A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the; Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea; and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the; Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea; and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
In this place we got beef, pork, poultry, papaw apples, bread-fruit,
limes, oranges, and every refreshment that is mentioned in the account
of Lord Anson's voyage. The sick began to recover from the day they
first went on shore: The air, however, was so different here from what
we found it in King George's Island, that flesh meat, which there kept
sweet two days, could here be scarcely kept sweet one. There had been
many cocoa-nut trees near the landing-place, but they had been all
wastefully cut down for the fruit, and none being grown up in their
stead, we were forced to go three miles into the country before a single
nut could be procured. The hunters also suffered incredible fatigue, for
they were frequently obliged to go ten or twelve miles through one
continued thicket, and the cattle were so wild that it was very
difficult to come near them, so that I was obliged to relieve one party
by another; and it being reported that cattle were more plenty at the
north end of the island, but that the hunters being quite exhausted with
fatigue when they got thither, were not able to kill them, much less to
bring them down, I sent Mr Gore, with fourteen men, to establish
themselves in that part of the island, and ordered that a boat should go
every morning, at day-break, to bring in what they should kill. In the
mean time the ship was laid by the stern to get at some of the copper
sheathing which had been much torn; and in repairing the copper, the
carpenter discovered and stopped a large leak under the lining of the
knee of the head, by which we had reason to hope most of the water that
the vessel had lately admitted in bad weather, came in. During our stay
here, I ordered all the people on shore by turns, and by the 15th of
October, all the sick being recovered, our wood and water completed, and
the ship made fit for the sea, we got every thing off the shore, and
embarked all our men from the watering-place, each having, at least,
five hundred limes, and there being several tubs full on the
quarter-deck, for every one to squeeze into his water as he should think
fit.
At break of day, on Friday the 16th, we weighed, and, sailed out of the
bay, sending the boats at the same time to the north end of the island,
to bring off Mr Gore and his hunters. At noon, we received them and
their tents on board, with a fine large bull, which they had just
killed.
While we lay at anchor in this place, we had many observations for the
latitude and longitude, from which we drew up the following table:
Latitude of the ship, as she lay at anchor 14° 55'N. long. 214°15'W.
Latitude of the watering-place 14 59 N.
Longitude of the body of Tinian 24 W.
Longitude of the Tinian Road 214 8 W.
Medium of Longitude, observed at Tinian 214 7
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