The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and eventually reaches Antarctic waters. An albatross appears and leads them out of the ice jam where they are stuck, but even as the albatross is praised by the ship's crew, the mariner shoots the bird: The crew is angry with the mariner, believing the albatross brought the south wind that led them out of the Antarctic. However, the sailors change their minds when the weather becomes warmer and the mist disappears: They soon find that they made a grave mistake in supporting this crime, as it arouses the wrath of spirits who then pursue the ship "from the land
William Wales (astronomer) a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1776. Amongst Wales' pupils at Christ's Hospital were Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb. It has been suggested that Wales' accounts of his journeys might have influenced Coleridge when writing his poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The writer Leigh Hunt, another of Wales' pupils, remembered him as "a good man, of plain simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign countenance". He was appointed as Secretary of the Board of Longitude in 1795, serving in that position until his death in 1798. He was nominated by the First Lord