The Gentleman from Staithes: Rediscovering Thomas Kirton and His Lost Longitude Invention
- Staithes Museum
- May 16
- 4 min read
At Staithes Museum, we often think of Captain Cook’s voyages as the height of 18th-century maritime exploration — voyages that depended not only on courage and seamanship but also on advances in navigation. Among the most pressing questions of the age was how to find a ship’s longitude at sea — a problem so difficult it spawned a royal reward and centuries of effort. Most people have heard of John Harrison’s marine timekeepers. Fewer have heard of Thomas Kirton — a schoolmaster from Staithes and/or Whitby, a man outside the scientific elite, who may have tried to solve the same problem from the Yorkshire coast.
Thanks to a curious newspaper clipping brought in by Bill Hinchley, our research into this local figure began with a cryptic 18th-century news item referring to “a gentleman at Staithes” who had developed a new method for measuring latitude. That led us into the archives of the Board of Longitude, where, to our surprise and excitement, we found his name: Thomas Kirton. And reading forward through the meeting records, we found something even cooler - Kirton had submitted an invention to simplify longitude measurements as well!
A Remarkable Local Mind
Thomas Kirton appears in the official records of the Board of Longitude in 1787 with his latitude invention. As the newspapers at the time put it, “... frequently the mariner is prevented by clouds obscuring the sun, for many days together, at noon; and often in long voyages in obliged to beat about to and fro for a long time, sometime a month or more, before he dare make the land, if be be unsure of his latitude; which will now be put into his power to do at any hour of the day, as well as at noon.”
Later, in a letter to the Board, dated 20 November 1787 and written from Whitby, Kirton respectfully asks the Board to consider his proposal for finding the longitude of a ship using a rotating “cone circle” that completed its revolution every 24 hours. Though the technical details are difficult to interpret today (at least, I can’t understand what he’s talking about!), he clearly believed he had a system that could provide accurate positioning at sea.
The Board’s response was cautiously encouraging: if he wanted their opinion, he should send them the machine. There’s no record that he ever did. The following year, the Board received a book from Kirton describing his invention — but the Astronomer Royal judged that it “did not contain any thing meriting the Board’s attention.” And so, like many other hopefuls, Kirton’s ideas disappeared into the archives — almost.
The Diary that Could Change Everything
In researching Kirton, we found a tantalising clue in an 1895 edition of the Whitby Gazette, which quotes from a diary Kirton had kept. In it, he recorded the arrival of six new bells at St Mary’s Church in Whitby in July 1762. This shows he kept a diary, and was recording daily events in detail. What might that diary say about his inventions? Could it explain how he developed his ideas — or even better describe the mechanism he offered to the Board of Longitude? What could it reveal about the life of a Staithes Schoolmaster-turned-inventor, and the famous national drive to invent a machine to work out your longitude and make navigation safer and more accurate?
At present, we have no idea where the diary is. It may have passed through family hands, ended up in a box in an attic, or even been lost. But if it still exists, it could help tell the story of a Yorkshire schoolmaster with the boldness to believe he could solve the world’s greatest scientific puzzle.
Who Was Thomas Kirton?
From parish and death records, we know that Kirton died in 1790 at the age of 77. He was described as a schoolmaster — a profession that, at the time, indicated a high level of education. He had a wife, Elizabeth, and at least two sons. One of them died young, and the second was given the same name. They also had a couple of daughters. Bill Hinchley is currently working on his family tree.
Other scattered records we’ve found so far have only been newspaper mentions, and nothing else that mentions a diary.
What we do know is that Kirton was thinking deeply about astronomical observation, geometry, and navigation — the same subjects that occupied the minds of Britain’s greatest scientists of the day. That he did so from Whitby, and not from Greenwich, makes his story all the more compelling.
A New Chapter in the Museum
At Staithes Museum, we’re currently displaying an exhibit about navigation in the age of Cook, including replicas and images of the Harrison chronometers, and stories of how mariners used astronomy and mathematics to find their way across vast oceans. Kirton’s story — if we can uncover more of it — would be the perfect local counterpoint. His voice, preserved in the formal but heartfelt letters to the Board, reminds us that science has always had its dreamers — not just in royal courts, but in schoolrooms and fishing villages too.
We are now asking for the public’s help: do you know anything about Thomas Kirton’s diary? Has it survived in a private collection, a family archive, or even a forgotten pile of old books in a loft or cellar?
Even the smallest lead could help us recover a lost chapter of Yorkshire’s scientific heritage.
If you have any information, please contact us at Staithes Museum. You can reach us at staithesmuseum@gmail.com, or drop in when the museum is open. We’d be delighted to talk.
Let’s see if together, we can bring the story of this remarkable Whitby schoolmaster back to life.
A very interesting article! I am descended from Thomas Kirton's daughter Elizabeth, and have also read about that diary! In Robert Tate Gaskin's "The Old Seaport of Whitby: Being Chapters from the Life of its Bygone People," there are actually a couple of passages from this diary. I wonder if there might be some more luck looking fpr the diary if you could find what libraries the author might have had access to?