38 Ibid., 94, 95.
39 Henry M. Stommel, The Gulf Stream: A Physical and Dynamical Description, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, 1965), chap. 1; Thomas Frohock Gaskell, The Gulf Stream (New York, 1973), 3–5.
40 J. H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (London, 1966), 102–122.
41 Robert Bishop, Instructions and Observations Relative to the Navigation of the Windward and Gulph Passages (London, 1761), 48, 50 (for quotation), 51, 52 (on Spanish ships), 54 (on Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi).
42 Editorial note, PBF, 10:86–88; BF to Pringle, May 27, 1762, PBF, 10:94.
43 Ibid., 89.
44 Ibid, 90, 93–94.
45 Thomas Penn to Richard Peters, July 5, 1758, PBF, 7:363n–364n; BF to [Isaac Norris], Jan. 14, 1758, PBF, 7:362.
46 Penn and Richard Peters cited in PBF, 7:110n–111n
47 WS to David Hall, Aug. 10, 1762, PBF, 10:141; BF to Kames, Aug. 17, 1762, PBF, 10:147; David Hume to BF, May 10, 1762, PBF, 10:81–82.
48 BF to Kames, June 2, 1765, PBF, 12:159.
49 BF to Richard Jackson, Mar. 8, 1763, PBF, 10:208; BF to William Ponsonby, Earl of Bessborough, July 13, 1765, PBF, 12:208–209; BF to WF, Aug. 28, 1767, PBF, 14:243; Stourzh, Benjamin Franklin and American Foreign Policy, 42, 54–65.
50 BF and William Hunter to James Parker, Apr. 22, 1757, PBF, 7:196; Anthony Todd to BF and John Foxcroft, Mar. 12, 1763 (three letters), PBF, 10:217–224; BF and John Foxcroft, Tables of Rates of Postage, c. 1763, PBF, 10:417–420; Howard Robinson, Carrying British Mails Overseas (New York, 1964), 43–44, 46.
51 Chronology, PBF, 10:277–279.
52 Christopher L. Brown, “Empire without Slaves: British Concepts of Emancipation in the Age of the American Revolution,” WMQ 56 (1999), 273–306.
53 BF to John Waring, Feb. 17, 1758, PBF, 7:377–379; Waring to BF, Jan. 4, 1760, PBF, 9:12; BF to Waring, Dec. 17, 1763, PBF, 10:395–396; David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York, 2004), 194.
54 BF to Francis Hopkinson, Dec. 16, 1767, PBF, 14:340.
55 [BF], A Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County . . . (1764), PBF, 11:55; BF to Sir William Johnson, Sept. 12, 1766, PBF, 13:416; “A New England-Man” [BF], Public Advertiser, Mar. 16, 1773, PBF, 20:115–122.
56 A. B. [BF], Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Public Affairs (1764), PBF, 11:160, 172–173.
57 “To the Freeholders . . . ,” PBF, 11:381; William B. Reed, ed., Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed (Philadelphia, 1847), 1:36–37; Autobiography, 271.
58 BF to DF, Dec. 9, 1764, PBF, 11:517; BF to MS, [Dec. 12–16, 1764], PBF, 11:521; BF to DF, Dec. 27, 1764, PBF, 11:534; BF to DF, Feb. 14, 1765, PBF, 12:62 (on gown).
59 Stearns, Science in the British Colonies, 585; entry for Feb. 16, 1771, Benjamin Franklin Journal, 1764–1774, Franklin Papers, APS.
60 BF to WF, [Sept. 27, 1766], PBF, 13:425; BF to WF, Aug., 28, 1767, and [Nov. 13, 1767], PBF, 14:242–243, 302–303;Jack M. Sosin, Whitehall and the Wilderness (Lincoln, Neb., 1961); George E. Lewis, The Indiana Company, 1763–1798: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Frontier Land Speculation and Business Venture (Glendale, Calif., 1941).
61 Timothy Folger to Sir Jeffery Amherst, [1763], PBF, 10:429–431; BF to Richard Jackson, May 1, 1764, PBF, 11:187; Privy Council, grant of land for BF, June 26, 1767, PBF, 14:202, 203.
62 BF, scheme for a western settlement, [1763–1764], PBF, 10:420–422; Grand Ohio Company petition to the king, [June? 1769], PBF, 16:167; editorial note, PBF, 21:31–33.
63 Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionar y America, 1735–1789 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1956), 174–177.
64 BF to Charles Morton, Oct. 29, 1765, PBF, 12:341–342; Thomas D. Cope, “Some Contacts of Benjamin Franklin with Mason and Dixon and Their Work,” APS Proceedings 95 (1951), 232–238.
65 Nicholas Rogers, “Liberty Road: Opposition to Impressment in Britain during the American War of Independence,” in Jack Tar in History: Essays in the History of Maritime Life and Labour, ed. Colin Howell and Richard J. Twomey (Fredricton, New Brunswick, Canada, 1991), 57. On Franklin’s map purchases, see entries for Sept. 8, 1766, Mar. 1772, Aug. 1773, Benjamin Franklin Journal, 1764–74, APS.
66 Mary Blewitt, Surveys of the Seas: A Brief History of British Hydrography (n.p. [Great Britain], 1957), 29; W. R. Chaplin, “A Seventeenth-Century Chart Publisher . . . ,” American Neptune 8 (1948), 310–311; Thomas R. Adams, “Mount and Page: Publishers of Eighteenth-Century Maritime Books,” in A Potencie of Life: Books in Society—The Clark Lectures, 1986–1987, ed. Nicolas Barker (London, 1993), 147–153; Victor Suthren, To Go Upon Discovery: James Cook and Canada, from 1758 to 1779 (Toronto, Canada, 2000), 153.
67 PG, Jan. 31, 1765,
68 Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (New York, 1995); William J. H. Andrewes, ed., The Quest for Longitude (Cambridge, Mass., 1996); BF to John Winthrop, Dec. 23, 1762, PBF, 10:179, 179n–180n; BF to DF, June 21, 1767, PBF, 14:192; Winthrop to BF, Oct. 26, 1770, PBF, 17:264, 264n (on Maskelyne). Franklin also knew John Walsh, one of Maskelyne’s cousins, who investigated the electrical torpedo fish or ray; see John Walsh to BF, [before June?, 1772], PBF, 19:160–163.
69 BF and John Foxcroft to Anthony Todd, Sept. 21, 1764, PBF, 1 1:341–346 (on postal rates); Table of Revised Postal Rates, c. 1764, PBF, 1 1:535–536; BF to Anthony Todd, [Jan. 16, 1764], PBF, 11:21 (for first quotation); Postmasters General to Lords of the Treasury, Jan. 28, 1764, PBF, 11:37–41 (second quotation on p. 38); Post Office commission to BF and John Foxcroft, Sept. 25, 1765, Franklin Papers, APS; Lords Sandwich and Le Despencer to Treasury Commission, Post Office, Dec. 14, 1768, Post 1/9, PO. West Florida was not included in the expanded service. See Robinson, Carrying British Mails, 45, 47–49; John D. Ware with Robert R. Rea, George Gauld: Surveyor and Cartographer of the Gulf Coast (Gainesville and Tampa, Fla., 1982), 115, 140.
70 Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675–1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New York, 1986), chaps. 7 and 9.
71 Ibid., chap. 7; editorial note, PBF, 20:73n (on post horns).
72 BF to DF, Dec. 9, 1764, PBF , 11:517; BF to MS, July 18, 1770, PBF, 17:94–95; BF to MS, Mar. 14, 1764, PBF, 11:110.
73 On postal venison, 1766–1768, see: PBF, 13:529; PBF, 14:220; PBF, 15:182. On Falconer, see: BF to WF, July 14, 1773, PBF, 20:306; Falconer to BF, Dec. 2, 1773, PBF, 20:491; Library Company committee to BF, Dec. 28, 1773, PBF, 20:517; BF to Falconer, Feb. 14, 1773, PBF, 20:58; Falconer to BF, Nov. 15, 1772, PBF, 19:371; Falconer to BF, Nov. 15, 1772, PBF , 19:371.
74 Jane Mecom to BF, Nov. 7, 1768, PBF, 15:263; BF to Mecom, Nov. 20, 1768, PBF, 15:268; Jonathan Williams Sr. to BF, [Aug.? 1772], PBF, 19:291; BF to Richard Bache, Dec. 1, 1772, PBF, 19:394 (on Isaac All, see also PBF, 12:31n); Paddock to BF, [Dec.] 21, 1773, PBF, 20:512–513; BF to DF, Dec. 13, 1765, PBF, 12:400.
75 Falconer to BF, Apr. 5, 1765, PBF, 12:100–101; BF to DF, Dec. 15, 1766, PBF, 13:525; entries for Sept. 25, 1768 (on Harvard) and Jan. 4, 1770 (on Le Roy), Benjamin Franklin Journal, 1764–1774, APS; BF to Humphry Marshall, Mar. 18, 1770, PBF , 17:110.
76 BFP, 58, 221; Fortune and Warner, Franklin and His Friends, 77; BF to Jonathan Williams, Feb. 24, 1764, PBF, 11:89–90, 89n; John Bartram to BF, Nov. 5, 1768, PBF, 15:257; Mary Bache to BF, Feb. 5, 1772, PBF, 19:66; DF to BF, May 30, 1771, PBF, 18:63; Harvard College to BF, June 24, 1771, PBF, 18:138.
77 BF to DF, [Jan.? 1758], PBF, 7:369 (on Goodeys); BF to DF, June 10, 1758, PBF, 8:93 (on ham, apples, and cranberries); BF to DF, Feb. 27, 1760, PBF, 9:27 (on apples); BF to DF, June 27, 1760, PBF, 9:175 (on venison and bacon); DF expenses, 1762, PBF, 10:101 (on Goodeys); DF to BF, Oct. 8–13, 1765, PBF, 12:303 (on apples and cranberries); DF to BF, Apr. 2[0–25, 1767], PBF, 14:139 (on no-cake); Seth Paddock to BF, Nov. 29, 1769, PBF, 16:250 (on cod); BF to–, Apr. 3, 1772, PBF, 19:99 (on codfish tongues and “sounds”).
78 Edmund S. Morgan
and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1953); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 161–175.
79 “Homespun,” second reply to “Vindex Patriae,” Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1766, PBF, 13:7–8.
80 Benjamin Franklin’s examination by the House of Commons, PBF, 13:135–136, 144.
81 Ibid., 135, 137, 144.
82 Ibid., 135, 158; Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 213–215.
83 Harvard College to BF, PBF, 16:6–7; Autobiography, 271; R. Hingston Fox, Dr. John Fothergill and His Friends (London, 1919); Page Talbott, ed., Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World (New Haven, 2005), 203, fig. 6.2—the jug was made in 1765, though the author of this catalog is not certain if Fothergill gave it to Franklin then.
84 BFP, 74–83, 328–340; Fortune and Warner, Franklin and His Friends, 26–29.
85 Chronology, PBF, 13:xxvii–xxviii; Chronology, PBF, 14:xxviii; Alfred Owen Aldridge, Franklin and His French Contemporaries (New York, 1957), 23–30.
86 BF to PC, Apr. 30, 1764, PBF, 11:182; “F. B.” on smuggling, London Chronicle, Nov. 21–24, 1767, PBF, 14:317, 318.
87 Commissioners of Customs (Boston) to Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury, May 12, 1768, Treasury 1/465/60–61, TNA; Anthony Todd to Thomas Bradshaw, June 4, 1768, Treasury Letters, Post 1/9, PO.
88 BF to Anthony Todd, Oct. 29, 1769 [1768], PBF, 15:246–247.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid., 247.
91 Ibid.; Chaplin, “Seventeenth-Century Chart Publisher,” 309, 310; Lloyd A. Brown, “The River in the Ocean,” in Essays Honoring Lawrence C. Wroth, ed. Frederich R. Goff (Portland, Me., 1951), 69–84; Philip Richardson, “Benjamin Franklin and Timothy Folger’s First Printed Chart of the Gulf Stream,” Science 207 (1980), 643–645; Ellen Cohn, “Benjamin Franklin, Georges-Louis Le Rouge and the Franklin/Folger Chart of the Gulf Stream,” Imago Mundi 52 (2000), 130–132 (Cohn dated the chart at 1769, Franklin at 1768—see below).
92 Instructions to Deputies, Packet Captains and Surveyors, 1763–1811, Post 44/1, PO; Suthren, To Go Upon Discovery, 57–60, 97–102, 126–128, 147 (quotation), 154–155; James Cook, master, “A Journal of the Grenville,” June 14, 1764–Dec. 31, 1765, 111r, 115r, 127r (for quotation), ADM 52/1263, TNA. These entries match those in Cook’s logbook; later logbooks and journals contain nothing on currents.
93 Edouard A. Stackpole, The Sea-Hunters: The New England Whalemen during Two Centuries, 1635–1835 (Philadelphia, 1953), 26, 31–32, 37, 42, 49–55. On the mistaken date, see PBF, 15:246n; the date of 1769 was carried forward in subsequent correspondence—see Thomas Gage to Hillsborough, Jan. 6, 1769, in The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, 1763–1775, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1931), 1:213.
94 Adams, “Mount and Page,” 153–155; Richardson, “First Printed Chart of the Gulf Stream,” 645; Thomas Pownall, “Hydraulic and Nautical Observations on the Currents in the Atlantic Ocean . . . ,” with annotations by Benjamin Franklin [c. 1787], title page, Royal Society Library, London; entry for Oct. 10, 1767, Incident Bills, 1766–1769, PO; Richard Mount and Thomas Page, Atlas maritimus novus; or, The New Sea-Atlas (London, 1702), 35. The truncated stream echoed other of Franklin’s analyses of fluid circulation as occurring in discrete sections (BF to MS, Sept. 13, 1760, PBF, 9:213, 214; BF to MS, Nov.? 1760, PBF, 9:249) and his assertion, in a conversation with Lord Egmont, that Britain had “in its rightful Possession the Turnpike of the Sea,” a passage subject to the collection of tolls, reversing the usual understanding, as defined by Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, that the sea was the free highway of nations (BF to Joseph Galloway, Jan. 9, 1769, PBF, 16:13).
95 Mount and Page, Atlas maritimus novus, compare the chart on p. 35 (used for the Franklin and Folger chart) with those on pp. 36 and 37, which do not include the full geography surrounding the Atlantic Ocean.
96 BF to Todd, Oct. 29 [1768], 247–248; [BF], The Interest of Great Britain Considered . . . , 91.
Chapter 7
1 “F+S” [BF], London Chronicle, Jan. 5–7, 1768, PBF, 15:3.
2 George F. E. Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty: A Social Study (Oxford, 1962); John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976).
3 Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America,” WMQ 25 (1968), 371–407; Nicholas Rogers, “Liberty Road: Opposition to Impressment in Britain during the American War of Independence,” in Jack Tar in History: Essays in the History of Maritime Life and Labour, ed. Colin Howell and Richard J. Twomey (Fredricton, New Brunswick, Canada, 1991), 57, 60–61; Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Boston, 2005), 222–225.
4 BF to WF, Apr. 16, 1768, PBF, 15:98–99; BF to John Ross, May 14, 1768, PBF, 15:129 (see also BF to Joseph Galloway, PBF, 15: 127–128).
5 BF to Jane Mecom, July 7, 1773, PBF, 20:290.
6 BF to–, Nov. 28, 1768 (printed in Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 49), PBF, 15:273.
7 Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1956), 122–138.
8 [Charles Thomson] to BF, Nov. 6, 1768, PBF, 15:262; William Smith to BF, May 3, 1771, PBF, 18:95; James E. McClellan III, Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1985), chap. 4; Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (Princeton, 1968), 23–29.
9 Autobiography, 271.
10 BF to John Winthrop, July 2, 1768, PBF, 15:170–171.
11 Editorial note, PBF, 20:26n.
12 On rain, see BF to Thomas Percival, June 1771, PBF, 18:154, 154n, 156; William E. Knowles Middleton, A History of the Theories of Rain . . . (New York, [1966]), 98–99, 168–170. On water’s compressibility, see BF to John Canton, Mar. 14, 1764, PBF, 11:98; Canton to BF, June 29, 1764, PBF, 11:244–246; Charles Coulston Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York, 1970–1990), 3:52.
13 Editorial notes, PBF, 4:376n, 377n; Benjamin Franklin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity (London, 1769), 165. The fifth edition (of 1774) was essentially the same as the fourth.
14 Editorial note, PBF, 21:292–297; Monthly Review 42 (1770), 200.
15 Franklin to O[liver] N[eave], [before 1769], PBF, 15:295–297.
16 Contents of 1769 edition, PBF, 21:293–296. Despite his quarrels with Pennsylvania’s proprietors, Franklin never omitted from any edition of his Experiments and Observations the stiff note of 1750 in which he acknowledged Thomas Penn’s gift of an electrical apparatus to the Library Company.
17 Verner W. Crane, “The Club of Honest Whigs: Friends of Science and Liberty,” WMQ 23 (1966), 210–233.
18 Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, 1971), 77–78; BF to WF, Aug. 19 [–22], 1772, PBF, 19:259–260; BF to Académie Royale des Sciences, Nov. 16, 1772, PBF, 19:372; JL to BF, Apr. 22, [1770], PBF, 17:126, 126n; JL to BF, Sept. 30, 1772, PBF, 19:308, 308n; JL to BF, Apr. 19, 1773, PBF, 20:170; JL to BF, Nov. 29, [1773], PBF, 20:487.
19 JB to BF, May 8, 1768, PBF, 15:112–115, 115n.
20 BF to Beccaria, Aug. 11, 1773, PBF, 20:354–355; editorial note, PBF, 14:4n; Howard S. Reed, “Jan Ingenhousz, Plant Physiologist, with a History of the Discovery of Photosynthesis,” Chronica Botanica 11 (1949), 291–294.
21 BF to JL, June 22, 1773, PBF, 20:240–241; BF to Kames, Feb. 21, 1769, PBF, 16:47–48; JL to BF, Nov. 29, [1773], PBF, 20:488.
22 Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistr y and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992); Archibald Clow and Nan L. Clow, The Chemical Revolution: A Contribution to Social Technology (London, 1952); Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future (London, 2002), 229–239.
23 Autobiography, 43, 133.
24 Ralph H. Brown, “The de Brahm Charts of the Atlantic Ocean, 1772–1776,” Geographical Review 28 (1938), 124–132.
25 Commission for Determining the New York–New Jersey Boundary, [June 26, 1767], PBF, 14:198; Louis De Vorsey, “Pioneer Charting of the Gulf Stream: The Contributions of Benjamin Franklin and William Gerard De Brahm,” Imago Mundi 28 (1976), 111; De Vorsey, intro. to William Gerard De Brahm, The Atlantic Pilot (London, 1772), facsim. (Gainesville, Fla., 1974), ix–xxiv.
26 “Mr Brahm’s Observations on the American Coast,” Gentleman’s Magazine 41 (1771), 436.
27 De Brahm, Atlantic Pilot, iii, 13.
28 Ibid., xxx, 7.
29 Ibid., “The Ancient Tegesta, Now Promontory of East Florida,” pp. 3, 8, 9.
30 De Brahm, “East Florida,” notations above Cape Canaveral, sheet 1, CO 700/Florida 3, TNA; De Brahm, Atlantic Pilot, 13, 16; De Vorsey, “Pioneer Charting,” 114.
31 Philip L. Richardson, “Benjamin Franklin and Timothy Folger’s First Printed Chart of the Gulf Stream,” Science 207, no. 8 (1980), 643–645.
32 On the supposed lack of contact between Franklin and De Brahm, see De Vorsey, “Pioneer Charting,” 114. On their points of intersection, see BF to WF, Nov. 9, 1765, PBF, 12:362–364 (on Franklin’s audience with Dartmouth); BF and William Bollan to Lord Dartmouth, Aug. 20, 1773, PBF, 20:368–369; De Vorsey, intro., Atlantic Pilot, xxvii–xxix (on Dartmouth and Royal Society), xxxvii (on reviews of De Brahm); Benjamin Franklin, “The Cravenstreet Gazette,” Sept. 25, 1770, PBF, 17:225 (on untidy newspapers).
33 De Brahm, Atlantic Pilot, vii.
34 Ibid., iii; Autobiography, 271; “Twilight” [BF], “On Absentee Governors: II,” Public Advertiser, Aug. 27, 1768, PBF, 15:195; Bernard Bailyn, Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence (New York, 1990), 174.
35 De Brahm, Atlantic Pilot, iii, vi; Brown, “De Brahm Charts,” 129; BF to Thomas Cushing, June 10, 1771, PBF, 18:122.
36 BF to JP, Sept. 19, 1772, PBF, 19:299–300.
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