slaves, in a cruise of four months. During his stay there, he had four severe attacks of fever: and in the beginning of May, 1823, his ship, then at Ascension, where he was obliged to invalid, had already lost her purser, gunner, and captain’s-clerk, two midshipmen, twenty sailors, five marines, and four boys, all of whom fell victims to the climate of Africa. His post commission bears date May 15th, 1823.
In 1825, Captain Phillips invented a method of suspending ships’ compasses, so as to prevent their bring affected by the firing of guns in action, or from any other concussion, and to ensure their preserving a horizontal position in all sorts of weather. The most favorable reports have been made on this instrument by Captains Henry E. P. Sturt and Frederick Marryat; the former of whom says, that the concussion from firing the guns of the Phäeton frigate, when under his command, had no apparent effect on the steadiness of the card; and the master of the Ariadne 28, lately commanded by Captain Marryat, states, that while he was employed in boats, searching for some supposed rocks off the Western Islands, notwithstanding the shock occasioned by the oars, the vibration never exceeded half a point, whereas the compass cards supplied by the dock-yard, for boats’ use, went completely round and round.
In 1827, Captain Phillips applied tbe hydrostatic principle, of water rising to its own level, to the pumpdales of ships, by which he has enabled them to be cranked under the lower-deck, so as to free it from such a serious incumbrance, and yet to allow the water to deliver itself from the same height as before. The pumpdale of the Asia 81, intended for the flag of Sir Edward Codrington, was the first placed according to this plan. In addition to these, Captain Phillips has proposed several other improvements, which are now on trial. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1829; and has recently been appointed to the command of the Ariadne.
This scientific officer married, Sept. 25th, 1823, Elizabeth, daughter of William Nicholson, of St. Margaret’s, Rochester Esq.
