Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/254

NO. 2. up in them when he went to sleep: and this with sea-sickness threw him into a severe fit of illness; and it was with the greatest difficulty that his life was saved—but he very well knew, that if he did not keep the water out of the box, that some would be so cruel as to say, he let it in on purpose, because he knew it would not answer: and others would say, it was a thing too tender, and too delicate to go to sea: and would not consider the hardships of the voyage, nor the cruelty of not having a proper place prepared to put it in: and that he was sent home in a ship which with the greatest difficulty they were able to keep above water in the weather they met with.—Thus after one of the roughest voyages that any ship ever had, they on the 26th March, arrived at Spithead.

He would not have expressed himself thus, on not having a proper place, if he had reflected further, for it was the cruelty of fortune, in this instance. Commodore Forrest, the officer in command, he previously says, "gave him all the assistance in his power" to promote the objects of the voyage. He said his orders were to ship him, and Mr. Robison the Astronomer, [after the observations were completed] in the first man of war that should sail for England; but that he did not expect there would be one that would sail till June. This was very bad encouragement for Mr. Harrison, who did not want to stay so long in that country. Subsequently however, the Authorities at Jamaica having occasion to send a dispatch home without delay; and the observations being completed, the Commodore sent to Mr, Harrison, and informed him, that there would in two days time be a ship sail for England with an express; and if he was ready he would ship him on board of it.—He does not say, he applied to the Commodore, or the Captain, for the carpenter to prepare a place for the Timekeeper; and it could not be supposed those Officers would think of it, but at his suggestion. His being sent home in an old ship, not worth repairing, and condemned after her arrival, which, by its consequences, had he not being providentially of a robust constitution, was so near costing him his life, was yet altogether a casualty, like some of the most important events in the lives of other men. It took up eighteen months to get the determination of the Commissioners, what number of other Watches they expected to be made, under the new Act. After which time, they told us they would be satisfied with two, and if they were made by other workmen, it would be so much the more agreeable to the spirit of the last Act, which had been grounded upon a doubt whether other people could make them.—It has been hitherto impossible to get them to fix any determinate mode of trial with