Here is Mark Knopfler’s captivating masterpiece about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon’s late-
1763 journey from England to Philadelphia to survey the border between Pennsylvania/Delaware and Maryland. While fifty years later the Mason-Dixon Line would symbolize America’s deep fracture over slavery, the two astronomers/surveyors were originally commissioned to settle a land-dispute between Thomas Penn, then Proprietor of Pennsylvania, and Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore. Conflicts between the Maryland charter Charles I granted to George Calvert in 1632 and the Pennsylvania charter Charles II granted to William Penn in 1681 instigated a dispute over roughly 4,000 square miles of land (and taxes). Mason and Dixon began their partnership conducting an observatory expedition of the 1761 transit of Venus for the Royal Society. The highly successful expedition and ensuing work on gravitational, astronomical, and tidal observations established their reputations for excellence and won them the praise of the scientific community…

Lyrics

I am Jeremiah Dixon, I am a Geordie boy. A glass of wine with you, sir, and the ladies I’ll enjoy. All Durham and Northumberland is measured up by my own hand. It was my fate from birth to make my mark upon the earth. He calls me Charlie Mason, a stargazer am I. It seems that l was born to chart the evening sky. They’d cut me out for baking bread, but I had other dreams instead. This baker‘s boy from the west country would join the Royal Society. We are sailing to Philadelphia, a world away from the coaly Tyne. Sailing to Philadelphia to draw the line, a Mason-Dixon Line.

Now you’re a good surveyor, Dixon, but I swear you’ll drive me mad. The West will kill us both you gullible Geordie lad. You talk of liberty, how can America be free? A Geordie and a baker’s boy in the forests of the Iroquois? Now hold your head up, Mason, see America lies there. The morning tide has raised the capes of Delaware. Come up and feel the sun, a new morning has begun. Another day will make it clear why your stars should guide us here. We are sailing to Philadelphia…

We are sailing to Philadelphia…