143 
Letter from Wilfrid T. Grenfell, Esq., M.R.C.S., 
Superintendent of the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. 
Ar the request of the Secretary I venture to send you a brief 
account of the voyage we made last year in the smack “ Albert’ 97 
tons register, belonging to the Council of the Mission to Deep Sea 
Fishermen. 
We sailed from Yarmouth on June 15th and returned on December 
Ist, having sailed to St. John’s in Newfoundland, along the coast to 
Labrador and as far north as Hopedale, thence south again and up 
the Straits of Belle Isle, visiting almost all the fishing stations, and 
returning by St. John’s direct to Yarmouth. The return journey from 
St. John’s to the Start Lighthouse was accomplished in only twelve 
days. 
Your Society, through the Director of the Plymouth Laboratory, 
furnished me with three deep-sea reversing thermometers, and one 
instrument for bringing up specimens of bottom water. We used the 
thermometers on wire with Basnett’s patent deep-sea sounder, but 
this was only gauged up to 100 fathoms, and, not having any line 
suitable for the thermometers on board, I was unable to take any very 
deep soundings. Moreover, the work was new to me, and until I 
was joined by Mr. Adolph Nielsen, the Superintendent of Fisheries 
for Newfoundland, I had, I am sorry to confess, not realised the 
value which soundings might have. In the Report of the Fishery 
Commission of the colony the scientific work carried out is fully 
detailed, and for those who have not access to that little book it may 
be worth while my summarising the general conclusions arrived at, espe- 
cially as to the results to be anticipated from a more extended series 
of observations, and as to the lines on which these should be made. 
We added to that work surface temperatures across the Atlantic 
both ways, and on our return journey were only prevented by ex- 
tremely boisterous weather from recording deep-sea soundings also. 
The observations I have forwarded to the Plymouth Laboratory. 
Captain Sir Baldwin Walker, R.N., has since shown me some inte- 
resting records he made during four years on the Newfoundland 
coast in H.M,S, “ Emerald,” but he regrets greatly that the Naval 
