Читать книгу Early History of the Colony of Victoria, Volume I - Francis Peter Labilliere - Страница 8

EXPEDITIONS OF BASS AND FLINDERS.

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Two excursions in the Tom Thumb—Famous voyage of Bass in the whale-boat—Governor Hunter's despatch describing it—Bass meets escaped convicts—Wilson's Promontory—Western Port reached—Bass convinced of existence of a Strait—Remarks of Flinders on the whale-boat voyage—His visit to Furneaux Islands—He and Bass sail round Tasmania in the Norfolk—Fate of Bass.

WE now come to the period when the exploration of the territory of Victoria really commenced. Cook had sighted, and sailed away from, the coast of our future colony. Eighteen years later, Captain Phillip founded the first settlement in Australia, at Port Jackson. He arrived at Botany Bay, January 18th, 1788,—a date which will ever be memorable as the day on which the Anglo-Saxon race was first planted in the Great South Land, and the foundation laid for one of the grandest and most important extensions of the British Empire. For thirteen years after this historic event, nothing was done to solve the problem of the southern coast—the doubt respecting Tasmania still continuing.

At length, in October, 1795, Flinders and Bass first started in the direction in which they subsequently made their great discoveries. Little had been added to the knowledge which Cook had acquired of the coast to the south of Port Jackson, Indeed, even in the near neighbourhood of Botany Bay, the country had not been thoroughly investigated; for to throw further light upon it was the object of the first expedition of Bass and Flinders. Their boat, the Tom Thumb, was but eight feet long; and, besides themselves, it was only manned by a boy. The result of the journey was the tracing of the George River, which runs into Botany Bay, twenty miles further than it had previously been examined. On March 25th, 1796, the same gallant craft and crew started again, and proceeded as far south as Port Hacking, which they investigated, returning to Sydney, April 2nd, after meeting with some hair-breadth escapes. At one time Bass had to keep the sheet of the sail in his hand, whilst Flinders steered with the oar, and the boy bailed out the water which washed in upon them; and on another occasion, the surf, carrying the boat on to the beach, completely drenched them and everything they had.

The expedition, in 1797-98, of Mr. George Bass, surgeon of the Reliance, is one of the most remarkable in the annals of adventurous discovery. The author regrets that he cannot narrate it in the words of the explorer himself; but after seeking in vain in all quarters in this country, where there seemed any chance of Bass's original journal being found, and writing to Sydney about it, he is obliged to give the facts of the expedition second-hand, as stated by Flinders in his "Terra Australis". Mr. Flinders Petrie, grandson of the distinguished navigator, writes to the author in reply to his inquiries,—"As to Bass's journal, I am as much in the dark as you are." That this brave explorer made copious notes of his voyage in the whaleboat, there can be no doubt, judging from the fact that, when he afterwards sailed round Van Diemen's Land with Flinders, he amply recorded his observations. Colonel Collins, in his "Account of the English Colony in New South Wales," published 1802, says that he is able to enter, "with some degree of minuteness, into the particulars" of the cruise round Van Diemen's Land, "being enabled to do this from the accurate and pleasing journal of Mr. Bass, with the perusal and use of which he has been favoured."

The principal hope of Bass's journals being in existence is that, like Grimes's report, they may be disinterred from among the early official papers in Sydney. The one relating to the Western Port expedition would be of much greater value than the other which describes the voyage round Tasmania; for of that we have the account of Flinders, the joint hero with Bass of the enterprise. It does not appear, from the following despatch relating to the former—the whale-boat—expedition, that a copy of Bass's journal describing it was sent to this country by Governor Hunter. That officer's letter to the Duke of Portland, in the Record Office, would, therefore, seem to be the earliest written account of the famous whale-boat voyage now extant in this country, as far as the author has been able to discover. This despatch, which appears never to have been published, runs thus:—

"Sydney, New South Wales, "1st March, 1798.

"MY LORD DUKE,—The tedious repairs which his Majesty's ship Reliance necessarily required, before she could be put in a condition for going again to sea, having given an opportunity to Mr. George Bass, her surgeon—a young man of well-informed mind and an active disposition—to offer himself to be employed in any way in which he could contribute to the benefit of the public service, I inquired of him in what way he was desirous of exerting himself, and he informed me nothing could gratify him more effectually than my allowing him the use of a good boat, and permitting him to man her with volunteers from the King's ships. I accordingly furnished him with an excellent whale-boat, well fitted, victualled, and manned to his wish, for the purpose of examining along the coast to the southward of this port, as far as he could with safety and convenience go. His perseverance against diverse winds, and almost incessant bad weather, led him as far south as the latitude of 40° 00', or a distance from this port, taking the bendings of the coast, more than of 600 miles. He coasted the greater part of the way, and sedulously examined every inlet along the shore, which does not in these parts afford a single harbour fit to admit even a small vessel, except a bay in latitude 35° 06' called Jarvis's Bay, and which was so named by one of the transport ships bound here, who entered it, and is the same called by Captain Cook 'Longnose Bay'; he explored every accessible place until he came as far as the southernmost parts of this coast, seen by Captain Cook, and from thence until he reached the northernmost land, seen by Captain Furneaux, beyond which he went westward about sixty miles, where the coast falls away in a W.N.W. direction. Here he found an open ocean westward, and by the mountainous sea which rolled from that quarter, and no land discoverable in that direction, we have much reason to conclude that there is an open strait through, between the latitude 39° and 40° 12' S., a circumstance which, from many observations made upon tides and currents thereabouts, I had long conjectured. "It will appear by this discovery that the northernmost land seen by Captain Furneaux is the southernmost extremity of this coast, and lies in latitude 39° 00' S. At the westward extremity of Mr. Bass's coasting voyage he found a very good harbour, but unfortunately the want of provision induced him to return sooner than I wished and intended; and, on passing a small island laying off the coast, he discovered a smoke, and supposed it to have been made by some natives, with whom he wished to have an opportunity of conversing. On approaching the shore, he found the men were white and had some clothing on, and when he came near he observed two of them take to the water and swim off. They proved to be seven of a gang of fourteen who escaped from hence in a boat on the 2nd of October last, mentioned in Letter No. 30, and who had been treacherously left on this desolate island by the other seven, who returned northward. The boat, it seems, was too small for their whole number, and when they arrived at Broken Bay they boarded another boat, the Hawkesbury, with fifty-six bushels of wheat on board, and then went off with her northward, leaving the old boat on shore. "These poor distressed wretches, who are chiefly Irish, would have endeavoured to travel northward and thrown themselves upon his Majesty's mercy, but were not able to get from this miserable island to the mainland. Mr. Bass's boat was too small to accommodate them with a passage, and as his provision was nearly expended he could only help them to the mainland, where he furnished them with a musket and ammunition and a pocket compass, with lines and fish-hooks. Two of the seven were very ill, and those he took into his boat, and shared his provision with the other five, giving them the best directions in his power how to proceed; the distance being not less than 500 miles, he recommended them to keep along the coast, the better to enable them to get food. Indeed, the difficulties of the country, and the possibility of meeting hostile natives, are considerations which will occasion doubts of their ever being able to reach us. When they parted with Mr. Bass and his crew, who gave them what clothes they could spare, some tears were shed on both sides. The whale-boat arrived in this port after an absence of twelve weeks, and Mr. Bass delivered to me his observations on this adventurous expedition. I find he made several excursions into the interior of the country, wherever he had an opportunity. It will be sufficient to say that he found, in general, a barren, unpromising country, with very few exceptions; and, were it even better, the want of harbours would render it less valuable. "Whilst this whale-boat was absent, I had occasion to send the colonial schooner to the southward, to take on board the remaining property saved from the wreck of the ship Sydney Cove, and to take the crew from the island she had been cast upon. I sent in the schooner Lieut. Flinders of the Reliance (a young man well qualified), in order to give him an opportunity of making what observations he could among those islands; and the discovery which was made there by him and Mr. Hamilton, the master of the wrecked ship, shall be annexed to those of Mr. Bass in one chart, and forwarded to your grace herewith, by which I presume it will appear that the land called Van Diemen's, and generally supposed to be the southern promontory of this country, is a group of islands separated from its southern coast by a strait, which it is probable may not be of narrow limits, but may perhaps be divided into two or more channels by the islands near that on which the Sydney Cove was wrecked.*

[* The remainder of the letter describes some explorations which had been made in the neighbourhood of Sydney.]

*****

"I have the honour to be, with very great respect, my lord, your grace's most humble and most obedient servant,

"JNO. HUNTER."

The following particulars respecting the expedition in question are gathered from Flinders's "Terra Australis". In the evening of December 3rd, 1797, Bass set out on his voyage with a crew of six seamen and six weeks' provisions. On the 19th he discovered Twofold Bay, and next day rounded Cape Howe, and thus Victoria was again seen by white men, who were perhaps the very first to set foot upon her soil; for in the evening Bass landed "at the entrance of a lagoon, one mile north of Ram Head." Here a gale detained him for ten days, the time being spent in examining the country, of which he did not favourably report.

Renewing his voyage, December 31st, Bass proceeded beyond Ram Head much more than fifteen leagues—the distance from it at which Point Hicks was marked—but he could recognize "no point of projection which would be distinguishable from a ship." By noon next day he calculated he had run upwards of a hundred miles. A more southerly course was then taken, and the boat reached what the explorer supposed was Furneaux's Land, but which he afterwards became convinced was Wilson's Promontory—so named by Governor Hunter, on the joint recommendation of Flinders and Bass, after Thomas Wilson, Esq., of London, a friend of the former.

Having, on January 3rd, 1798, visited one of the adjacent islands, where he found the convicts who had run off with the boat from Sydney, Bass coasted along the mainland, and, after rounding an open bay, on the 4th reached Western Port, which, according to the boat's run, he considered to be about sixty miles N.W. by W. ½ W. from his supposed Furneaux's Land, and in about latitude 38° 25' S. Here the gallant explorer repaired his noble little craft, and made an examination of the port. Water was found with difficulty, and was brackish everywhere, except in the winding creek on the east side of the port. Only four natives were seen, and but few kangaroo; "black swans went by hundreds in a flight, and ducks—a small but excellent kind—by thousands."

After being detained in Western Port till January 18th—a week over the time for which he had been provisioned—Bass was reluctantly obliged to turn back, otherwise he would doubtless have been the discoverer of Port Phillip Bay, which was within an easy day's reach of him. During the first night of his return journey, he was obliged to shelter behind a cape, afterwards named Liptrap. Next morning, running down to the islands west of Wilson's Promontory, he was again obliged to seek shelter at Cape Liptrap, where a succession of gales detained him for a week. During this delay he salted a quantity of petrels, with which he had at the islands replenished his supply of provisions.

Starting again on the 26th, Bass took five of the seven escaped convicts, whom, on his outward journey, he had found on an island, and, landing them on the mainland, gave them directions how to steer for Sydney. He also assisted them with a few things he could spare. The other two, who were unequal to attempt an overland journey of five hundred miles, he took with him in the boat. These convicts were probably the first white men to see the coast up to this point where Bass found them. On February 3rd, he fell in with the five at the Corner Inlet, but nothing more was ever heard of them.

Wilson's Promontory was rounded on the 26th, and another detention till Feb. 1st took place in Sealer's Cove. The explorer utilized this time by examining the promontory. Flinders remarks, in passing it in the Investigator, on his way out from England in 1802, that the adjacent islands were "laid down upon my chart of 1799, on the authority of Mr. Bass; and when it is considered that this enterprising man saw them from an open boat in very bad weather, their relative position to Wilson's Promontory will be thought surprisingly near the truth. Unfortunately the situation of the promontory itself, owing to some injury done to his quadrant, is considerably in error, being twelve or fourteen miles wrong in latitude."

Speaking of the current which ran at Wilson's Promontory at from two to three miles an hour, Bass in his journal—the words of which are given in inverted commas by Flinders—says,—

"Whenever it shall be decided that the opening between this and Van Diemen's Land is a strait, this rapidity of tide, and the long south-west swell that seems to be continually rolling in upon the coast to the westward, will then be accounted for."

On Feb. 2nd Bass sailed to Corner Inlet, and was again detained until the 9th by those adverse winds which had so much impeded him, and which next day once more stopped his progress—this time with so much severity that he was obliged to retreat to the beach through a heavy surf, in lat. which he made to be 37° 47' S. There the natives, who appeared to have never seen or heard of white men, paid the explorer a friendly visit. At daylight on the 11th the brave boat was again launched, and at four in the afternoon anchored under the Ram Head, where there was another delay till the evening of the 14th, when a favourable breeze suddenly sprung up, and at ten o'clock carried the explorers past Cape Howe, and by noon of the 15th to Twofold Bay. On the night of Feb. 24th, 1798, this wonderful voyage was terminated by the safe arrival of Bass and his crew within the splendid harbour of Sydney.

Captain Flinders speaks in suitable terms of the great exploit of his friend. He remarks that,—"In the three hundred miles of coast from Port Jackson to Ram Head, he added a number of particulars which had escaped Captain Cook." Flinders then sums up the new discoveries made by Bass:—

"Our previous knowledge of the coast scarcely extended beyond Earn Head, and there began the harvest in which Mr. Bass was ambitious to place the first reaping-hook. The new coast was traced 300 miles, and instead of travelling southward to join itself to Van Diemen's Land, as Captain Furneaux had supposed, he found it, beyond a certain point, to take a direction nearly opposite, and to assume the appearance of being exposed to the buffetings of an open sea. Mr. Bass himself entertained no doubt of the existence of a wide strait separating Van Diem en '8 Land from New South Wales; and he yielded with the greatest reluctance to the necessity of returning, before it was so fully ascertained as to admit of no doubt in the mind of others. But he had the satisfaction of placing at the end of his new coast an extensive and useful harbour, surrounded with a country superior to any other known in the southern parts of New South Wales.


"A voyage expressly undertaken for discovery in an open boat, and in which 600 miles of coast, mostly in a boisterous climate, was explored, has not, perhaps, its equal in the annals of maritime history. The public will award to its high-spirited and able conductor—alas! now no more—an honourable place in the list of those whose ardour stands most conspicuous for the promotion of useful knowledge."

The names of Bass's six attendants in the whale-boat ought to be recorded; but that of only one of them seems to have been preserved. Flinders mentions that Mr. Thistle, who with seven others was drowned in the accident to the cutter of the Investigator at Cape Catastrophe, at the entrance to Spencer's Gulf, had made the voyages to Western Port and round Van Diemen's Land.

While Bass was absent, Flinders left Port Jackson, on Feb. 1st, in the Francis, commanded by Captain Hamilton, and of which schooner Mr. Reed was master, to bring away the people and cargo remaining with the wreck of the ship Sydney Cove on Preservation Island, one of the Furneaux Group. On the outward voyage, the coast was sighted about Cape Howe, as well as in other places, and Wilson's Promontory was seen. On Feb. 25th, when setting out to return to Sydney, Flinders says,—

"It was still a matter of doubt whether the land to the south of the islands was or was not a part of Van Diemen's Land, and I therefore requested Mr. Reed to make a stretch that way. At noon our latitude was 40° 44⅔', and the peak of Cape Barren bore N. 13° E. . . .


"We stretched on until the land was seen beyond 40° 50', and then veered to the northward. In this latitude Captain Furneaux says, 'the land trenches away to the westward'; and as he traced the coast from the south end of the country to this port, there could no longer be a doubt that it was joined to the land discovered by Tasman in 1642. The smokes which had constantly been seen rising from it showed that there were inhabitants; and this, combined with the circumstance of there being none upon the islands, seemed to argue the junction of Van Diemen's Land with New South Wales, for it was difficult to suppose that men should have reached the more distant land, and not have attained the islands intermediately situated; nor was it admissible that, having reached them, they had perished for want of food. On the other hand, the great strength of the tides setting westward, past the islands, could only be caused by some exceedingly deep inlet, or by a passage through to the southern Indian Ocean. These contradictory circumstances were very embarrassing; and, the schooner not being placed at my disposal, I was obliged, to my great regret, to leave this important geographical question undecided. At the time we veered to the northward, the coast of Van Diemen's Land was about three miles distant."

When Flinders reached Sydney again in the Francis, March 9th, he found that Bass had been back a fortnight from his famous whale-boat expedition. The former says,—

"He communicated all his notes and observations to be added to my chart. There seemed to want no other proof of the existence of a passage between New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land than that of sailing positively through it."

The demonstration of this fact, being clearly part of the history of the discovery of Victoria, must now be briefly noticed. Flinders gives his own account of the voyage in his "Terra Australis," and Collins in his "Account of the English Colony in N. S. Wales," vol ii., published twelve years earlier, in 1802, enters "with some degree of minuteness into the particulars . . . from the accurate and pleasing journal of Mr. Bass." It appears that on Oct. 7th, 1798, the colonial sloop Norfolk, of twenty-five tons, left Port Jackson on her important voyage of discovery. She is called by Collins "the small-decked boat" and "long-boat". She carried Flinders and Bass, and, to use the words of the former, "an excellent crew of eight volunteers from the king's ships." She was provisioned for twelve weeks. The brig Nautilus sailed in company with her on a sealing expedition to Furneaux Islands. Twofold Bay was visited and examined by Flinders and Bass. Continuing their voyage on the 14th, they reached Kent's Group on the 17th. They were detained by adverse winds for some days at the Furneaux Islands, some of which Bass explored, and, as appears in Collins's work, minutely described, whilst Flinders made soundings.

At length, Nov. 1st, they reached the north coast of Van Diemen's Land, and steered westward along it, at a distance of from two and a half to three miles. Port Dalrymple, where Launceston now exists, was entered on the 3rd and quitted on the 20th; but next day a gale from the west drove the Norfolk back to Furneaux Islands, from whence she was not able to renew her course till Dec. 3rd. On the 6th, Circular Head was passed, and Flinders remarks,—

"From the time of leaving Port Dalrymple no tide had been observed until this morning. It ran with us and continued until three o'clock, at which time low land was seen beyond the three hummocks. This trending of the coast so far to the north made me apprehend that it might be found to join the land near Western Port, and thus disappoint our hopes of discovering an open passage to the westward; the water was also discoloured, as if we were approaching the head of a bay rather than the issue of a strait, and, on sounding, we had seventeen and afterwards fifteen fathoms."

An extraordinary flight of sooty petrels,** which the discoverers observed Dec. 9th, will justify a short digression. Flinders writes,—

[** Or Mutton-birds.]

"There was a stream of from fifty to eighty yards in depth, and of 300 yards or more in breadth; the birds were not scattered, but flying as compactly as a free movement of their wings seemed to allow; and during a full hour and a half this stream of petrels continued to pass without interruption, at a rate little inferior to the swiftness of the pigeon. On the lowest computation I think the number could not have been less than a hundred million."

In a note it is calculated that,—

"Taking the stream to have been fifty yards deep by three hundred in width, and that it moved at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and allowing nine cubic yards of space to each bird, the number would amount to 151,500,000. The burrows required to lodge this quantity of birds would be 75,750,000; and, allowing a square yard to each burrow, they would cover something more than 18½ geographic square miles of ground."

On this day, Dec. 9th, passing between the mainland and Three Hummock Island, one of the group to which the discoverers gave the name of Governor Hunter, Flinders says,—

"A long swell was perceived to come from the south-west, such as we had not been accustomed to for some time. It broke heavily upon a small reef lying a mile and a half from the point, and upon all the western shores; but, although it was likely to prove troublesome and perhaps dangerous, Mr. Bass and myself hailed it with joy and mutual congratulation, as announcing the completion of our long-wished-for discovery of a passage into the Southern Indian Ocean."

Colonel Collins gives in inverted commas a brief extract from Bass's account of this discovery. This, therefore, and the sentence previously given about the currents at Wilson's Promontory, contain the only words descriptive of his remarkable voyages which we can feel certain are the explorer's own. Collins proceeds,—

"Mr. Bass says (with all the feeling and spirit of an explorer) that 'he already began to taste the enjoyment resulting from the completion of this discovery, which had been commenced in the whale-boat under a complication of anxieties, hazard, and fatigue, known only to those who conducted her,' modestly sharing the praises to which he alone was entitled with those who accompanied him.


"It was worthy of remark (Mr. Bass says) that the northern shore of the strait from Wilson's Promontory (seen in the whale-boat) to Western Port resembled the bluff bold shore of an open sea, with a swell rolling in, and a large surf breaking upon it; while the southern shore, or what is the coast of Van Diemen's Land, appeared like the inner shore of a cluster of islands, whose outer parts break off the great weight of the sea. The cause of this is immediately obvious, on recollecting that the swell of the Indian Ocean enters the strait from the southward of west. The greater part of the southern shore is a bight, whose western extreme is Hunter's Isles and the north-west cape of Van Diemen's Land. Now, as the swell comes from the southward as well as westward, it must, after striking the north-west part of the southern shore, evidently run on in a direction somewhat diagonal with the two sides of the strait until it expends itself upon the northern shore, where both swell and surf are found. But to the southward of this diagonal line the swell must quickly take off, and totally disappear, long before it can reach the shore to make a surf. Hence arises the difference.


"That the swell of the Indian Ocean comes, by far the greater part of the way, from the southward of west can hardly be doubted, since it is well known that the prevailing winds are from that quarter."

Thus was solved the problem of the insularity of Van Diemen's Land. On Dec. 9th its N.W. extremity, named by Flinders, from its appearance, Cape Grim, was passed, and, following the trending of the coast, a southern course was taken. The Norfolk anchored at the entrance of the Derwent on the 21st, and next day proceeded up the river for about twelve miles. On January 3rd, 1799, she again put to sea, and, after quitting Van Diemen's Land and its adjacent islands, sighted the Australian coast on the 9th, somewhere near Ram Head. On the evening of the 11th according to Flinders, and the 12th according to Collins, anchor was cast inside Port Jackson, the discoverers having, as the former remarks, "exceeded, by no more than eleven days, the time which had been fixed for our return."

Both Flinders and Collins record that, on the return of the Norfolk, Governor Hunter—who, we have seen, was one of the first to suggest doubts as to the peninsula theory—paid a just "tribute" to the services of Bass by calling the new strait after him.

In July of the same year the Norfolk, which derived her name from the island where she was built, was employed by Flinders in the investigation of Morton Bay.

Having now reached the end of the achievements of Bass as an explorer, it only remains to express regret that the career of a man of so much promise should have been so early closed. His fate is not quite certain; but, having been taken prisoner by the Spaniards in South America, he is believed to have been sent to work in the mines, and there to have died.

Early History of the Colony of Victoria, Volume I

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