The Naval Pioneers of Australia

CHAPTER XII.

OTHER NAVAL PIONEERS, AND THE PRESENT MARITIME STATE OF AUSTRALIA—CONCLUSION

Long after Bligh, the last naval governor, was in his grave, the pioneer work of naval officers went on; and if not the chief aid to the settlement of Australia, it played an important part in its development. Begun at the foundation of the colony, when the marine explorer did his work in open boats; carried on, as the settlement grew, in locally built fore-and-aft vessels down to the present, when navigating officers are year in, year out, cruising "among the South Sea Islands," or on the less known parts of the northern and western Australian coast-line, surveying in up-to-date triple-expansion-engined steam cruisers or in steam surveying yachts, the work of chart-making has always been, and still is, done so thoroughly as to command the admiration of all who understand its 1793 its meaning, and withal so modestly that the shipmaster, whose Admiralty charts are perhaps little less or even more valuable to him than his Bible, scarcely ever thinks, if he knows, how they are made.

In the earliest days of the colony, Phillip and Hunter were land as well as sea explorers; Dawes and Tench, of the Marines, and Quartermaster Hacking, of the Sirius, in 1793 and 1794, made the first attempts to cross the Blue Mountains. Shortlands (father and son), Ball, of the Supply, and half a dozen other naval lieutenants, all made discoveries of importance; Vancouver, McClure, and Bligh (the latter twelve years before he was thought of as a governor) each did a share of early charting.

The list might be extended indefinitely. Let us take only one or two names and tell their stories; and these examples, with the narrative of Flinders and Bass, must stand as illustrative of the work of all.

In land exploring the military officers were not behindhand. Beside the work of the marines, a young Frenchman, Francis Louis Barrallier, an ensign of the New South Wales Corps, who came out with King, distinguished himself. King made him artillery and engineer officer, and he did much surveying with Grant in the Lady Nelson. Inland he went west until stopped by the Blue Mountains barrier; and King tells us an amusing story of this trip. Paterson, in command of the regiment, told King that he could not spare Barrallier for exploring purposes, so King, to get over the difficulty, appointed him his aide-de-camp, and then sent him on an "embassy to the King of the Mountains."

Barrallier went home in 1804, and saw a great deal of service in various regiments, distinguishing himself in military engineering, among his works being the erection of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square. He died in London in 1853.

The Lady Nelson was a little brig of 60 tons burden, one of the first built with a centre-board, or sliding keels, as the idea was then termed. She was designed by Captain Schanck, one of the naval transport commissioners, and when she sailed from Portsmouth to begin her survey service in Australia, she was so deeply laden for her size that she had less than three feet of freeboard.

Lieutenant James Grant was, through the influence of 1800 Banks, appointed to command this little vessel. He has much to say on the subject of sliding keels, for which see his Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery. The Lady Nelson was well built, and Grant showed his respect for her designer by his naming of Cape Schanck in Victoria and Mount Schanck in South Australia. In one of his letters to Banks, Grant says that, with all his stores of every description on board, he could take his vessel into seven feet of water, and could haul off a lee shore, by the use of sliding keels, "equal to any ship in the navy." On the night of January 23rd, 1800, it blew such a gale in the Channel that six vessels went on shore, and several others were reported missing. This gale lasted for nine days, and during that time the Lady Nelson rode comfortably at her anchor in the Downs.

Grant's instructions when he left England were to proceed through the newly discovered Bass' Straits on his way, report himself at Sydney, and then set to work and survey the coast, beginning with the southern and south-western parts of it. The brig sailed, with a crew of seventeen all told, in February, 1800, and arrived on December 16th of the same year, being the first vessel to pass through Bass' Straits on the way from England to Australia. On the voyage Grant discovered and named many points on the Victorian coast-line; then, as soon as the vessel arrived and received a thorough overhaul, she was sent to sea again to continue the work in company with a small intercolonial vessel, the Bee.

They sailed on March 8th, 1801, and were surveying until May 2nd, when Grant sums up the work done in these words:—

"We have now gained a complete survey of the coast from Western Point to Wilson's Promontory, with the situation of the different islands of the same, and ascertained the latitudes of the same, which from our different observations we have been able to do sufficiently correct.... These points being ascertained so far as lays in our power, I judge it most prudent to make the best of our way to port, keeping the shore well in sight to observe every particular hitherto unknown."

The portions left out in this extract refer to the latitudes and longitudes, which are so correctly given that the only ascertainable difference between them and the figures in a recent addition of Norrie is in the case of Wilson's Promontory, which Grant says is 1801 in longitude between 146° 25' and 146° 14', and Norrie's table gives us 146° 25' 37".

On the return of the little vessel, she took part in an interesting ceremony, which the following proclamation by Governor King, dated May 29th, best describes:—

"Thursday next being the anniversary of His Majesty's birth, will be observed as a holyday. The present Union will be hoisted at sunrise. At a quarter before nine the New South Wales Corps and Association to be under arms, when the Royal Proclamation for the Union between Great Britain and Ireland will be publicly read by the Provost-Marshall, and on the New Union flag being displayed at Dawes Point and on board His Majesty's armed vessel Lady Nelson the military will fire three rounds, which the batteries will take up, beginning at the main guard, Bennilong and Dawes Points, at the Windmill Hills, and at the barracks. When finished, His Majesty's armed vessel the Lady Nelson will fire 21 guns, man ship, and cheer. At noon the salute will be repeated from the batteries, New South Wales Corps and Association will fire three rounds, and at one o'clock the Lady Nelson will fire 21 guns in honour of His Majesty's birthday. The Governor will be ready to receive the compliments of the officers, civil and military, on those happy occasions, at half-past one o'clock."

King had a high opinion of Grant as a seaman, but he considered him an unscientific man, not suitable for surveying, and wrote to England to that effect. Grant himself confirms this in a letter asking to go home, as from the "little knowledge I have of surveying, … where I may be enabled to be more serviceable to my country." His faith in sliding keels had been somewhat shaken by this time, and he complained that he could not claw his vessel off a lee shore, and so Flinders found, when Grant with the Lady Nelson kept him company along the Barrier Reef when the Investigator was surveying that part of the coast. The Nelson had been ordered to act as tender to the Investigator, but she was so unsuited to the work that Flinders lost patience and sent her back to Sydney, where she did a great deal of surveying in the exploration of the Hunter River and its vicinity. Grant went home, and cut a much better figure as a fighting officer, was promoted commander, and died in 1838. On his way home he took a box of King's despatches to convey to England, and when the despatch-box was opened it was found to be empty. King, writing of this matter, said:—

"I do not blame Lieutenant Grant so much for the 1802 villainous transaction respecting the loss of my despatches as I deprecate the infamy of those who had preconcerted the plan. Before the vessel he went in left the colony, it was told me that such an event would happen, and the master's conduct prior to his leaving this fully justified the report. I would not suffer the vessel to leave the port before a bond of £500 was given that neither Lieutenant Grant or the despatches should be molested. Under these circumstances and Lieutenant Grant's knowledge of the master, he ought to have been more guarded, as I gave my positive directions that the vessel should be seen a certain way to sea, and the box was not given from my possession before the vessel was under way. However, the plan was too well laid and bound with ill-got gold to fail. Let the villain enjoy the success of his infamy. As to any publication of Mr. Grant's, I believe nothing new or original can arise from his pen without the aid of auxiliary fiction."

Lieutenant Murray, of the Porpoise, relieved Grant in the Lady Nelson, and Murray and his mate. Lieutenant Bowen, further explored Bass' Straits and the Victorian coast, their chief achievement being the discovery of Port Phillip.

The Lady Nelson was off the heads of Port Phillip on January 5th, 1802, but the weather was too bad to enter, and Bowen was sent to examine the bay in one of the brig's boats. This he did, and the Lady Nelson entered, and anchored off what is now the quarantine station on February 15th. Murray took possession of the place on March 9th, naming it Port King, and Surveyor Grimes made a survey of it. They left on March 12th. The Frenchman Baudin, with the Geographe and Naturaliste, eighteen days later ran along this coast and claimed its discovery, although the Englishmen, Flinders in particular, had already surveyed and named nearly all his discoveries; but Baudin was gracious enough to admit that Port Phillip, which he had only sighted, had been first entered by the Lady Nelson. Flinders sailed into the bay on April 26th, thinking that he had made a new discovery, until, on his arrival at Port Jackson, he heard of the Lady Nelson's prior visit, and that Governor King, with modesty and regard for his old chief, had altered Murray's name of Port King to Port Phillip.

In consequence of Murray's services in the Lady Nelson, King appointed him acting lieutenant, and strongly recommended the Admiralty should confirm the appointment.

With the recommendation, Murray sent home, through the governor, the following certificate of his services, which is interesting as showing how such certificates were then written, and because of what came of this particular recommendation:—

"In pursuance of the directions of Sir Roger Curtis, Bart., Vice-Admiral of the White and Commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels employed and to be employed at the Cape of Good Hope and the seas adjacent, dated the 8th July, 1800. "We have examined Mr. John Murray, who appears to be more than 21 years of age, and has been at sea more than six years in the ships and qualities undermentioned, viz.:—

"He produceth journals kept by himself in the Polyphemus, Apollo, and Porpoise, and certificates from Captains Lumsdine, Manly, and Scott, of his diligence and sobriety. He can splice knots, reef and sail, work a ship in sailing, and shift his tides, keep a reckoning of the ship's way by plain sailing and Mercator, observe the sun and stars, and find the variation of the compass, and is qualified to do the duty of an able seaman and midshipman.

"Given under our hands on His Majesty's ship Adamant, in Simon's Bay, Cape of Good Hope, this 9th day of July, 1800.

The Secretary to the Admiralty wrote to Governor King on May 5th, 1802, stating that this passing certificate of Mr. Murray's was "an imposition attempted to be practised in his report of services, and to acquaint you that they will not, in consequence, give him a commission, nor will they allow him to pass for an officer at any future period." With this letter came an enclosure showing that by Mr. Murray's passing certificate "it is set forth that he served in the Duke from the 9th June, 1789, to the 2nd December, 1789, but we must observe that the Duke was not in commission in 1789, neither is he found on her books from the 10th of August, 1790, to 2nd August, 1791, when she was in commission, nor is he born on the Duke while she was in ordinary, which time, even admitting he did belong to her, would not have been allowed towards the regular servitude of six years."

In reply to this charge, Murray told King that he could 1803 "explain" the circumstance; but he soon after returned to England, and these deponents can find no further trace of him.

Soon after it was decided to colonize the new discovery, and the Calcutta, man-of-war, and Ocean, transport, sailed from Portsmouth with prisoners and stores on April 26th, 1803, arriving at Port Phillip on October 10th. Collins, now a brevet-lieutenant-colonel, who was Judge-Advocate under Phillip, was in command of the expedition, and was to be the first governor of the settlement.

King, at Port Jackson, had meanwhile sent—in May, 1803—Lieutenant Bowen in the Lady Nelson, with a transport and a party of settlers, to form a settlement at the head of the Derwent in Van Diemen's Land.

The expedition was made up of 307 male convicts, 17 of their wives, and 7 children; 4 officers and 47 non-commissioned officers and men of the Marines, with 5 women and 1 child; and a party of 11 men and 1 woman, free settlers. Besides these were about 12 civilian officials. By the close of 1803, Collins, with the concurrence of most, if not all, of his officers, decided to abandon Port Phillip, and convey his colonists to the Derwent settlement. His justification for taking this step was the unsuitableness of the land and the difficulty of procuring fresh water near the heads of Port Phillip. This shows that he was not of the same spirit as Governor Phillip, and that he wrote history far better than he made it.

Bowen had already begun the settlement near what was named Hobart Town by him in honour of the Secretary of State, Lord Hobart. In 1881 the "Town" was dropped, and "Hobart" became the official name of the capital of Tasmania. The man acting as mate of the Lady Nelson was one Jorgenson, the "King of Iceland," whose remarkable story was written by Mr. Hogan, and published by Ward and Downey in 1891, and whose career was a most extraordinary series of adventures. The Lady Nelson pursued her careful and useful voyages until 1827, when she was seized by Maoris on the coast of New Zealand and destroyed.

In 1817 there came out young Phillip Parker King, son of Governor King, who made four voyages round the Australian coast, completing a minute survey in 1822, when he returned to England and 1822 published an interesting account of his work. Sir Gordon Bremer in the Tamar, Sterling in the Success, Fitzroy in the Beagle, Hodson in the Rattlesnake, Captain (afterwards Sir George) Grey on the West Australian coast, Blackwood in the Fly, Stokes and Wickham, and scores of other naval officers ought to be mentioned, and no attempt can be made in a work like this to do justice to the merchantmen who, in whalers and sealers or East Indiamen, in a quiet, modest, business-like way of doing the thing, sailed about the coast making discoveries, and often, through the desertion of their seamen, leading to the foundation of settlements.

Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson, and William Charles Wentworth, in Governor Macquarie's time, were the first men to make an appreciable advance to the west, inland from the sea. Lawson was a lieutenant in the New South Wales Corps, in the Veteran Company of which notorious regiment he remained attached to the 73rd when the "Botany Bay Rangers" went home. Blaxland was an early settler in the colony, and Wentworth was the son of a wealthy Norfolk Island official, who had sent his boy home to be educated, and when these three men went exploring, young Wentworth had just returned to Australia. In 1813, after many hard trials, by keeping to the crown of the range and avoiding the impenetrable gorges which their predecessors had thought would lead to a pass through the barrier, they managed to gain the summit of the main range, and then returned to Sydney. The work had taken a month to perform, and Macquarie promptly sent out a fully equipped party to follow up the discovery. So thoroughly did the governor back up the work of the explorers that by January, 1815, the convict-made road had been completed to Bathurst, and the Blue Mountain ranges were no longer a barrier to the good country of the west.

The Humes, Evans, Oxley, and the rest of the land explorers followed as the years went on, and very soon there was not a mile of undiscovered land in the mother-colony. Attempts to penetrate the interior of the great continent followed, and that work and the opening of the far north, with its too often accompaniments of disaster and death, went on until quite recent times. Occasionally even now we hear much talk of expeditions into the interior, but newspaper-readers who read of such exploring parties can generally take it for granted that stories of hazard and hardship nowadays lose nothing in the telling, especially where mining interests and financial speculation are concerned.

By way of ending to this story of the naval pioneers of Australia, it will perhaps be not amiss to show what the navy was in Australia at the beginning of the century and what it is now at its close. A return issued by Governor King on the 4th of August, 1804, showed that the Buffalo, ship of war, with a crew of 84 men, the Lady Nelson, a 60-ton brig, with 15 men, were the only men-of-war that could be so described on the station. The Investigator, Flinders' ship, was then being patched up to go home, and she is stated to have 26 men rated on her books. Belonging to the Colonial Government were the Francis, a 40-ton schooner, the Cumberland, 20-ton schooner, the Integrity, a cutter of 59 tons, the Resource, a schooner of 26 tons, built from the wrecks of the Porpoise and Cato, and some punts and open boats. The crews of all these vessels amounted to 145 men.