DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPEDITION. 21 
IIL. SUMMARY OF THE VOYAGE AND WorK. 
Part I.— Ceylon to Mauritius. 
According to the arrangements which had been made, we were to leave Ceylon for 
our cruise about the middle of April, 1905. We ourselves arrived in Ceylon early in 
April in anticipation of leaving about that date, but unfortunately we found that the 
Sealark had damaged her forefoot on a coral-reef, while surveying the waters around 
Port Sudan, then a mere waste of sand, broken only by the holy tomb of the Mirza 
Sheikh-el-Bartid. This was at first thought to be of little importance, but in any case 
it necessitated her being drawn up on the slip at Colombo. The repairs, which were at 
first to have taken a fortnight, were protracted day by day to five weeks. In the 
meantime we got together the cases of bottles and gear which we intended for use 
between Ceylon and Mauritius. We also procured from the Customs our barrels of 
alcohol, which we had especially ordered from Sydney, N.S.W., on account of its 
greater purity. Supplies, too, for camping in the Chagos were obtained, as well as a 
limited number of articles as presents for traders, &c. 
We found that the Sealark’s starboard steamboat had been so disabled that we 
should have been compelled to proceed on our cruise with only one boat. Anyone, 
who has been on a surveying-cruise through island groups, knows well how much 
steamboats are in request. One with a skiff in tow can, in many classes of work, do 
about four times as much as a single whaleboat. The employment, moreover, of 
mechanical means of progression is very desirable in the tropics. Under the circum- 
stances we deemed it desirable to substitute a boat of our own, and purchased the 
‘Xanthus.’ She was a square-sterned boat, 22 feet in length, with vertical boiler, 
engines by Simpson, Strickland, & Co. She had originally been built as a yacht’s launch 
for work in more or less protected waters, so that to make her serviceable for work in 
the open seas we had to have her bows decked in and her gunwale raised. We also 
had to alter her to fit the slings of the Sealark, and to give her more water-tanks and 
coal-bunkers. She could be stopped or turned in her own length, so that she was 
particularly suitable for work among coral-reefs, while her speed, 8 to 9 knots as against 
the 5 to 6 knots of the other steamboat, caused her to be constantly in request. 
Although largely used for survey-work, she was kept particularly at our disposal and 
enabled us to see considerably more of the reefs and islands than we should otherwise 
have been enabled to do. 
We finally cleared Colombo Harbour at 5.30 p.m. on the evening of May 9 in a heavy 
rain-squall, the forerunner of the south-west monsoon. A course was set west-south-west 
right into the teeth of the wind, which increased on the second day to a moderate gale. 
We crossed the Equator on May 18, passing two days later into more genial weather. 
During all this time we had been having a heavy swell, continued rain-squalls, and dark 
cloudy nights, and as we were heavily laden with 30 tons of coal on deck we were 
uncomfortable in the extreme. From lat. 2? N. to 3° S. we experienced each day 
currents of over 40 miles in 24 hours setting almost due E., the maximum being 
59 miles between lats. 1° 47° N. and 0° 04’ N. It was interesting to us to note that 
