the United Provinces of the River Plate (Argentina) to assume the post of United States chargé d'affaires in the wake of the USS Lexington raid on the Falkland Islands in 1831. On arrival both British line-of-battle ship Plantagenet and H. B. M. frigate Druid complimented her flag by playing Hail, Columbia. Also aboard was President Andrew Jackson's "special confidential agent" Edmund Roberts in the official status of Captain's clerk. 25June 1832, having left orders for Boxer to follow to Bencoolen, Peacock departed war-stricken Montevideo for the Cape of Good Hope. After taking water at Tristan da Cunha and rounding the cape, then trying to keep about latitude 38° or 39°, on 9 or 10 August a sea of uncommon height and volume struck the ship, and threw her nearly on her beam ends, completely overwhelmed the gig in the starboard-quarter, crushed it into atoms in a moment, and buried the first three ratlines of the mizen-shrouds under water. Picking up the southeast trade wind around (,) on 28 August 1832, Peacock sailed to Bencoolen where the Dutch Resident reported that Potomac had completed her mission. Under orders to gather information before going to Cochin-China, Peacock sailed for Manila by way of Long Island and 'Crokatoa' (Krakatoa), where hot springs found on the eastern side of the islands one hundred and fifty feet from the shore boiled furiously up, through many fathoms of water. Her chronometers proving useless, Peacock threaded the Sunda Strait by dead reckoning. Diarrhea and dysentery prevailed among the crew from Angier to Manila; after a fortnight there, cholera struck despite the overall cleanliness of the ship. Peacock lost seven crewmen, and many who did recover died later in the voyage of other diseases. No new case of cholera occurred after 2 November 1833 while Peacock was under way for Macao. Within two leagues of the Lemma or Ladrone islands, she took aboard a pilot after settling on a fee of thirteen dollars and a bottle of rum. After six weeks in the vicinity of Canton City, China, with the onset of the winter northeast monsoon and no sign of Boxer, Peacock sailed from Lintin Island in the Pearl River estuary for the bay of Turane (modern Danang) as best for access to Hué, capital of Cochin-China her task was to explore the possibilities of expanding trade with the kingdom. Contrary winds from the northwest rather than the