riding across Anglesey where they paused to view the great Parys copper mine; they identified a cove, which they named Pilot's Bay, where the boats might safely shelter to await incoming shipping. He also subscribed 100 guineas to the Liverpool Marine Society, established in 1789 to care for needy mariners and their families. He died, unmarried, on 11 February 1801 in Liverpool, and was buried in the churchyard of St Thomas's, Liverpool.

J. K. Laughton, rev. Anita McConnell

Sources  J. S. Rees, History of the Liverpool pilotage service (1984) · D. B. Hague and R. Christie, Lighthouses, their architecture, history and archaeology (1975), 164 · R. Brooke, Liverpool as it was during the last quarter of the eighteenth century (1853), 101–2, 393 · W. Hutchinson, A treatise on practical seamanship (1777) · J. K. Laughton, Studies in naval history: biographies (1887) · will

Archives:  Liverpool RO, tide journals · RS, tide journals. Wealth at death: effects and administration to sister

Laplace, Pierre Simon

McLaurin, Colin