hich occupied us on the
1st and 2d of July.

During our stay here, the crews were served with fresh beef every day.
And I should not do justice to Mr Ommanney, the agent victualler, if I
did not take this opportunity to mention, that he shewed a very obliging
readiness to furnish me with the best of every thing that lay within his
department. I had been under the like obligations to him on my setting
out upon my last voyage. Commissioner Ourry, with equal zeal for the
service, gave us every assistance that we wanted from the naval yard.

It could not but occur to us as a singular and affecting circumstance,
that at the very instant of our departure upon a voyage, the object of
which was to benefit Europe by making fresh discoveries in North
America, there should be the unhappy necessity of employing others of
his majesty's ships, and of conveying numerous bodies of land forces to
secure the obedience of those parts of that continent which had been
discovered and settled by our countrymen in the last century. On the 6th
his majesty's ships Diamond, Ambuscade, and Unicorn, with a fleet of
transports, consisting of sixty-two sail, bound to America, with the
last division of the Hessian troops, and some horse, were forced into
the Sound by a strong N.W. wind.

On the 8th I received, by express, my instructions for the voyage, and
an order to proceed to the Cape of Good Hope with the Resolution. I was
also directed to leave an order for Captain Clerke to follow us as soon
as he should join his ship, he being at this time detained in London.

Our first discoverers of the New World, and navigators of the Indian and
Pacific Oceans, were justly thought to have exerted such uncommon
abilities, and to have accomplished such perilous enterprises, that
their names have been handed down to posterity as so many Argonauts.
Nay, even the hulks of the ships that carried them, though not converted
into constellations in the heavens, used to be honoured and visited as
sacred relics upon earth. We, in the present age of improved navigation,
who have been instructed by their labours, and have followed them as our
guides, have no such claim to fame. Some merit, however, being still, in
the public opinion, considered as due to those who sail to unexplored
quarters of the globe; in conformity to this favourable judgment, I
prefixed to the account of my last voyage the names of the officers of
both my ships, and a table of the number of their