Stephenson:Neal:The System of the World:3:Cloudesley Shovell (Neal Stephenson)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

This is such an odd name that I feel compelled to say that I did not make it up. Daniel is alluding here to one of history's more famous maritime disasters, which occurred in 1707 during the War of the Spanish Succession. It had nothing to do with enemy action and everything to do with bad navigation, and it is one of the reasons why Parliament established the Longitude Prize some years earlier.