Tasting notes

Appearance: Burnished copper colour from sloe berries, oak and spices.

Nose: Lively notes of tonka, caramel and gentle spices.

Taste: Rich and smooth with warm notes of vanilla, cinnamon and tropical fruits. Long and spicy finish.

The quest for longitude

Finding longitude while at sea was one of the most dramatic pursuits of all times: a race in which science, genius, royalty and the navy embarked, hunting for solutions in utopic clocks, Jupiter’s moons and lunar tables. They aimed to seize a prize as lucrative as it was elusive, or simply to avoid getting lost at sea. Longitude Spiced Rum ingredients tell the stories of their epic accomplishments and the calamities that befell them along the way: shipwreck, sabotage, disease, murder and mutiny.

Cloves, nutmeg & cinnamon: Capturing the Madre de Deus

This enormous galleon was forced to navigate through the well-known routes which were “safe” in the absence of accurate longitude. But these routes were also trafficked by traders, navy and pirates alike making it likely to sail right into enemy ships. An English naval squadron near the Azores was lying in wait to intercept Spanish ships heading back from the New World when the Madre de Deus sailed right into their web. She was filled with over 500 tons of cargo including cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. Besides spices, her chests were filled with gold, silver and jewellery making her capture a colossal prize worth nearly half of England’s annual revenue at the time!

Kelp: The Scilly naval disaster of 1707

Kombu kelp from the Celtic Sea reminds us of the story of Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell taking place in this very sea which harbours the unmarked tombstones for his troops. Returning home after a victory against the French, Admiral Shovell steered his fleet straight into the rocks off the Isles of Scilly resulting in the death of nearly 2000 men and the loss of 4 war ships. How could such a high-ranking and experienced admiral lead them into one of the greatest British maritime disasters? His miscalculation of longitude was at fault. He had been warned of the mistake by a sailor but Admiral Shovell chose to have the sailor hanged on the spot for subversion and mutiny. After all, there was no reliable way to calculate longitude in his time. Shovell was one of only two men reaching the shore alive but when a local woman found him nearly drowned on the beach, she murdered him to keep his priceless emerald ring. Three decades later the woman confessed the crime in her deathbed producing the ring as proof.

Lime: Death from scurvy

Limes and longitude appear to have nothing in common, but they both could have saved hundreds of lives from George Anson’s men in his voyage around the world. By the time he reached Patagonia, the life of many sailors had been taken by scurvy, a disease common with seafarers of the time due to lack of vitamin C. However, a series of miscalculations of longitude turned this bad start into a disaster. After a violent storm, Anson sailed north believing he was 300 miles west of land when he sailed right into Tierra del Fuego. They had been virtually treading water for weeks while scurvy continued to claim sailors’ lives daily. He knew soon there would not be enough men to sail the ship. Anson steered to Juan Fernandez Island to soothe the dying and sustain the living. Although he reached the island’s latitude, without knowing his longitude he couldn’t be certain whether to sail east or west. He correctly guessed west but changed his mind after 4 days and turned back east. When he reached Spanish-ruled Chile he was forced to turn back west again causing a 2-week delay. All the while, scurvy whittling at the crew taking 6-10 lives each day. By then, there remained only eight men and some officers and their servants able to work the ship.

Sloe berries: The Board of Longitude

English sloe berries take us right to Westminster where the Longitude Act was issued to reward anyone who could find a practical method to determine longitude at sea. Its biggest prize was £20’000 (approx. £3m today) for determining longitude within half a degree of error (equivalent to 27 miles or 30 minutes). The Act established the Board of Longitude, to judge the proposals and administer the rewards. It required that any proposal be tested on one of Her Majesty’s ships from Britain to the West Indies. As the race progressed, two main contenders approached the finish line: Timekeepers led by genius clockmaker John Harrison and the lunar distance method led by astronomists. Harrisons H4 clock was successfully tested well within the stringent margin of error that the Act required for the top prize. Unfortunately for Harrison, some Board members were astronomists who openly endorsed the lunar distance method. Not only the Board dismissed the H4’s success but unfairly and systematically altered the rules preventing Harrison from wining the prize. The Board never awarded the top prize to anyone although they did award smaller incentive awards to different contributors throughout its 114 years of existence.

Iris Florentina: The moons of Jupiter

This Italian botanical takes us the land of Galileo Galilei who with the help of the telescope, changed our understanding of the universe. Besides evidencing that the sun was at the centre of the universe instead of the Earth, he discovered Jupiter’s moons which he used for determining longitude. This brilliant method worked very well on land and was used by cartographers for more accurate mapping. It is said the French king complained that the astronomers had taken more territory from him than his enemies as they remapped France using this method. However, observing Jupiter’s moons from a moving ship was very difficult. In a failed attempt to win the prize from Spain and Netherlands for finding longitude at sea he invented the celatone (a type of helmet with a mounted telescope). The Spanish were not impressed while the dutch awarded him a gold chain and medal for his effort but no prize. However, he was not allowed to accept it because supporting that the sun was at the centre of the universe was forbidden by the Roman Inquisition. He was then forced to recant and spend the rest of his life under house arrest.

Oak: Harrison the genius

Oak is the final magic that rounds the flavour and character of our rum, imparting complexity with layers of complementary flavours during the ageing process. We dedicate this wood ingredient to our hero: John Harrison. He was an ingenious carpenter and self-taught clockmaker with humble beginnings. Before 20 years old he completed his first clock which had the unique feature of being built almost entirely of wood including the oak wheels. He devoted years to solve the longitude problem with sea clocks. It took him decades building the first 3 sea clocks (H1, H2 and H3) before finally perfecting what the scientific community had feared impossible: a timekeeper which could tell longitude at sea within the most stringent margin of error. This was the H4, his famous masterpiece, the “Mona Lisa” of horology. Despite numerous quarrels with the Board of Longitude and never having received the award he was owed, Harrison is remembered in history as the genius who solved the problem of Longitude.

Bitter Orange: The villain of the story

Bitter orange provides a sour and bitter emotional gustatory experience linked to envy and jealousy. It leads us to the villain of our story, the Reverend Nevil Maskelyne. He was an astronomer and ardent supporter of lunar distance method which he was working on. He established the Primer Meridian in Greenwich as his observations where gathered from the Royal Observatory. Despite the obvious conflict of interest, when Maskelyene was appointed as Astronomer Royal he became a member and judge for the Board of Longitude. Harrison’s H4 masterpiece was then handed to Maskelyene for further testing in Greenwich. Although the timekeeper had already passed the trial at sea with plaudits, Maskeylene concluded after 10 months of testing that the watch could not be trusted to keep a ship’s longitude and deemed the stars more reliable. The watch seemed to have incurred some damage and Harrison went on to accuse him of sabotage. Harrison also claimed the watch had been stored inside a box in direct sunlight while the thermometer measuring the clock’s ambient temperature lay on the shade. Despite this quarrel, Maskeylene accomplished a myriad of contributions to science and early modern navigation.

Coconut: The fate of Captain Cook

Coconut reminds us of the South Pacific islands and Hawaii where Captain James Cook met his tragic fate. He was an explorer and cartographer who had been entrusted to test a copy of Harrison’s H4 chronometer (the “K-1”) to measure longitude at sea during his second voyage. He praised the time-keeper which he used to accurately map the South Pacific. During his third voyage, conflicts rose between Europeans and Hawaiians. In an attempt to abduct the ruling chief of Hawaii, Cook’s men were confronted on the beach by an elderly kahuna who approached them holding a coconut and chanting while a large crowd of native villagers started to form. Cook was then fatally stabbed with a dagger concluding his legacy of navigation and science. According to an account kept at the time, Cook’s murder coincides with the instant that the K-1 stopped ticking.

Mango: Captain Bligh and the K-2

This tropical fruit takes us to the Pitcairn Islands where it thrives and fuels its nano-economy. For decades, the island kept the K-2, which was another copy of Harrison’s H4 timekeeper by watchmaker Larcum Kendall. The K-2 was tested to measure longitude aboard the H.M.S. Bounty under Captain William Bligh who had survived the murder of Captain Cook in Hawaii but was later restrained by his crew in the mutiny on the Bounty. He was set adrift but survived and eventually became governour of New South Wales in Australia where he was then imprisoned by army mutineers during the Rum rebellion. The K-2 however, had a more fascinating round of adventures. It was kept by the H.M.S. Bounty mutineers and brought to Pitcairn island until it was recovered by an American Quaker, only to be stolen by the Spanish later. It rode on mules along the Andes before sailing into the Opium Wars to then return to the British Museum. It finally found its home in Greenwich in 1963, almost two centuries after it was built.