I left them a boat and seine with what provisions I was able to spare.

We took our departure for Sydney on the 22nd of July 1801, and arrived there on the 25th." Six weeks after his return to port, Grant sent in his resignation on the ground that he had so "little knowledge of nautical surveying." The resignation was accepted by King, who wrote in reply: "I should have been glad if your ability as a surveyor or being able to determine the longitude of the different places you might visit was in anyway equal to your ability as an officer or a seaman." A very slight perusal of Grant's narrative of his voyage enables us to grasp the state of his feelings when he sent in his resignation.

It is evident that he thought he had not been treated fairly, and was glad to quit New South Wales.

He writes of his departure: "The mortifications and disappointments I met with...induced me to seize the first opportunity of leaving the country." And it seems possible that when he told King that he had no knowledge of "nautical surveying," he said so because he knew King thought he had not, and it looks as if the admission was made as a pretext to obtain his passage to England, rather than for the purpose of belittling his own capabilities.

That Grant was a fine seaman goes without saying.