2 EQUIPMENT OF THE SHIP. [1843. 



station in time to share in the operations of the spring 

 of the following year. The offer was accepted ; and as 

 H.M.S ' SAMARANG', 26 Guns, was the only vessel that 

 could be completed in time to afford a hope of joining 

 the Commander-in-Chief before the commencement of 

 the S.W. monsoon, I commissioned that ship on the 

 17th of November. 



About this time, however, intelligence reached England 

 of the termination of the war ; and as the ports laid open 

 by the new Treaty were unsafe to navigate with our 

 scanty hydrographical knowledge of those regions, it was 

 determined by the Government that a complete Survey 

 should be made, not only of their main approaches 

 throughout the adjacent Seas, but of the entire coast 

 of China. 



As the greater part of our labours would be carried on 

 in boats, my principal attention was directed to their 

 equipment ; they consisted of two diagonally-built barges 

 of thirty-two feet, coppered and fitted to carry six- 

 pounder brass guns, two Carvel cutters of twenty-five 

 feet, with brass three-pounders, two thirty feet gigs, and 

 a jolly-boat ; the cutters and gigs furnished with three- 

 pounder rocket-tubes. Every facility was afforded by the 

 Admiralty, in the equipment of the ship, to render her as 

 complete as could be desired ; and, by dint of exertion, 

 she was in a condition for sea by the 1st of January, 

 1843. Her immersion, with extra boats and stores, 

 rendering it, however, imprudent to put to sea at that 

 early period of the year, she was detained until the 7th, 

 lightening, re-stowing and altering, and did not quit 

 Spithead for Falmouth until the 26th. 



