Produced by Sue Asscher THE LOGBOOKS OF THE LADY NELSON WITH THE JOURNAL OF HER FIRST COMMANDER LIEUTENANT JAMES GRANT, R.N. BY IDA LEE, F.R.G.S. (MRS. CHARLES BRUCE MARRIOTT.) AUTHOR OF: THE COMING OF THE BRITISH TO AUSTRALIA, [and] COMMODORE SIR JOHN HAYES, HIS VOYAGE AND LIFE. WITH SIXTEEN CHARTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE ORIGINALS IN THE ADMIRALTY LIBRARY. GRAFTON & CO. 69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET LONDON. W.C. First Published in 1915. TO THE MEMORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WILLIAM LEE, ONE OF AUSTRALIA'S PIONEERS. PREFACE. The objects for which the Lady Nelson's voyages were undertaken render her logbooks of more than ordinary interest. She was essentially an Australian discovery ship and during her successive commissions she was employed exclusively in Australian waters. The number of voyages that she made will perhaps never be accurately known, but her logbooks in existence testify to the important missions that she accomplished. The most notable are those which record early discoveries in Victoria: the exploration of the Queensland coast: the surveys of King Island and the Kent Group: the visits to New Zealand and the founding of settlements at Hobart, Port Dalrymple, and Melville Island. Seldom can the logbooks of a single ship show such a record. Their publication seemed very necessary, for the handwriting on the pages of some of them is so faded that it is already difficult to decipher, and apparently only the story of Grant's voyages and the extracts from Murray's log published by Labilliere in the Early History of Victoria have ever before been published. In transcription I have somewhat modernized the spelling where old or incorrect forms tended to obscure the sense, and omitted repetitions, as it would have been impossible to include within the limits of one volume the whole of the contents of the logbooks. The story of the Lady Nelson as told by Grant has in places been paraphrased, for he sometimes writes it in diary form under date headings and at others he inserts the date in the narrative. The entries from the logbooks of Murray, Curtoys and Symons, in the Public Record Office, with such omissions as I have specified, are printed verbatim. Murray's charts now published are distinctly valuable, as in the fourth volume of the Historical Records of New South Wales, where they should be found, it is stated that they are "unfortunately missing."