IT will be recollected that the late Dr. Scoresby--who made himself so great a name in the history of Arctic discovery--went round the world in the 'Royal Charter' in order to study the deviation of compasses in iron ships. The fine old sailor in his posthumous work[D] thus speaks of the ship and her performances:-- [D] 'Journal of a Voyage to Australia and Round the World, for Magnetical Research.' 'Now, as to the action and performance of the "Royal Charter" under this hard gale and mighty disturbance of the waters, the experience we again derived was truly astonishing, and, compared with all my previous experience, what I should have deemed impossible; for by far the greatest portion of the time, I should say four minutes out of five, we had no observable motion, the ship being steady, quiet, and often apparently absolutely still. A minute or two would often pass whilst these heavy waves were rolling harmlessly forward, and but just raising in a slight degree the stem and alternately depressing it, when we might have seemed to be sailing in a sea of extreme calmness in the finest weather. In these intervals of dead quiet, no woodwork, joint, or junction of iron and timber, emitted an audible sound--no creaking was heard,--and at night there was sometimes a quiet most striking in its stillness. Of cases of this perfect quiet in time of heavy sea, squalls, and storm, I frequently noted intervals of seven and eight seconds, of ten to twelve, sometimes twenty up to twenty-four seconds, where there was not motion sufficient to break a silence of repose like that of dock or harbour. Hence, notwithstanding the lurches on rolling, extending sometimes to 16° or 20° on one side, and perhaps once in several hours to 30°--the maximum never exceeded up to this time,--a rolling inseparable from a progress directly before the wind, in difficult steering and with squared yards,--yet most occupations below, while ladies as well as others, went on as usual; and, when the state of the decks as to dryness would admit, exercise on the deck likewise. Thus when the waves were at the highest--when elevations of forty feet and upwards were rolling around and beneath the ship--Mrs. Scoresby accompanied me on deck for exercise, and to view, in an instant of bright sunshine, the sublime scenes around, and found no difficulty in walking the poop deck, which was unencumbered and dry. She accompanied me, too, along the gangways extending from the poop to the deck-house, and from thence to the broad and spacious forecastle up to the very bitts, within a few feet of the stem,--and even to this extent, and along a range of three hundred and twenty feet of deck and platform, the progress was perfectly easy, and at the time the whole extent was clean (unusually so, almost to whiteness), and dry from end to end.