Patrick Malahide, An Appreciation

It’s been a while since we’ve taken a look at our Favouritest Grabs, so Admin and I thought it was about time – plus it gives us an excuse to look through grabs.   As always, these are scenes from Mr. Malahide’s performances that we found especially interesting, entertaining, or appealing.

RF’s Picks:

John Harrison whips off his wig after a long journey by foot

What’s Going On in This Picture?

It’s from “Lost at Sea:  The Search for Longitude” (1998), recapped by Admin here.  Mr. Malahide plays self-taught carpenter and clockmaker John Harrison, who in 1714 is engaged in trying to figure out a better way for calculating longitude for ships at sea.  Up until this point, ships had been using “dead reckoning“, which wasn’t accurate enough and could sometimes result in disaster if ships were too close to rocks or other naval hazards.  The British government has offered a reward of £20,000 (an astronomical (no pun intended) sum for the time) to anyone who can come up with a reliable way for ships to calculate longitude, and John Harrison is in the running for the prize.

In this scene, Harrison has just returned from a lengthy journey – on foot! – from Barrow to London, to present his findings thus far to the Astronomer Royal, Dr. Edmond Halley.  In turn, Dr. Halley refers Harrison to London’s most famous clockmaker, George Graham.  The meeting actually goes well, but Harrison is concerned that Graham might try to pirate his ideas – although Halley assures him that Graham is an honourable man and wouldn’t do that.  Harrison also expresses some professional skepticism about Graham’s abilities as a clockmaker:  “While Mr. Graham proved indeed a fine gentleman, if truth be told I were taken aback by the poor, little feeble motions of his pendulums. The small force they had, like poor creatures sick and inactive. But, I commented not on the folly of his watches.”  Clearly, there’s a lot of professional pride at stake.  😉  Anyway, one of Harrison’s first acts upon returning home is to take off his wig, with an obvious sense of relief at finally being able to do so.
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