ABSTRACT
By the middle of 1779 Jeremiah Bentham had been convinced of the necessity for Samuel Bentham (SB) to travel through northern Europe to Russia. For Jeremiah, as he explained the chief clerk in the office of the Secretary of State for the Northern Department, the overriding purpose was educational. The states bordering the Baltic Sea had long-established trading relations with Britain and were a major source of shipping and naval stores. The younger son's study as a science, has conceived a design of going abroad in order to inform himself of the state of naval architecture & the marine at all the Northern Powers. Meanwhile he investigated the safest means of crossing the North Sea. Until then little notice had been taken of the American War of Independence, into which France entered in 1778 and Spain in 1779. Hostilities demanded a vessel that would attract little attention, and he sounded out a Dutch fishing boat.
