Arniston Wrecked Without Marine Chronometer

In 1815, the British East Indian merchant ship Arniston, sailing under charter to the British East India Company and carrying wounded soldiers from Ceylon to England, approached the stormy waters near Cape Agulhas in South Africa without a marine chronometer that her owners had refused to buy. Captain George Simpson had to rely on dead reckoning and older navigational methods, and in the adverse weather he and his officers mistakenly believed they had already passed the Cape of Good Hope. On 30 May 1815, the ship struck rocks near Waenhuiskrans and broke up in the surf, killing 372 of the 378 people on board. Only six men survived, and the loss of Arniston became a notorious example of how skipping an "easy and cheap" navigational instrument could turn a routine voyage into a catastrophe.

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