1803.
June.
at the average price of 10d. per pound, which before, if it could have been obtained, would have cost nearly double the sum. On my application to the governor, the commissary was ordered to supply us with two pipes of port wine; and a pint was given daily to all those on board, as well as on shore, whose debilitated health was judged by the surgeon to require it.
The arrangements being made which concerned the health of the ship's company, I inclosed to the governor the report of the master and carpenter upon the state of the ship when in the Gulph of Carpentaria; and requested that he would appoint officers to make a survey of her condition. A plank was ripped off all round, a little above the water's edge; and on the 14th, the officers appointed by His Excellency made the survey, and their report was as follows:
"Pursuant to an order from His Excellency
Philip Gidley King, esquire, principal
commander of His Majesty's ship Buffalo."
- "We whose names are hereunto subscribed, have been on board His Majesty's ship Investigator, and taken a strict, careful, and minute survey of her defects, the state of which we find to be as follows.
- One plank immediately above the wales being ripped off all round the ship, we began the examination on the larbord side forward; and out of ninety-eight timbers we find eleven to be sound, so far as the ripping off of one plank enables us to see into them, ten of which are amongst the aftermost timbers. Sixty-three of the remaining timbers are so far rotten as to make it necessary to shift them; and the remaining twenty-four entirely rotten, and these are principally in the bow and the middle of the ship.
- On the starbord side forward we have minutely examined eighty-nine timbers, out of which we find only five sound; fifty-six are so far decayed as to require shifting, and the remaining twenty-eight are entirely rotten. The sound timbers are in the after part of the ship, and those totally decayed lie principally in the bow.
- The stemson is so far decayed, principally in its outer part, as to make it absolutely necessary to be shifted.
