So granted as I work in the industry, this is somewhat personal but here's my hot take:
The success of the Royal Navy can be attributed directly to watchmakers, not the British simply being naturally superior seamen. The invention of the sea-clock is a lengthy but interesting one. As the sea-clocks were a closely guarded secret, for some time the Royal Navy were the only ones with them and this period happens to coincide with the Royal Navy winning everything at sea.
In the 1720s, it was impossible to tell where a ship was from east-west. A sextant could reliably determine north-south from the sun but as the sun and stars rotated, there was no way to determine longitude. A large reward was offered for anyone who could devise an instrument with that ability. A carpenter named John Harrison self-taught himself watchmaking and began working towards winning the large prize of twenty thousand pounds offered for success.
John Harrison reckoned that with a sufficiently accurate clock, one could set it to, say, the time in Greenwich and then divide the earth into 24 even sections for hours, then subdivide those into 60 for minutes, and know where you were by what hour your clock indicated vs. when the sun was directly overhead. However clocks of the time were only accurate to within about four minutes a day, and gravity and movement affected the watch's accuracy, a moving clock was less accurate than a stable one, and a clock constantly moving up and down with the waves would only be accurate to within 15 minutes per day which would leave a ship hopelessly off course after a six-month voyage. John Harrison reckoned that if he could get his clock to within 4 seconds a day, a ship would only be off by about 15 miles after six months of journey, which would be easily corrected via spyglass and crow's nest watch.
Harrison's first clock H1 traveled with him to Lisbon and back in 1736 on a test run. The journey there was negative but after adjusting to shipboard life, Harrison was able to tell position so accurately on the return trip that he corrected the Captain's navigation by 60 miles and prevented the ship from entering dangerous waters. Harrison had built a clock hundreds of times more accurate than any other in the world, but still short of his goal.
H2 and 3 were promising but didn't get the accuracy he wanted either. Harrison had to invent a number of new devices ranging from the balance staff to the bimetallic spring that are still used in clocks (and some other instruments) to this day over the next 19 years as he continued to build ever-more-accurate clocks. He built an escapement out of diamond to get a harder and more accurate movements and continued to improve.
H4 went with Harrison's son William aboard HMS Deptford to Jamaica in 1761 (John Harrison himself was 68 years old at this time) and, after crossing the Atlantic, William was able to successfully predict the day they would sight land from the clock. He was correct and the Captain was so impressed he offered his personal fortune to obtain the next Harrison clock. The Journey was 81 days and 5 hours, and H4 was able to predict their position within 1 nautical mile. Captain James Cook would later take a replica of H4 on his famous voyage and his log is filled with praise for how well he could navigate with it. Cook's replica of H4 was then loaned to Captain William Bligh and stolen from him by Fletcher Christian during the famous mutiny on the bounty, and not recovered until 1808.
At this point things turned into a soap opera. Harrison's rival Nevil Maskelyne had attempted the same voyage alongside H4, using his own proposal of measuring Lunar Distance. He was off by 30 nautical miles to H4's 1, but he was also promoted to Astronomer Royal and thus able to be on the Board of Longitude which was responsible for determining if Harrison had succeeded. Maskelyne claimed that while the tests showed Harrison's clock was accurate, in reality the clock had multiple errors that just happened to cancel each other out. He was able to convince the board that more trials were needed, giving himself time to try to win the prize. After another successful test Maskelyne continued to claim the Sea Clock wasn't accurate and it was just a series of inaccuracies that canceled each other out making it appear on time.
Maskelyne would be kicked off of most internet forums for trolling and bad faith debating at this point, but he failed to be kicked from his position of Astronomer Royal, even with the King's intense displeasure at his antics.
King George III personally tested H5 and found it accurate, and put increased pressure on the Board to give Harrison the prize. Parliament did the same. Nevil Maskelyne refused to do so. Things went to the press and Harrison's supporters clashed with Nevil's, both putting out multiple newspaper articles to support their side.
In the end King George III personally gave the prize money to Harrison from his own purse but the board never certified Harrison's clocks and never formally awarded Harrison the acclaim he wanted. He died quite rich but bitter over his treatment. At the end of his life he claimed to have designed a clock that was accurate to 1 second every 100 days, which was soundly mocked for how ludicrous it was for a watch to be so accurate (quartz watches today generally don't meet that standard). He died before completing it, but in 1995 a replica from his plans was built and tested, and was 5/8ths of a second off after 100 days of operation.
In truth Harrison did honestly fail one criterion of the board: He couldn't make his clocks cheaply. A Harrison sea-clock cost about a third what the ship it sailed on did. But the advantages of knowing your exact position at all times were so great that it paid for itself rapidly, ships could travel more quickly, take advantage of trade winds that would get them lost without the navigational aid, and the crews were fresher and healthier from spending less time at sea, and far fewer ships were lost to navigational hazards. Unsurprisingly the Royal Navy, given the ludicrous navigational advantages the sea-clock offered, soon became the pre-eminent navy in the world. Soon insurers refused to insure any vessel without one. Harrison is remembered to this day by Watchmakers and... not really anybody else much.