 In eight years of active service as an officer, he served two and a half years in a surveying ship in the Mediterranean (1818–21), one and a half years in a surveying sloop in the English Channel and off the coast of Ireland (1823–24), and one and a half years as Surveyor of the frigate during a voyage (1824–26) to and from the Hawaiian Islands (then known as the "Sandwich islands").In Hawaii he surveyed harbours which, he noted, were "said not to exist by Captains Cook and Vancouver.