256 cook's voyage to aug. 



leagues. We had light airs the remaining part of this 

 and the following day, and got no soundings with 

 one hundred and forty fathoms of line. 



On the 22d of August, 1779, at nine o'clock in 

 the morning, departed this life Captain Charles 

 Clerke, in the thirty-eighth year of his age. He 

 died of a consumption, which had evidently com- 

 menced before he left England, and of which he had 

 lingered during the whole voyage. His very gradual 

 decay had long made him a melancholy object to his 

 friends ; yet the equanimity with which he bore it, 

 the constant flow of good spirits, which continued 

 to the last hour, and a cheerful resignation to his 

 fate, afforded them some consolation. It was impos- 

 sible not to feel a more than common degree of com- 

 passion for a person whose life had been a continued 

 scene of those difficulties and hardships to which a 

 seaman's occupation is subject, and under which he 

 at last sunk. He was brought up to the navy from 

 his earliest youth, and had been in several actions 

 during the war which began in 17*56, particularly 

 in that between the Bellona and Courageux, where, 

 being stationed in the mizen-top, he was carried 

 overboard with the mast, but was taken up without 

 having received any hurt. He was midshipman in 

 the Dolphin, commanded by Commodore Byron, on 

 her first voyage round the world, and afterward 

 served on the American station. In 1768, he made 

 his second voyage round the world, in the Endeavour, 

 as master's mate, and by the promotion which took 

 place during the expedition, he returned a lieutenant. 

 His third voyage round the world was in the Reso- 

 lution, of which he was appointed the second lieute- 

 nant: and soon after his return, in 177<5, he was pro- 

 moted to the rank of master and commander. When 

 the present expedition was ordered to be fitted out, 

 he was appointed to the Discovery, to accompany 

 Captain Cook ; and by the death of the latter sue- 



