192 



THE VOYAGE. • ^TAT. 22. 



fortable accommodation below. By these alterations and by 

 the strong sheathing added to her bottom she was brought 

 up to 242 tons burthen. It is a proof of the splendid seaman- 

 ship of Captain Fitz-Roy and his officers that she returned 

 without having carried away a spar, and that in only one 

 of the heavy storms that she encountered was she in great 

 danger. 



She was fitted out for the expedition with all possible care, 

 being supplied with carefully chosen spars and ropes, six 

 boats, and a " dinghy; " lightning conductors, "invented by 

 Mr. Harris, were fixed in all the masts, the bowsprits, and even 

 in the flying jib-boom." To quote my father's description, 

 written from Devonport, November 17, 1831 : "Everybody, 

 who can judge, says it is one of the grandest voyages that 

 has almost ever been sent out. Everything is on a grand 

 scale. Twenty-four chronometers. The whole ship is fitted 

 up with mahogany ; she is the admiration of the whole place. 

 In short, everything is as prosperous as human means can 

 make it." 



Owing to the smallness of the vessel, every one on board 

 was cramped for room, and my father's accommodation seems 

 to have been small enough : " I have just room to turn round," 

 he writes to Henslow, "and that is all." Admiral Sir James 

 Sulivan writes to me : " The narrow space at the end of the 

 chart-table was his only accommodation for working, dress- 

 ing, and sleeping; the hammock being left hanging over his 

 head by day, when the sea was at all rough, that he might lie 

 on it with a book in his hand when he could not any longer 

 sit at the table. His only stowage for clothes being several 

 small drawers in the corner, reaching from deck to deck ; the 

 top one being taken out when the hammock was hung up, with- 

 out which there was not length for it, so then the foot-clews 

 took the place of the top drawer. For specimens he had a 

 very small cabin under the forecastle." 



Yet of this narrow room he wrote enthusiastically, Sep- 

 tember 17, 1 83 1 : — " When I wrote last I was in great alarm 

 about my cabin. The cabins were not then marked out, but 



