■,v INTRODUCTION. 



arising from her confined stowage, and her incapacity to receive the 

 crew of the other vessel in case of serious and irreparable injury hap- 

 pening to the latter. Any vessel unable to carry every item of her 

 own resources, must at some period or other of the voyage become a 

 burthen, and, in case of separation, helpless and inefficient ; a contin- 

 gency which there is no necessity for risking. If to what has just 

 been stated be added the advantages, which every seaman will readily 

 appreciate, of each ship being enabled to furnish her consort, on any 

 occasion of loss or damage, with stores of a size and nature exactly 

 suited to her wants, no doubt can, I think, exist of the expediency of 

 having the two ships precisely similar. 



So rigidly was this principle adhered to in the equipment of the 

 present Expedition, that, taking into consideration the improbability of 

 both ships sustaining losses in the same articles, our supply of stores 

 might almost be considered as doubled by this arrangement. Thus, 

 for instance, the fore-masts and main-masts were not only " equalized " 

 in each ship, but the dimensions of these, and of every thing belonging 

 to them, were precisely ahke in both, so that any article belonging to 

 either of these four masts might be transferred from ship to ship, and 

 at once applied to its proper use, without selection, trial, or alteration 

 of any kind. In the course of the foUo^ing Narrative, it wiU be seen 

 what essential service was derived from this plan in the indispensable 

 article of anchors, on which the safety of a ship so often and so entirely 

 depends. I have been thus expUcit in stating some of the advantages 

 of tliis arrangement, from a conviction of the absolute necessity of 

 resorting to it in the equipment of two ships that must necessarily be 

 dependent solely on their own resources, for a long and uncertain 

 period of time. 



