I know not how to account for the scurvy raging more in the one ship than the other, unless it was owing to the crew of the Adventure being more scorbutic when they arrived in New Zealand than we were, and to their eating few or no vegetables while they lay in Queen Charlotte’s Sound, partly for want of knowing the right sorts, and partly because it was a new diet, which alone was sufficient for seamen to reject it.  To introduce any new article of food among seamen, let it be ever so much for their good, requires both the example and authority of a commander; without both, of which it will be dropt before the people are sensible of the benefits resulting from it.  Were it necessary, I could name fifty instances in support of this remark.  Many of my people, officers as well seamen, at first disliked celery, scurvy-grass, &c., being boiled in the peas and wheat; and some refused to eat it.  But, as this had no effect on my conduct, this obstinate kind of prejudice by little and little wore off; they began to like it as well as the others; and now, I believe, there was hardly a man in the ship that did not attribute our being so free from the scurvy, to the beer and vegetables we made use of at New Zealand.  After this I seldom found it necessary to order any of my people to gather vegetables, whenever we came where any were to be got, and if scarce, happy was he who could lay hold on them first.  I appointed one of my seamen to be cook of the Adventure, and wrote to Captain Furneaux, desiring him to make use of every method in his power to stop the spreading of the disease amongst his people, and proposing such as I thought might tend towards it.  But I afterwards found all this unnecessary, as every method had been used they could think of.

1773 August

The wind continued in the N.W. quarter, and blew fresh at times, attended with rain; with which we stood to the N.E.  On the 1st of August, at noon, we were in the latitude of 25 deg. 1’, longitude 134 deg. 6’ W., and had a great hollow swell from N.W.  The situation we were now in, was nearly the same that Captain Carteret assigns for Pitcairn’s Island, discovered by him in 1767.  We therefore looked well out for it, but saw nothing.  According to the longitude in which he has placed it, we must have passed about fifteen leagues to the west of it.  But as this was uncertain, I did not think it prudent, considering the situation of the Adventure’s people, to lose any time in looking for it.  A sight of it would, however, have been of use in verifying, or correcting, not only the longitude of this isle, but of the others that Captain Carteret discovered in this neighbourhood; his longitude not being confirmed, I think, by astronomical observations, and therefore liable to errors, which he could have no method to correct.