I write to Sir Thomas Fremantle, now Commander-in-Chief of Mediterranean no less. I congratulate him on his new command. And I do desire him a favour, as my cousin will benefit from a cruise on his 74-gun man-o-war for her health:

I have now a request to make to you, which I shall feel much gratified if you can comply with. You are aware that my Cousin Charlotte Shipley & her family are in Minorca, or Majorca. I believe the latter. Her health is very failing & bad, & she is convinced that a Month’s cruize would set her up. Now my dear Fremantle have you any means of letting any one of the Vessels under your command, take her, her husband & a little girl, 8 years old, a cruize any where, for that period, not before the 1^st week in May an account of the cold which will be too severe for her cough. M^r Shipley would lay in his own stock, wine &c which would remove any delicacy you might have in proposing this to any of your Captains, & it might be the saving of the poor woman. Should you be able to manage it, the Ship need only water for a couple of days, either at Palma or [?] & the Shipleys if they had notice, could be sure to be there ready to embark. Excuse my mentioning this request, which I am sure that you will comply with if you can, & reject without ceremony if you cannot.

Fremantle has his flag aboard HMS Rochfort. 

Chandos Buckingham

The Anna Eliza is anchored at Messina, Sicily. It is a rough night and day. I write in my diary:

The Gale last night was tremendous. Craft of all kinds coming in all day from stress of the weather. Much thunder & lightening.

The Gale was so strong last night & this morning, that even if it had been in our favour we could not have gone. As it was, it not only blew a storm, but it was right in our teeth. So we are remained fast, fortunate in having a safe anchorage. All day vessels were putting in to Messina with more or less damage, driven in by the weather.

H.M.S. “Mastiff,” barque-rigged, employed as a surveying vessel in the Archipelago, put in here from Malta, bound to Naples. She was all but lost last night, having stood in too long upon one tack into the bay beyond Scylla, and getting embanked on a lee shore, just cleared the rocks. Her boat was carried from her stern.

To-day Mr. Moore, Sharp, and two seamen, were going on shore. The waves beat high on the quay where they landed. Sharp was in a hurry to get out, fell backwards, and upset the boat. Moore clung to her, and she righted again instantly. Sharp and the seamen jumped into the water, fearful lest the boat should come over them. All wet; no one hurt or injured. We are all better today—& shall sail as soon as the Wind moderates & comes round in our favour.

Moore is our surgeon. Sharp is my waiter. They are among our crew of 48 aboard the Anna Eliza.

Buckingham & Chandos

My son, Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville—we call him Dico, you may call him Chandos as everyone else does—published some of my diaries and I will draw on them from time to time.

I was denied the Grand Tour during my youth due to the small matter of Britain being at war with those dreadful revolutionaries led by Napoleon. I found an opportunity in my fifties to sail off to the Mediterranean aboard the Anna Eliza.

Our mission is in part scientific. On the second day of January 1828, we are anchored off Messina, Sicily. Our desire to collect specimens is driven by scientific curiosity and absorbs us day after day.

I note in my published diary:

We have now collected every species of shell known upon this coast—amongst the rest a very minute argonaut, not bigger than a pea. We believe it to be the young paper argonaut; and yet it differs in some respects, having a dorsal fin or sail, which the argonaut, when complete, has not. The elements of the animal seem to be in the shell. We have analyzed, as carefully as we have the means of doing, the specimens of gneiss from Scylla rock; and the vein which we believed to be lava at first sight, turns out to be oxide of manganese, with crystals of carbonate of lime. This had never been observed before—at least that I am aware of.

Mr Lunn is my naturalist and geologist, though I take the greatest interest in the subject myself. From this expedition, and later gifts and purchases I will build a collection of 3,169 minerals, carefully arranged according to Phillip’s Mineralogy, and 3050 fossils catalogued according to Brogniart. These will be housed in my museum at Stowe.

The editor of my published diaries left one sentence out of the entry for this day. I had written: “All were very drunk.” It seems that not everyone finds natural history and geology as absorbing as myself!

Buckingham & Chandos