nd amply equipped, would supply my place. I was,
however, deficient in junk, an article which is essentially necessary in
every voyage, and for this I applied when I got to Plymouth, but I was
told that a quantity sufficient for both the ships had been put on board
the Dolphin.

On Friday the 22d of August, 1766, the ship's company having the evening
before received two months pay, I weighed, and made sail from Plymouth
Sound in company with the Dolphin, under the command of Captain Wallis,
and the Prince Frederick store-ship, commanded by Lieutenant James
Brine. We proceeded together without any remarkable incident till the
7th of September, when we came to an anchor in Madeira road.

While I lay at this place, not being yet acquainted with my destination,
I represented my want of junk, and the reply that had been made to my
application for a supply by the commissioner at Plymouth, in a letter to
Captain Wallis, who sent me five hundred weight. This quantity however
was so inadequate to my wants, that I was soon afterwards reduced to the
disagreeable necessity of cutting off some of my cables to save my
rigging.

On the 9th, very early in the morning, the lieutenant acquainted me
that, in the night, nine of my best men had secretly set off from the
ship to swim on shore, having stripped themselves naked and left all
their clothes behind them, taking only their money, which they had
secured in a handkerchief that was tied round their waist; that they
proceeded together till they came very near the surf, which breaks high
upon the shore, and that one of them, being then terrified at the sound,
had swum back again to the ship, and been taken on board, but that the
rest had ventured through. As the loss of these men would have been very
severely felt, I immediately sat down to write a letter to the consul,
entreating his assistance to recover them; but, before I had finished
it, he sent me word, that all of them having, to the great astonishment
of the natives, been found naked on the beach, they had been taken into
custody, and would be delivered up to my order. The boat was dispatched
immediately, and as soon as I heard they were on board, I went upon the
deck. I was greatly pleased to see a contrition in their countenances,
which at once secretly determined me not to inflict the punishment by
which they seemed most heartily willing to expiate their fault; but I
asked them what could have induced them to quit the ship,