Having received the boats on board, and a light breeze at S.S.E. springing up, we got under sail the next day at two o’clock in the afternoon; but the breeze soon died away, and we were obliged to anchor again till ten o’clock at night.  We then weighed with the wind at E. and proceeded down the Channel.

On the 30th, at three o’clock in the afternoon, we anchored in Plymouth Sound, where the Discovery had arrived only three days before.  I saluted Admiral Amherst, whose flag was flying on board the Ocean, with thirteen guns, and he returned the compliment with eleven.

It was the first object of our care on arriving at Plymouth, to replace the water and provisions that we had expended, and to receive on board a supply of port wine.  This was the employment which 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 respective crews.  The like information will be expected from me at present.