Captain Proctor answered the First Lord from Spithead, dated May 17th, 1736, promising his attention to Harrison's comfort, but intimating his fear that he had attempted impossibilities.

It is always so with a new thing.

The first steam-engine, the first gaslight, the first locomotive, the first steamboat to America, the first electric telegraph, were all impossibilities! This first chronometer behaved very well on the outward voyage in the Centurion.

It was not affected by the roughest weather, or by the working of the ship through the rolling waves of the Bay of Biscay.

It was brought back, with Harrison, in the Orford man-of-war, when its great utility was proved in a remarkable manner, although, from the voyage being nearly on a meridian, the risk of losing the longitude was comparatively small.