502 BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT 



grine, and he even mentions his hopes of being made purser 

 to that ship. The first service in which Captain Knowles was 

 employed, was to convoy the fleet to Lisbon. In a letter from 

 Plymouth, where they were forced in by the weather, Mr 

 Robison paints, in strong colours, the difference between sail- 

 ing in a small ship, like the Peregrine, and a first rate, like 

 the Royal William, and the uncomfortable situation of all on 

 board, during a gale which they had experienced in coming 

 down the Channel. The voyage, however, gave him an op- 

 portunity of visiting Lisbon, on which the traces of the 

 Earthquake were yet deeply imprinted ; and the ship con- 

 tinuing to cruise off the coast of Spain and Portugal, he 

 had occasion to land at Oporto, and other places on the Portu- 

 guese coast. In the month of June he returned to England ; 

 and from this time quitted the navy, though he did not give 

 up hopes of preferment. He returned, to live with Admiral 

 Knowles, and in the end of the same summer, was recom- 

 mended by him to Lord Anson,, the First Lord of the Admi- 

 ralty, as a proper person to take charge of Harrison's Time- 

 keeper, which, at the desire of the Board of Longitude, was to 

 be sent, on a trial voyage, to the West Indies. 



The ingenious artist just named, had begun the construction 

 of his chronometer, on new principles, as early as the year 

 1726, and with the fortitude and patience characteristic of ge- 

 nius, had for thirty-five years struggled against the physical 

 difficulties of his undertaking, and the still more discouraging 

 obstacles which the prejudice, the envy, or the indifference of 

 his cotemporaries, seldom fail to plant in the way of an inven- 

 tor. Notwithstanding all these, he had advanced constantly 

 from one degree of perfection to another, and it was his fourth 

 time-keeper, reduced to a portable size, and improved in all 



other 



