A Voyage to the South Sea (Autobiography). William Bligh
passage of fifty-two days from Van Diemen's Land may be rated as moderate sailing. We passed New Zealand with the spring equinox and the winds, though strong, were at no time violent. To the southward of 40 degrees 0 minutes south they were variable; between the latitudes of 40 and 33 degrees south the wind kept in the north-west quarter; afterwards till we got into the trade the winds were variable, mostly from the eastward, but light and inclinable to calms. The ship was 3 degrees 22 minutes in longitude to the eastward of the dead reckoning, which the timekeeper almost invariably proved to be owing to a current giving us more easting than the log. Our track was as distant from any course of former ships as I could conveniently make it and, though we made no new discoveries, except the small cluster of islands near New Zealand, yet in other parts of the track, as has been noticed, we met with signs of being in the neighbourhood of land.
It may not be unworthy of remark that the whole distance which the ship had run by the log, in direct and contrary courses, from leaving England to our anchoring at Otaheite, was twenty-seven thousand and eighty-six miles which, on an average, is at the rate of a hundred and eight miles each twenty-four hours.
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