[1] Carteret entered the navy in 1747, serving aboard the Salisbury, and then under Captain John Byron from 1751 to 1755.

[5] Weakened by severe illness, he arrived back in England, at Spithead, on 20 March 1769, having been ably assisted by Lieutenant Erasmus Gower who was, for much of the voyage, the only fit person on board Swallow who could navigate.

Four of their five children survived to adulthood, including: Carteret's health was ruined by his voyage of exploration, and he received little reward from the Admiralty.

In the meantime, in 1773, his journals of the voyage were published as part of An Account of the Voyages undertaken by Byron, Wallis, Carteret and Cook, but that volume's editor John Hawkesworth made many changes to his account and so Carteret drafted a correct version of his own (which, however, only got published in 1965, by the Hakluyt Society).

[7] His new ship, HMS Endymion, at last came on 1 August 1779 and despite problems in the Channel, off Senegal and off the Leeward Islands (at the last of which Carteret was nearly killed in a hurricane) he arrived in the West Indies as instructed.