In the early 1700s , a series of very public and very tragic maritime disasters occurred , including the wrecking of a squadron of naval vessels on the Scilly Islands in 1707 . Around the same time , mathematician Thomas Axe decreed in his will that a £ 1,000 prize be awarded for promising research into finding “ true longitude ” and that annual sums be paid to scholars involved in making corrected world maps
Scilly Islands in 1707
Scilly naval disaster of 1707
Longitude rewards