improved plan; Dr. Irving’s apparatus for distilling fresh water from the sea was adopted; Mr. Israel Lyons was engaged, by the Board of Longitude, to embark in this voyage, for the purpose of making astronomical observations; the board also sent two watch machines for keeping the longitude by difference of time, one on Mr. Harrison’s principles, the other by Mr. Arnold; and, in short, every possible arrangement was made effectually to decide the long-agitated question concerning the practicability of a north-east passage into the Pacific ocean.

The report of this scientific voyage, from which so much nautical knowledge could not fail to be derived by a youth thirsting for professional information, most powerfully attracted the enterprising spirit of young Nelson; who resolved, if possible, to participate in it’s advantages, without any apprehensions from the perils to which he must necessarily be exposed in it’s pursuit.  It may, indeed, be justly doubted, whether the hope of successfully encountering these very perils might not constitute one of its chief charms for his intrepid mind.

Notwithstanding, therefore, the implied interdiction of the Admiralty, respecting the employment of boys on this hazardous voyage, he so powerfully pleaded with Captain Lutwidge to be appointed coxswain, and so fully satisfied him he was not unqualified for the task, that the worthy captain at length, kindly consented to receive him in this capacity; and, though the Carcass, when fitted, being found too deep in the water to proceed to sea with safety, was constrained to put part of her guns on shore, and reduce her complement to eighty men, the young coxswain felt himself already too firmly fixed in his captain’s favour to dread being one of the dismissed number.

On the 30th of May 1773, Captain Lutwidge, in the Carcass, joined Captain Phipps, in the Racehorse, at the Nore:  but, being delayed, by the easterly winds, till the 4th of June, his majesty’s birth-day, at six o’clock that morning, both ships weighed; and Captain Lutwidge, having received his orders from Captain Phipps, they immediately sailed on the expedition.

The journal of this important voyage, during which so much was seen and suffered, Captain Phipps published soon after his return, in a respectable quarto volume, which contains a large fund of scientifical and professional information.

Our young hero had recently felt the enervating effects of a burning sun, in the torrid regions of the west; he had now speedily to encounter the benumbing influence of a frozen atmosphere, in the torpid confines of the north.

On the 13th of June, in the evening, land was first seen by the Carcass:  it was light enough to read on deck all night; and, the next day, some Shetland boats came on board with fish.

After proceeding along the coast of Spitsbergen, and ranging between the land and the ice several days, at half past four, in the afternoon of the 7th of July, the ice setting very close, they ran between two pieces, and were suddenly stopped.  The ice, indeed, now set so fast down, that they were soon fixed; and obliged to heave through, for two hours, with ice-anchors from each quarter, nor were they quite out of the ice till midnight.