The equipment of the _Hecla_ and _Fury_, and the loading of the _William Harris_ transport, being completed, we began to move down the river from Deptford on the 8th of May, 1824, and on the 10th, by the assistance of the steamboat, the three ships had reached Northfleet, where they received their powder and their ordnance stores. Two days were here employed in fixing, under the superintendence of Mr. Barlow and Lieutenant Foster, the plate, invented by the former gentleman, for correcting the deviation of the compass produced by the attraction of the ship’s iron; and the continuance of strong easterly winds prevented our getting to the Nore till the 16th. During our stay at Northfleet the ships were visited by Viscount Melville, and the other Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, who were pleased to approve of our general equipment and arrangements. During our passage across the Atlantic in June, and afterwards on our way up Davis’s Strait, we threw overboard daily a strong copper cylinder, containing the usual papers, giving an account of our situation. We also took every opportunity afforded by light winds, to try the temperature of the sea at different depths, as compared with that at the surface. I now determined, as the quickest and most secure mode of clearing the transport, to anchor at the Whale-fish Islands, rather than incur the risk of hampering and damaging her among the ice. Fresh gales and thick weather, however, prevented our doing so till the 26th, when we anchored at eight A.M., in seventeen fathoms, mooring the ships by hawsers to the rocks, and then immediately commenced our work. In the meantime the observatory and instruments were landed on a small island, called by the Danes Boat Island, where Lieutenant Foster and myself carried on the magnetic and other observations during the stay of the Expedition at this anchorage, of which a survey was also made.