A Voyage to Terra Australis — Volume 2: Undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802 and 1803, in His Majesty's ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland schoonerFlinders, Matthew
History
A Voyage to Terra Australis — Volume 2: Undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802 and 1803, in His Majesty's ship the Investigator, and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland schooner
Flinders, Matthew
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Voyages and travels
Whilst beating against this foul wind the dysentery carried off another
seaman, Thomas Smith, one of those obtained from governor King; and had
the wind continued long in the same quarter, many others must have
followed. Happily it veered to the southward at midnight, we passed
Botany Bay at three in the morning [THURSDAY 9 JUNE 1803], and at
daybreak tacked between the heads of Port Jackson, to work up for Sydney
Cove. I left the ship at noon, above Garden Island, and waited upon His
Excellency governor King, to inform him of our arrival, and concert
arrangements for the reception of the sick at the colonial hospital. On
the following day [FRIDAY 10 JUNE 1803] they were placed under the care
of Thomas Jamison, Esq., principal surgeon of the colony; from whom they
received that kind attention and care which their situation demanded; but
four were too much exhausted, and died in a few days. The first of them
was Mr. Peter Good, botanical gardener, a zealous, worthy man, who was
regretted by all.
Lieutenant Murray had arrived safely with the Lady Nelson, after a
somewhat tedious passage from the Barrier Reefs; he made himself an
anchor of heavy wood on the coast, for fear of accident to his sole
remaining bower, but fortunately had no occasion to use it. Besides the
Lady Nelson, we found lying in Sydney Cove H. M. armed vessel Porpoise,
the Bridgewater extra-Indiaman, the ships Cato, Rolla, and Alexander, and
brig Nautilus. The Géographe and Naturaliste had not sailed for the South
Coast till some months after I left Port Jackson to go to the northward,
and so late as the end of December, captain Baudin was lying at King's
Island in Bass' Strait; it was therefore not very probable that he should
reach the Gulph of Carpentaria by the middle of February, when I had
finished its examination, nor even at the beginning of March, when the
south-west monsoon would set in against him.
We found also at Port Jackson Mr. James Inman (the present professor of
mathematics at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth), whom the Board of
Longitude had sent out to join the expedition as astronomer, in the place
of Mr. Crosley who had left us at the Cape of Good Hope. To this
gentleman's care I committed all the larger astronomical instruments, and
also the time keepers, after observations had been taken to compare their
longitudes with that of Cattle Point. The results obtained on the 10th
a.m., with the Goose-island-Bay rates, were,
From No. 543, 151° 18' 41" east.
From No. 520, 151 16 22 east.
Cattle Point having been settled in 151° 11' 49" (see Vol. I.), the mean
error of the time keepers was 5' 42.5" to the east; and as I have no
means to form an accelerating correction to the Goose-Island Bay rates,
the 5' 42.5" of error has been equally apportioned throughout the twenty
days between the two stations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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