[EAST COAST. PORT JACKSON]

Whilst beating against this foul wind the dysentery carried off another seaman, Thomas Smith, one of those obtained from governor King; and had the wind continued long in the same quarter, many others must have followed.  Happily it veered to the southward at midnight, we passed Botany Bay at three in the morning [THURSDAY 9 JUNE 1803], and at daybreak tacked between the heads of Port Jackson, to work up for Sydney Cove.  I left the ship at noon, above Garden Island, and waited upon His Excellency governor King, to inform him of our arrival, and concert arrangements for the reception of the sick at the colonial hospital.  On the following day [FRIDAY 10 JUNE 1803] they were placed under the care of Thomas Jamison, Esq., principal surgeon of the colony; from whom they received that kind attention and care which their situation demanded; but four were too much exhausted, and died in a few days.  The first of them was Mr. Peter Good, botanical gardener, a zealous, worthy man, who was regretted by all.

Lieutenant Murray had arrived safely with the Lady Nelson, after a somewhat tedious passage from the Barrier Reefs; he made himself an anchor of heavy wood on the coast, for fear of accident to his sole remaining bower, but fortunately had no occasion to use it.  Besides the Lady Nelson, we found lying in Sydney Cove H. M. armed vessel Porpoise, the Bridgewater extra-Indiaman, the ships Cato, Rolla, and Alexander, and brig Nautilus.  The Geographe and Naturaliste had not sailed for the South Coast till some months after I left Port Jackson to go to the northward, and so late as the end of December, captain Baudin was lying at King’s Island in Bass’ Strait; it was therefore not very probable that he should reach the Gulph of Carpentaria by the middle of February, when I had finished its examination, nor even at the beginning of March, when the south-west monsoon would set in against him.

We found also at Port Jackson Mr. James Inman (the present professor of mathematics at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth), whom the Board of Longitude had sent out to join the expedition as astronomer, in the place of Mr. Crosley who had left us at the Cape of Good Hope.  To this gentleman’s care I committed all the larger astronomical instruments, and also the time keepers, after observations had been taken to compare their longitudes with that of Cattle Point.  The results obtained on the 10th a.m., with the Goose-island-Bay rates, were,

From No. 543, 151 deg. 18’ 41” east. 
From No. 520, 151 16 22 east.

Cattle Point having been settled in 151 deg. 11’ 49” (see Vol.  I.), the mean error of the time keepers was 5’ 42.5” to the east; and as I have no means to form an accelerating correction to the Goose-Island Bay rates, the 5’ 42.5” of error has been equally apportioned throughout the twenty days between the two stations.