At midnight on the 19th May the three little vessels _Sunshine_, _Elizabeth_, and _Ellen_ sailed out of Dartmouth harbour before a fresh gale from the north-east. The _Sunshine_ sprang a leak which could only be kept under by 500 strokes of the pump during each watch, and the _Ellen_ was such a bad sailer that she had to be towed. On the 16th June, in spite of these drawbacks, the three vessels came to anchor in Gilbert Sound. Davis was so anxious that the expedition should pay its expenses that he determined to despatch both the _Sunshine_ and the _Elizabeth_ to the fishery, and to continue his voyage of discovery in the little pinnace _Ellen_ of barely 20 tons. Then John Churchward reported that the _Ellen_ had sprung a leak and that it required 300 strokes of the pump every watch to keep her clear of water. In this wretched little craft the explorers were to hazard their lives. All felt the crisis to be serious. Some hesitated. John Davis considered the matter, and his decision was worthy of him. He told his people that it would be better to end their lives with credit than to return with infamy and disgrace. The crew accepted his words as final and resolved to live and die together. At midnight therefore on the 21st June all sailed from Gilbert Sound, the two barks for the fishing voyage, and Davis in the pinnace to continue the work of discovery. Proceeding northward along the west coast of Greenland, to which he gave the name of the London Coast, Davis took an observation on the 30th which showed the pinnace to be in 72° 12′ N. A lofty perpendicular cliff, in reality one of several small islands off the coast, was named after the friend and chief promoter of the expedition “Sanderson his Hope,” for here it was that there seemed to be the chiefest hope of a passage. Sanderson his Hope rises to the height of 850 feet above the sea, perpendicular save for narrow ledges on which myriads of looms and kittiwakes rear their young. Davis was now obliged to alter course to the west owing to a strong northerly wind, and ran for 40 leagues in that direction without sighting land. Throughout the voyage he paid close attention to the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism, and did his best to increase the data for studying the properties of the magnet during all his voyages. The observations for variation at London have been continuous since 1580, and Davis had studied the work of another Arctic navigator, William Burrough, whose _Discourse of the Compass and Magnetic Needle_ appeared in 1581, followed in 1585 by Robert Norman’s _New Attractive_.