Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.Stokes, John Lort
History
Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.
Stokes, John Lort
Australia -- Description and travel; Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Natural history -- Australia
I noticed here a trappean dyke, but the general formation of this end of
King Island exactly corresponded with that about Captain Smith's house,
which shows that it is a continuous ridge of granite. The south-eastern
shore is rather steep, and the ground which rises abruptly over it is
almost denuded of wood.
Leaving Seal Bay--from the south point of which we saw the principal
dangers at this extremity of Bass Strait, Reid's rocks bearing East by
South 1/4 South 12 miles--we coasted round the eastern shore and anchored
off a sandy bay about the centre of the island. The only remarkable
object was a rock, lying one mile from the shore and five from Seal Bay,
on which we bestowed a name suggested by its form, Brig Rock. Off the
north point of the bay in which we anchored lies a white rock or islet
called Sea Elephant Rock, with a reef a mile off its north point.
Opposite this is a small inlet fed by the drainage of some lagoons or
swamps behind the bay. Northward the character of the coast, as far as we
could see, changes considerably, being lower, with a continued line of
sandy shore.
A breeze from the eastward prevented our completing the survey of the
northern side of the island; but one important result we had arrived at,
namely, that safe anchorage may be obtained in west winds within a
moderate distance of this part of the shore in less than fifteen fathoms.
CROSS THE STRAIT.
We now crossed over to the group of islands fronting the north-western
point of Tasmania, and confining the southern side of the mouth of the
Strait. The tide setting to the South-West at the rate of three knots an
hour* brought us within five miles of Reid's rocks. Passing at that
distance from their eastern side we had 28 and 30 fathoms sand and rock:
and the greatest depth we found in crossing was 37 fathoms towards the
south side of the Strait.
(*Footnote. This set of the tide being rather across the channel renders
the passage between King Island and Reid's rocks by no means
recommendable. Captain King on returning to New South Wales, used this
passage and was very nearly wrecked; the set of the tides at that time
not being known. It appears they saw the south point of King Island just
at dark, and shaped a course well wide of Reid's rocks; they found
themselves, however, drifted by the tide close on them. We made the time
of high-water at the full and change of the moon in this entrance of the
Strait to be half an hour before noon; but the western stream began three
hours and a half before, and the eastern again precedes low-water by the
same amount of time.)
A SECURE ANCHORAGE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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