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Updated: June 10, 2025
When God shall bring you upon the coast of Guinea, you are to make yourself acquainted, as you proceed along the coast, with all its rivers, havens and harbours or roadsteads, making a plat or chart of the same, in which you are to insert every place that you think material, all in their true elevations.
In India the political conditions of the peninsula necessarily indicated the eastern, or Coromandel, coast as the scene of operations. Trincomalee, in the adjacent island of Ceylon, though unhealthy, offered an excellent and defensible harbor, and thus acquired first-rate strategic importance, all the other anchorages on the coast being mere open roadsteads.
This bay is divided into two long roadsteads, those of Tampa and Hillisboro, the narrow entrance to which the steamer soon cleared. A short time afterwards the batteries of Fort Brooke rose above the waves and the town of Tampa appeared, carelessly lying on a little natural harbour formed by the mouth of the river Hillisboro.
At the other extremity, as is absolutely necessary in all navigation, the forecastle was reasonably clear, though even this important part of the deck was bristling with the flukes of no less than nine anchors that lay in a row across its breadth, the wild roadsteads of this end of the lake rendering such a provision of ground-tackle absolutely indispensable to the safety of every craft that ventured into its eastern horn.
Studded with plantations, each of which resembles a little village planned by some skilful landscape gardener; with crystal streams dashing down the mountain sides; with dense forests covering the high lands and mountain summits; with bays and indentations along the coast, each with a thriving village at the extremity, defended by fortifications; with ships at anchor in the roadsteads, and droghers coasting along the shores; with an atmosphere richly laden with sweets, and all the interesting associations connected with a tropical climate; these islands furnish an array of attractions which are hardly surpassed in the Western Hemisphere.
There is reason to believe that this work was completed anterior to the time of Alexander, and was therefore due to the Phoenicians themselves, who were not blind to the advantages of closed harbours over open roadsteads.
Spell-bound and quivering with excitement, the Water Rat followed the Adventurer league by league, over stormy bays, through crowded roadsteads, across harbour bars on a racing tide, up winding rivers that hid their busy little towns round a sudden turn; and left him with a regretful sigh planted at his dull inland farm, about which he desired to hear nothing.
"With the resources of your mind," wrote St. Vincent, when unable to reinforce him, "you will do very well;" and Nelson, when he put off his harness, might have boasted himself that the prediction was more than fulfilled. Provisions, water, and supplies of all sorts were brought to the ships on their station, either at sea, or in unfrequented roadsteads within the limits of the cruising ground.
She had been the late captain's fancy boat, used by him for sailing ashore from open roadsteads, and was fitted with air- chambers forward and aft and under each of the thwarts, thus being converted into a sort of unsinkable lifeboat. She was therefore in every respect eminently suitable for the duty upon which we proposed to employ her.
We look in at the harbour of Sebastopol, we anchor in open roadsteads off Caucasian towns, we moor our cables to the rings on the quay of Batum, and finally drop our anchor for the last time at a short distance from the coast of Asia Minor. Proud and bright, with forest-clad heights in the background, Trebizond bathes in the rays of the midday sun.
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