On the 17th of November only one man was fit for work, besides the officers; a very little longer continuance would have reduced her to the condition of floating at the mercy of winds and waves, without any possibility of assisting, impeding, or directing her course.  At six that evening, the wind being too scanty to carry her into the roads of Batavia, an effort was made by all indiscriminately who were able to work, and anchor was cast between the islands of Leyden and Alkmara; soon after a gun was fired, and a signal made for assistance.  At two in the afternoon on the 18th, as no assistance arrived, the still greater effort of weighing anchor was tried, and the task performed with the utmost difficulty; after which, standing in with the sea breeze, the ship came again to anchor at five, in nine fathoms.  The boat was now hoisted out, and sent to beg assistance from the Dutch Commodore, the crew of the Alexander being so much reduced as to be unable to furl their own sails.  A party was immediately sent to assist, and six of the Dutch seamen remained on board all night, lest any blowing weather should come on.  Never, perhaps, did any ship arrive in port more helpless, without being shattered by weather, from the mere effects of a dreadful and invincible disorder.

19 November 1788-7 December 1788

At five in the morning of the 19th, the welcome sight appeared of a boat from the Dutch Commodore, which he had humanely laded with refreshments.  She brought also a boatswain’s mate and twelve seamen to assist in refitting the ship for sea.  The sick were sent on the 20th to the hospital, where several of them died, being too far gone for any accommodation or skill to recover.  From the Bridgewater and Contractor East Indiamen, which lay in the road when the Alexander arrived; and from the Raymond, Asia, and Duke of Montrose, which came in a few days after; with the assistance of a few men from the Dutch Commodore, a fresh crew was at length made up, in which only four of the original seamen remained, the rest being either dead, or not enough recovered to return with the Alexander, when she sailed again on the 7th of December.

18 February 1789

The remaining part of the voyage was attended with few circumstances worthy of notice, and was made in a track sufficiently known to all navigators to permit us to dispense with a minute description of it.  At the Cape they met with Captain Hunter, in the Sirius, who, when the Alexander arrived, on the 18th of February, 1789, had been in Table Bay six weeks.  From him Lieutenant Shortland learned that the Borrowdale and the Prince of Wales transports, which had parted from him on the coast of New South Wales, had returned by the southern passage, and had been heard of from Rio de Janeiro.  In Table Bay the Alexander remained at anchor till the 16th of March, when she sailed again, and arrived off the Isle of Wight on the 28th of May.