The expedition is in some respects
unprecedented; a circumnavigation of 35,400 miles has never before
been made in the short period of 46 weeks, from which must be deducted
112 days of well-earned repose in harbour. We had, it is true, the
advantage of steam, without which such a performance would have been
an impossibility; but we travelled 20,517 miles under sail alone, and
the consumption of coal has not exceeded 350 tons. The 'Sunbeam'
sailed from Cowes on July 6, called at Torbay, Madeira, Teneriffe, and
the Cape Verde, crossed the Line on August 8, and, carrying a
favourable breeze in the south-east trades, without even a momentary
lull, a distance of 2,500 miles, arrived at Rio Janeiro on August 17.
Following the coasts of South America, we visited Montevideo, Buenos
Ayres, and Ensenada, steamed through the Straits of Magellan and
Smyth's Channel, and reached Valparaiso on October 21.
While on the coast of Patagonia it was our privilege to rescue a crew
of 15 hands from the bark 'Monkshaven,' laden with an inflammable
cargo of smelting coals, which had been on fire six days when we most
providentially descried her signals of distress.
On October 30 we commenced our long and lonely voyage of 12,330 miles
across the Pacific. We touched at Bow Island in the Low Archipelago,
Maitea and Tahiti in the Society Islands, and Hawaii and Oahu in the
Sandwich group.
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