General
Available in a limited edition of 300, this pens is accompanied by a booklet outlining its full and tragic story, including the discovery of The Association and story behind John Harrison’s quest for Longitude and the development of the Longitude Pen. Disaster struck on October 22nd, 1707, when Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell was returning back to base in Portsmouth from Gibraltar, the fleet sailed into tragedy when incorrect reckoning sent four of its vessels crashing onto the rocks off the Scilly Isles in the dark of the night.
Features
The wreck site was located in 1967, following which items of ship’s fittings, ordnance, precious metal coinage were recovered and the Longitude Pen incorporates some of those historic metals in its crafting. The pen cap top, cap band and barrel end are of bronze from a pulley sheave used with the stowage of Association’s anchors. Sterling silver smelted from a mixture of British coins recovered from Association has been used to forge the pen’s magnificent clip, which is based on the arm and fluke from one of the ship’s anchors, and engraved with an image of the hour hand from John Harrison’s ‘H4’ chronometer.
Comments
Nib options: Gold-plated stainless steel or 18k solid gold in fine, medium or broad nib as standard. Customised stub, italic or other styles are available to order. Pen used for this review arrived with a 18k gold medium nib to be found being sufficiently semi flex and certainly very smooth.
Ink used: Onoto Sapphire Blue, UK
