A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 15: Forming A Complete History Of The Origin And Progress Of Navigation, Discovery, And Commerce, By Sea And Land, From The Earliest Ages To The Present TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 15: Forming A Complete History Of The Origin And Progress Of Navigation, Discovery, And Commerce, By Sea And Land, From The Earliest Ages To The Present Time
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
Latitude South. Longitude East:
Adventure Bay, 43° 21' 20" 147° 29' 0"
Tasman's Head, 43 33 0 147 28 0
South Cape, 43 42 0 146 56 0
South-west Cape, 43 37 0 146 7 0
Swilly Isle, 43 55 0 147 6 0
Adventure { Variation of the compass 5° 15' E.
Bay, { Dip of the south end of the needle 70° 15 1/2'.
We had high-water on the 29th, being two days before the last quarter of
the moon, at nine in the morning. The perpendicular rise then was
eighteen inches, and there was no appearance of its ever having exceeded
two feet and a half. These are all the memorials useful to navigation,
which my short stay has enabled me to preserve, with respect to Van
Diemen's Land.
[Footnote 135: But Captain Flinders has pointed out some other mistakes,
especially as to the Storm and Frederik Hendrik's Bays of Tasman, in
which, says he, "He has been followed by all the succeeding navigators,
of the same nation, which has created not a little confusion in the
geography of this part of the world." Let us prevent the perpetuity of
errors, by quoting another passage from the same most accurate and
skilful navigator. "The bay supposed to have been Storm Bay, has no name
in Tasman's chart; though the particular plan shews that he noticed it,
as did Marion, more distinctly. The rocks marked at the east point of
this bay, and called the Friars, are the _Boreal's Eylanden_ of Tasman;
the true Storm Bay is the deep inlet, of which Adventure Bay is a cove.
Frederik Hendrik's Bay is not within this inlet, but lies to the
north-eastward, on the outer side of the land which Captain Furneaux, in
consequence of his first mistake, took to be Maria's Island, but which,
in fact, is a part of the main land." A copy of Tasman's charts is given
in the atlas to D'Entrecasteaux's voyage; it is taken from Valantyn, and
is conformable to the manuscript charts in the Dutch journal. But
according to Flinders, it has an error of one degree too much east, in
the scale of longitude. Besides, he informs us, "In the plan of Frederik
Hendrik's Bay, the name is placed _within_ the inner bay, instead of
being written, as in the original, on the point of land between the
inner and outer bays." He imagines the name was intended to comprise
both, and refers to vol. iii. of Captain Burney's History of Discoveries
in the South Sea, for a copy of Tasman's charts as they stand in the
original.--E.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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