and the dangers by which they were surrounded could only be avoided by listening for the breakers as they dashed on immense floating masses, many of which measured two hundred feet above the surface of the water, and extended between two and three miles in circumference. On quitting this inhospitable station, the Thalia and Medusa found an excellent anchorage on the coast of Labrador, affording an abundant supply of wood and water; which Captain Manby surveyed, and named Port Manvers, in honor of his esteemed friend the late Earl of that name[1]. From thence he proceeded to Newfoundland, the Western Islands, Cadiz, Gibraltar, and England.
Captain Manby’s health was so much impaired by this northern cruise, (having nearly lost the use of his right side,) and several internal complaints, occasioned by the great quantity of calomel he had taken in the West Indies, that his medical advisers strongly urged him to give up his ship, as the only chance of being restored to health. This advice he reluctantly complied with, and nearly four years elapsed before he became sufficiently convalescent to ask for employment. The downfall of Buonaparte soon rendering an application unnecessary, he purchased an estate at Northwold in Norfolk, where he now resides in a state of comfortable independence, anxiously looking for that step which alone can reward an officer who has ever served his country with vigilance, zeal, and fidelity.
Captain Manby married, in 1800, Miss Hamond, of Northwold, by whom he has two daughters. His brother, George W. Manby, Esq., formerly Barrack-Master at North Yarmouth, and who now holds an office of value in the Ordnance department, is the gentleman who brought into practice the method of saving shipwrecked persons, upon a plan published by Serjeant Bell, about twenty years before.
The subject of this memoir is, we believe, preparing for publication a new chart of the South Sea; a work which will prove that the innumerable islands in the Pacific Ocean are all peopled from the same stock; and that the same hierogly-
