MEMOIR OF SIR THOMAS MAKDOUGALL BRISBANE. 591 
of astronomy. The transport in which he and his regiment were embarked, was 
the ‘ William and Mary,’ a Newcastle collier, which had separated from the fleet. 
Sir Tuomas says, “ After our vessel had sailed alone for some weeks, the mate 
came to my cabin one morning at 4 o’clock and awoke me, to say that they had 
made the land; but he was afraid it was the main continent. I immediately got 
upon deck and found the ship among the breakers; and the captain on seeing 
the danger, said,—‘ Lord have mercy on us, for we are all gone.’ I said that is 
all very well, but let us do everything we can to save the ship. He ordered the 
helm to be put hard down; but so completely were the seamen paralysed by their 
awful situation, that not one of them would touch a rope. With the assistance 
of the officers, I, with my own hands, eased off the main-boom to allow the ship 
to pay off, and the sail to draw upon the other tack. Most providentially the wind 
came from the coast, and filled the sails, and though we were from four till ten 
in the morning in this critical juncture, yet we found ourselves at length off the 
bank. 
“ Reflecting that I might often, in the course of my life and services, be exposed 
to similar errors, | was determined to make myself acquainted with navigation 
and nautical astronomy ; and for that purpose, I got the best books and instru- 
ments, and in time became so well acquainted with these sciences, that when I 
was returning home I was enabled to work the ship’s way; and having since 
crossed the tropics eleven times, and circumnavigated the globe, I have found the 
greatest possible advantage from my knowledge of lunar observations and calcu- _ 
lations of the longitude. In proof of which, in sailing from Port Jackson to Cape 
Horn in 1825, a distance of about 8000 miles, I predicted our making the land to 
within a few minutes. We steered our course to Cape Frio on the Brazil coast, 
and when I expected it to be near, on account of my observation and reckoning, 
I got upon deck at 4 o’clock in the morning, to tell the captain to shorten sail, as 
we had not a run till day-light, upon which he replied, that by his reckoning he 
was not within 500 miles of it; but when daybreak appeared we were within 
one league of it, and anchored that evening in Rio de Janeiro. In the course of 
our passage, we touched at Madeira, and took in supplies. For in one of the 
severe gales, our ship was struck by a sea which laid her on her beam-ends, carried 
away all her boats and bulwarks, and the whole of our stock, so that we were 
literally compelled to live on the salt provisions for six weeks.” Of this occurrence 
Colonel Mansel, who was under Sir THomas’s command thus writes,—“ On the 
12th or 13th of December at midnight, a heavy sea struck us which laid the bark 
on her beam-ends, carried away our long boat, which was strongly lashed to the 
deck, and all our live stock we had laid in for our passage to the West Indies, 
where we arrived on the 29th of February, having lived all that time on salt beef 
and pork, with lobscouse for an occasional change. We could not light a fire in 
our small bark for a whole fortnight, and we lived mostly upon raw ham and 
