The Endeavour’s Leake examined. 
On the 20th we landed the powder, and go' out the flone 
ballad: and wood, which brought the ihip’s draught of wa- 
ter to eighi feet ten indies forward, and thirteen reet abaft; 
and this I thought, with the difference that would he made 
bv trim. hi ng the coals aft, would be fufficient ; fori found 
that the water role and fell perpendicularly eight feet at the 
fpring tides : but as foon as the coals were trinuned from over 
the leak, we could hear the water ruih in a little abaft the 
foremali, about three feet from the keel : this- determined me 
to clear the hold entirely. This evening Mr. Banks obferved 
that in many parts of the inlet there were large quantities of 
pumice ftones, which lay at a conliderable distance above high 
water mark ; whi her they might have been carried either by 
the frefhes, or extraordinary high tides, for there could be 
no doubt but that they came from the tea. 
The next morning we went early to work, and by four o’ 
clock in the afternoon had got out all the coals, call the moor- 
ings loo fe, and warped the Ihg a little higher up the harbour, 
to a place which I thought molt convenient for laying her 
alhore, in order to flop the leak. Her draught of water for- 
ward was now feven feet nine inches, and abaft thirteen feet 
fix inches. At eight o’clock, it being high water, I hauled 
her bow clofe alhore ; but kept her ilern afloat, becaule I was 
afraid of neiping her ; it was however necelfary to lay the 
whole of her as near the ground as poffible. 
At two o’clock in the morning of the 22d, the tide left her, 
and gave us an opportunity to examine her leak, which we 
found to be at her floor heads, a little before the ftarboard 
fore-chains, in this place the rocks had made their way 
through four planks, and even into the timbers ; three more 
planks were much damaged, and the appearance of thefe 
breaches was very extraordinary : there was not a fp inter to 
be leen, but all was as fmooth, as if the whole had been 
cut away by an inilrument : the timbers in this phce were 
happily very clofe, and if they had not, it would have been 
abi'olutely impo'lible to have faved the Ihip. But after all, 
her prefervacion d^ended upon a circurnftance ftill more re- 
markable : in one of the holes, which was big enough to have 
funk us, if vve had h id eight pumps inflead of four, and been 
.able to keep them mcelTaptly going, was in a great meafure 
plugged up by a fiagment of the rock, which, after having 
made the wound, was left flicking in it; fo that the water 
which at fir A had gained upon our pumps, was what came in 
at the interftices, between the flone and the edges of the hole 
that received it. We found alfo leverai pieces of die fothering, 
which had made their way between the timbers, and in a 
great meafure floppy . thofe parts of the leak which the ftone 
had left open. Upon further examination, we found that, be- 
tides 
