Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The version of Slocum's conversation with President Kruger
published in the Cape Town
Owl,
5 March 1898.
If the crews felt cheated out of their indulgence in the flesh pots,
Byron made it up to them two months later when, after an unevent-
ful crossing of the Indian Ocean,
Dolphin
and
Tamar
reached Cape
Town. The men enjoyed three weeks' shore leave and took every op-
portunity to get drunk on the local wine. After this the expedition en-
joyed a trouble-free run for home waters, though the
Tamar
was de-
flected to Antigua for her rudder to be rehung. The
Dolphin
reached
home on 9 May 1766, and Byron hurried to the Admiralty to make
his report.
Their lordships declared themselves well pleased with a voyage
which had demonstrated British maritime supremacy and paved the
way for the occupation of the Falklands and further Pacific explora-
tion. Moreover, the
Dolphin
had lost only six out of her complement
of 153 officers, sailors and marines - and not one of those six had
died of scurvy. The Pacific ghost had been laid.
Byron was immediately involved in urgent Admiralty plans for
a follow-up expedition. Anglo-French colonial rivalry had grown to
a new intensity and there could be no backing off. When the
Florida
storeship had returned in June 1765 with Byron's report on the Falk-
lands, Captain John McBride had been despatched to the islands to
