An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1: With Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, Etc. of The; Native Inhabitants of That Country. to Which Are Added, Some; Particulars of New Zealand; Compiled, By Permission, From; The Mss. of Lieutenant-Governor King.Collins, David
History
An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1: With Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners, Etc. of The; Native Inhabitants of That Country. to Which Are Added, Some; Particulars of New Zealand; Compiled, By Permission, From; The Mss. of Lieutenant-Governor King.
Collins, David
New South Wales -- Description and travel
We learned by the _Bellona_, that his Majesty's ship _Gorgon_ arrived at
Spithead on the 19th of June last. In her passage, which she made by Cape
Horn, on the 18th of February last, being in the latitude of 51 degrees
30 minutes S and longitude 34 degrees 07 minutes W variation 13 degrees
37 minutes E she fell in with twenty-nine islands of ice. When the ship
reached within three or four miles of the first of these islands, they
observed one compact body, without the smallest appearance of any opening,
bearing from NNE to WNW and which with some difficulty, being embayed*,
they were enabled to clear, by hauling the ship from N to WSW. This was
done at ten in the forenoon; they did not reach the extreme western point
of the ice until five in the evening; and from the rate at which the ship
sailed, from her coming up with the first island of ice, until she cleared
the north-west point of the field abovementioned, it was computed that she
had run full twenty leagues.
[* When near this great body of ice, the thermometer was as low as
thirty-six degrees; and it rose from that point, as she drew off, to forty
degrees.]
It must be remarked, that the _Sirius_, in the month of December 1788,
saw several islands of ice in nearly the same latitude and longitude.
At the Cape of Good Hope Captain Parker had met with Captain Edwards of
the _Pandora_, who delivered to him Mary Braud, the widow of Bryant, who
escaped to Timor in the fishing cutter, with one of the children, and
only four of the male convicts who accompanied Bryant in his flight.
Bryant died at Batavia, with the other child, and two of his companions;
one of them, James Cox, was said to be drowned in the Straits of Sunda.
On their arrival in England the story of their sufferings in the boat
excited much compassion; and, before the _Bellona_ sailed, they had been
brought up to the bar of the Old Bailey, and ordered by the court to
remain in Newgate until the period of their original sentence of
transportation should expire, there to finish their unsuccessful attempts
to regain their liberty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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