142 chapter five
That several of the Great Powers in Europe, particularly the French, Spaniards,
Danes and Swedes are making the proper dispositions for the Observation
thereof.... That the British nation has been justly celebrated in the learned
world, for their knowledge of astronomy, to which they are inferior to no nation
upon Earth, ancient or modern; and it would cast dishonour upon them should
they neglect to have correct observations made of this important phenomenon.
(Sheehan and Westfall 2004 , 163 )
The Royal Society was granted £ 4 , 000 for staff and equipment and was
promised the cooperation of the Admiralty, which was to provide means of
transportation. A coal bark was purchased and refitted for the journey as
HMS Endeavour. The estimated cost of the Endeavour, including supplies
and crew, was at least £ 8 , 235 , or roughly US$ 6. 5 million in 1996 terms (Sor-
renson 1996 , 224 – 25 n 9 ).^16 The Admiralty appointed Captain James Cook to
lead the expedition to the recently discovered islands of Tahiti and ordered
him to “make discovery of the Great Southern Continent,” assuming it ex-
isted, on his way back to Britain (Sheehan and Westfall 2004 , 183 ).^17 Britain
sent additional expeditions, most notably to the North Cape, Scandinavia,
and to Canada’s Hudson Bay. In addition, the Royal Society circulated in-
structions for transit observations throughout the British colonies.
France organized three overseas expeditions: to India, to the West In-
dies, and together with Spain, to Baja California.^18 Russian preparations
for the 1769 transit were intensive as well. Catherine the Great ordered
the Imperial Academy in 1767 to ensure the availability of astronomers,
instruments, and infrastructure for the impending transit. In order to staff
the proposed expeditions, the Russians invited foreign astronomers to
observe the transit from local stations at the expense of the Russian em-
press (Woolf 1959 , 179 – 81 ). Again there were numerous additional intra-
continental expeditions. This time Britain led the number of observations
(sixty- nine), while France dropped to second place (thirty- four). On the
whole, as many as 150 observation stations sponsored by eight different
countries took part in the effort (Woolf 1959 , 182 – 88 ). The absence of war
did not lessen the competitive approach to transit observations. The only
notable change was in the hierarchical ranking of the different contribu-
tors, reflecting British ascendance toward hegemony.
The Transit of 1874
Eighteenth- century observations did not provide a conclusive value for the
astronomical unit (Jayawardhana 2004 ). The desire to redress this failure
