Arrival and Description of Tinian
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ON the 28th, we saw a great number of birds about the ship, which continued till the 30th, when about two o’clock in the afternoon we saw land, bearing W. ½ N. which proved to be the islands Saypan, Tinian, and Aiguigan. At sunset, the extremes of them bore from N.W. ½ N. westward to S.W.; and the three islands had the appearance of one. At seven, we hauled the wind, and stood off and on all night; and at six the next morning, the extremes of the islands, which still made in one, bore from N.W. by N. to S.W. by S. distant five leagues. The east side of these islands lies N.E. by N. and S.W. by S. Saypan is the northermost; and from the north east point of that island to the south west point of Aiguigan, the distance is about seventeen leagues. These three islands are between two and three leagues distant from each other; Saypan is the largest, and Aiguigan, which is high and round, the smallest. We steered along the east side of them, and at noon hauled round the south point of Tinian, between that island and Aiguigan, and anchored at the south west end of it, in sixteen fathom water, with a bottom of hard sand and coral rock, opposite to a white sandy bay, about a mile and a quarter from the shore, and about three quarters of a mile from a reef of rocks that lies at a good distance from the shore, in the very
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 115, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/151.html