Item 88 - Letter from Richard Sheepshanks

RS wrote to George Airy yesterday concerning an application from Francis Beaufort: 'The Admiralty have commissioned him to look out for an assistant for Fallows' [Fearon Fallows - astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope]. 'Judging from myself I should prefer breaking in a man to my ways rather than having one ready made who might not think my mode better than his own and therefore it seems to me that a clear headed good tempered active man who might be supposed likely to be a companion to Fallows would be better than a scrub exported from Greenwich'. Although RS thinks 'we have spiflicated Sir James [James South]' - he is only half satisfied: 'He is not only a great orator but a pathetic orator, and he will speak whether he has anything or nothing to say. Now I had him well on the hip and with a tolerably favourable audience but most unfortunately without a proper opportunity and with a chance of stopping important business. So I did not do what I ought to have done ridiculed him for his much ado about nothing trumpery exhibition'. South has retired from the Council and RS had been elected in his place. RS is currently involved in all sorts of Nautical Almanac computations. He will make another attempt to serve John Pond but if he declines he will leave him to his fate: 'I class Pond, the Church and the Universities all together...With such bodies who can't fight and don't know where the stand is to be made I will not throw in my lot but will rather go against, if I must cut at all'