The Naval Pioneers of Australia Part 1

The Naval Pioneers of Australia.

by Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery.

PREFACE

This book does not pretend to be a history of Australia; it merely gathers into one volume that which has. .h.i.therto been dispersed through many. Our story ends where Australian history, as it is generally written, begins; but the work of the forgotten naval pioneers of the country made that beginning possible. Four sea-captains in succession had charge of the penal settlement of New South Wales, and these four men, in laying the foundation of Australia, surmounted greater difficulties than have ever been encountered elsewhere in the history of British colonization. Under them, and by their personal exertions, it was made possible to live upon the land; it was made easy to sail upon the Austral seas. After them came military and civil governors and const.i.tutional government, finding all things ready to build a Greater Britain. Histories there are in plenty, of so many hundred pages, devoted to describing the "blessings of const.i.tutional government," of the stoppage of transportation, of the discovery of gold, and all the other milestones on the road to nationhood; but there is given in them no room to describe the work of the sailors--a chapter or two is the most historians afford the naval pioneers.

The printing by the New South Wales Government of the Historical Records of New South Wales has given bookmakers access to much valuable material (dispatches chiefly) hitherto unavailable; and to the volumes of these Records, to the contemporary historians of "The First Fleet" of Captain Phillip, to the many South Sea "voyages," and other works acknowledged in the text, these writers are indebted. Their endeavour has been to collect together the scattered material that was worth collecting relating to what might be called the naval period of Australia. This involved some years'

study and the reading of scores of books, and we mention the fact in extenuation of such faults of commission and omission as may be discerned in the work by the careful student of Australian history.

The authors are very sensible of their obligations to Mr. Emery Walker, not only for the time and trouble which he has bestowed upon the finding of ill.u.s.trations, but also for many valuable suggestions in connection with the volume.

LOUIS BECKE.

WALTER JEFFERY.

_London_, 1899.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY--THE EARLIEST AUSTRALIAN VOYAGERS: THE PORTUGUESE, SPANISH, AND DUTCH.

Learned geographers have gone back to very remote times, even to the Middle Ages, and, by the aid of old maps, have set up ingenious theories showing that the Australian continent was then known to explorers. Some evidence has been adduced of a French voyage in which the continent was discovered in the youth of the sixteenth century, and, of course, it has been a.s.serted that the Chinese were acquainted with the land long before Europeans ventured to go so far afloat. There is strong evidence that the west coast of Australia was touched by the Spaniards and the Portuguese during the first half of the sixteenth century, and proof of its discovery early in the seventeenth century. At the time of these very early South Sea voyages the search, it should always be remembered, was for a great Antarctic continent. The discovery of islands in the Pacific was, to the explorers, a matter of minor importance; New Guinea, although visited by the Portuguese in 1526, up to the time of Captain Cook was supposed by Englishmen to be a part of the mainland, and the eastern coast of Australia, though touched upon earlier and roughly outlined upon maps, remained unknown to them until Cook explored it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTIN FROBISHER. From the portrait in Holland's "Herolowologia Anglica" [London, 1620]. _To face p_. 2.]

_Early Voyages to Australia_, by R.H. Major, printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1859, is still the best collection of facts and contains the soundest deductions from them on the subject, and although ably-written books have since been published, the industrious authors have added little or nothing in the way of indisputable evidence to that collected by Major.

The belief in the existence of the Australian continent grew gradually and naturally out of the belief in a great southern land. Mr. G.B. Barton, in an introduction to his valuable Australian [Sidenote: 1578]

history, traces this from 1578, when Frobisher wrote:--

"Terra Australis seemeth to be a great, firme land, lying under and aboute the south pole, being in many places a fruitefull soyle, and is not yet thorowly discovered, but only seen and touched on the north edge thereof by the travaile of the Portingales and Spaniards in their voyages to their East and West Indies. It is included almost by a paralell, pa.s.sing at 40 degrees in south lat.i.tude, yet in some places it reacheth into the sea with great promontories, even into the tropicke Capricornus. Onely these partes are best known, as over against Capo d' buona Speranza (where the Portingales see popingayes commonly of a wonderful greatnesse), and againe it is knowen at the south side of the straight of Magellanies, and is called Terra del Fuego. It is thoughte this south lande, about the pole Antartike, is farre bigger than the north land about the pole Artike; but whether it be so or not, we have no certaine knowledge, for we have no particular description thereof, as we have of the land under and aboute the north pole."

Then Purchas, in 1678, says:--

"This land about the Straits is not perfectly discovered, whether it be Continent or Islands. Some take it for Continent, and extend it more in their imagination than any man's experience towards those Islands of Saloman and New Guinea, esteeming (of which there is great probability) that Terra Australis, or the Southerne Continent, may for the largeness thereof take a first place in order and the first in greatnesse in the division and parting of the Whole World."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROBISHER'S MAP. From "A true Discourse of the late Voyages of Discoverie for the finding of a pa.s.sage to Cathaya by the Northweast under the conduct of _Martin Frobisher_, Generall:" [London, 1578]. _To face p_. 4.]

The most important of the Spanish voyages was that made by De Quiros, who left Callao in December, 1605, in charge of an expedition of three s.h.i.+ps.

One of these vessels was commanded by Luis Vaez de Torres. De Quiros, who is believed to have been by birth a Portuguese, discovered several island groups and many isolated islands, among the former being the New Hebrides, which he, believing he had found the continent, named Tierra Australis del Espiritu Santo. Soon after the s.h.i.+ps commanded by De Quiros became separated from the other vessels, and Torres took charge. He subsequently found that the land seen was an island group, and so determined to sail westward in pursuance of the scheme of exploration. In about the month of August he fell in with a chain of islands (now called the Louisiade Archipelago and included in the British Possession of New Guinea) which he thought, reasonably enough, was the beginning of New Guinea, but which really lies a little to the southeast of that great island. As he could not weather the group, he bore away to the southward, [Sidenote: 1605]

and his subsequent proceedings are here quoted from Burney's _Voyages_:--

"We went along three hundred leagues of coast, as I have mentioned, and diminished the lat.i.tude 2-1/2 degrees, which brought us into 9 degrees. From thence we fell in with a bank of from three to nine fathoms, which extends along the coast to 7-1/2 south lat.i.tude; and the end of it is in 5 degrees. We could go no further on for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail south-west in that depth to 11 degrees south lat.i.tude. There is all over it an archipelago of islands without number, by which we pa.s.sed; and at the end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large islands, and they appeared more to the southward. They were inhabited by black people, very corpulent and naked. Their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fas.h.i.+oned. We could not get any of their arms. We caught in all this land twenty persons of different nations, that with them we might be able to give a better account to your Majesty. They give [us] much notice of other people, although as yet they do not make themselves well understood. We were upon this bank two months, at the end of which time we found ourselves in twenty-five fathoms and 5 degrees south lat.i.tude and ten leagues from the coast; and having gone 480 leagues here, the coast goes to the north-east. I did not search it, for the bank became very shallow. So we stood to the north."

The "very large islands" seen by Torres were no doubt the hills of Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia, and so he, all unconsciously, had pa.s.sed within sight of the continent for which he was searching. A copy of the report by Torres was lodged in the archives of Manila, and when the English took that city in 1762, Dalrymple, the celebrated geographer, discovered it, and gave the name of Torres Straits to what is now well known as the dangerous pa.s.sage dividing New Guinea from Australia. De Quiros, in his s.h.i.+p, made no further discovery; he arrived on the Mexican coast in October, 1606, and did all he could to induce Philip III. of Spain to sanction further exploration, but without success.

Of the voyages of the Dutch in Australian waters much interesting matter is available. Major sums up the case in these words:--

"The entire period up to the time of Dampier, ranging over two centuries, presents these two phases of obscurity: that in the sixteenth century (the period of the Portuguese and Spanish discoveries) there are indications on maps of the great probability of Australia having already been discovered, but with no written doc.u.ments to confirm them; while in the seventeenth century there is doc.u.mentary evidence that its coasts were touched upon or explored by a considerable number of Dutch voyagers, but the doc.u.ments immediately describing these voyages have not been found."

The period of known Dutch discovery begins with the [Sidenote: 1644]

establishment of the Dutch East India Company, and a knowledge of the west coast of Australia grew with the growth of the Dutch colonies, but grew slowly, for the Dutchmen were too busy trading to risk s.h.i.+ps and spend time and money upon scientific voyages.

In January, 1644, Commodore Abel Janszoon Tasman was despatched upon his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas, and his instructions, signed by the Governor-General of Batavia, Antonio Van Diemen, begin with a recital of all previous Dutch voyages of a similar character. From this doc.u.ment an interesting summary of Dutch exploration can be made. Tasman, in his first voyage, had discovered the island of Van Diemen, which he named after the then Governor of Batavia, but which has since been named Tasmania, after its discoverer. During this first voyage the navigator also discovered New Zealand, pa.s.sed round the east side of Australia without seeing the land, and on his way home sailed along the northern sh.o.r.e of New Guinea.

But to come back to the summary of Dutch voyages found in Tasman's instructions: During 1605 and 1606 the Dutch yacht _Duyphen_ made two exploring voyages to New Guinea. On one trip the commander, after coasting New Guinea, steered southward along the islands on the west side of Torres Straits to that part of Australia, a little to the west and south of Cape York, marked on modern maps as Duyphen Point, thus unconsciously--for he thought himself still on the west coast of New Guinea--making the first authenticated discovery of the continent.

Dirk Hartog, in command of the _Endragt_, while on his way from Holland to the East Indies, put into what Dampier afterwards called Sharks' Bay, and on an island, which now bears his name, deposited a tin plate with an inscription recording his arrival, and dated October 25th, 1616. The plate was afterwards found by a Dutch navigator in 1697, and replaced by another, which in its turn was discovered in July, 1801, by Captain Hamelin, of the _Naturaliste_, on the well-known French voyage in search of the ill-fated La Perouse. The Frenchman copied the inscription, and nailed the plate to a post with another recording his own voyage. These inscriptions were a few years later removed by De Freycinet, and deposited in the museum of the Inst.i.tute of Paris. Hartog ran along the coast a few degrees, naming the land after his s.h.i.+p, and was followed by many other voyagers at frequent intervals down to the year [Sidenote: 1623-1627]

1727, from which time Dutch exploration has no more a place in Australian discovery.

During the 122 years of which we have records of their voyages, although the Dutch navigators' work, compared with that done by Cook and his successors, was of small account; yet, considering the state of nautical science, and that the s.h.i.+ps were for the most part Dutch East Indiamen, the Dutch names which still sprinkle the north and the west coasts of the continent show that from Cape York in the extreme north, westward of the Great Australian Bight in the south, the Dutchmen had touched at intervals the whole coast-line.

But before leaving the Dutch period there are one or two voyages that, either on account of their interesting or important character, deserve brief mention.

In 1623 Arnhem's Land, now the northern district of the Northern Territory of South Australia, was discovered by the Dutch yachts _Pesa_ and _Arnhem_. This voyage is also noteworthy on account of the ma.s.sacre of the master of the _Arnhem_ and eight of his crew by the natives while they were exploring the coast of New Guinea. In 1627 the first discovery of the south coast was made by the _Gulde Zeepard_, and the land then explored, extending from Cape Leeuwin to the Nuyts Archipelago, on the South Australian coast, was named after Peter Nuyts, then on board the s.h.i.+p on his way to Batavia, whence he was sent to j.a.pan as amba.s.sador from Holland.

In the year 1628 a colonizing expedition of eleven vessels left Holland for the Dutch East Indies. Among these s.h.i.+ps was the _Batavia_, commanded by Francis Pelsart. A terrible storm destroyed ten of the fleet, and on June 4th, 1629, the _Batavia_ was driven ash.o.r.e on the reef still known as Houtman's Abrolhos, which had been discovered and named by a Dutch East Indiaman some years earlier--probably by the commander of the _Leeuwin_, who discovered and named after his s.h.i.+p the cape at the south-west point of the continent. The _Batavia_, which carried a number of chests of silver money, went to pieces on the reef. The crew of the s.h.i.+p managed to land upon the rocks, and saved some food from the wreck, but they were without water. Pelsart, in one of the s.h.i.+p's boats, spent a couple of weeks exploring the inhospitable coast in the neighbourhood in the hope of discovering water, but found so little that he ultimately determined to attempt to make Batavia and from there bring [Sidenote: 1629]

succour to his s.h.i.+p's company. On July 3rd he fell in with a Dutch s.h.i.+p off Java and was taken on to Batavia. From there he obtained help and returned to the wreck, arriving at the Abrolhos in the middle of September; but during the absence of the commander the castaways had gone through a terrible experience, which is related in Therenot's _Recueil de Voyages Curieux,_ and translated into English in Major's book, from which the following is extracted:--

"Whilst Pelsart is soliciting a.s.sistance, I will return to those of the crew who remained on the island; but I should first inform you that the supercargo, named Jerome Cornelis, formerly an apothecary at Haarlem, had conspired with the pilot and some others, when off the coast of Africa, to obtain possession of the s.h.i.+p and take her to Dunkirk, or to avail themselves of her for the purpose of piracy. This supercargo remained upon the wreck ten days after the vessel had struck, having discovered no means of reaching the sh.o.r.e. He even pa.s.sed two days upon the mainmast, which floated, and having from thence got upon a yard, at length gained the land. In the absence of Pelsart, he became commander, and deemed this a suitable occasion for putting his original design into execution, concluding that it would not be difficult to become master of that which remained of the wreck, and to surprise Pelsart when he should arrive with the a.s.sistance which he had gone to Batavia to seek, and afterwards to cruise in these seas with his vessel. To accomplish this it was necessary to get rid of those of the crew who were not of his party; but before imbruing his hands with blood he caused his accomplices to sign a species of compact, by which they promised fidelity one to another. The entire crew was divided [living upon] between three islands; upon that of Cornelis, which they had named the graveyard of Batavia, was the greatest number of men. One of them, by name Weybehays, a lieutenant, had been despatched to another island to seek for water, and having discovered some after a search of twenty days, he made the preconcerted signal by lighting three fires, but in vain, for they were not noticed by the people of Cornelis' company, the conspirators having during that time murdered those who were not of their party. Of these they killed thirty or forty. Some few saved themselves upon pieces of wood, which they joined together, and going in search of Weybehays, informed him of the horrible ma.s.sacre that had taken place. Having with him forty-five men, he resolved to keep upon his guard, and to defend himself from these a.s.sa.s.sins if they should make an attack upon his company, which in effect they designed to do, and to treat the other party in the same manner; for they feared lest their company, or that which remained upon the third island, should inform the commander upon his arrival, and thus prevent the execution of their design. They succeeded easily with the party last mentioned, which was the weakest, killing the whole of them, excepting seven children and some women. They hoped to succeed as easily with Weybehays' company, and in the meanwhile broke open the chests of merchandise which had been saved from the vessel.

Jerome Cornelis caused clothing to be made [Sidenote: 1629]

for his company out of the rich stuffs which he found therein, choosing to himself a bodyguard, each of whom he clothed in scarlet, embroidered with gold and silver. Regarding the women as part of the spoil, he took one for himself, and gave one of the daughters of the minister to a princ.i.p.al member of his party, abandoning the other three for public use. He drew up also certain rules for the future conduct of his men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DUTCH MAN-OF-WAR OF THE END OF THE 17th CENTURY. From a print after Vandervelde.]

"After these horrible proceedings he caused himself to be elected captain-general by a doc.u.ment which he compelled all his companions to sign. He afterwards sent twenty-two men in two shallops to destroy the company of Weybehays, but they met with a repulse. Taking with him thirty-seven men, he went himself against Weybehays, who received him at the water's edge as he disembarked, and forced him to retire, although the lieutenant and his men had no weapons but clubs, the ends of which were armed with spikes.

Finding force unavailing, the mutineer had recourse to other means. He proposed a treaty of peace, the chaplain, who remained with Weybehays, drawing up the conditions. It was agreed to with this proviso, that Weybehays' company should remain unmolested, and they, upon their part, agreed to deliver up a little boat in which one of the sailors had escaped from the island where Cornelis was located to that of Weybehays, receiving in return some stuffs for clothing his people. During his negotiations Cornelis wrote to certain French soldiers who belonged to the lieutenant's company offering to each a sum of money to corrupt them, with the hope that with this a.s.sistance he might easily compa.s.s his design. His letters, which were without effect, were shown to Weybehays, and Cornelis, who was ignorant of their disclosure, having arrived the next day with three or four others to find Weybehays and bring him the apparel, the latter caused him to be attacked, killed two or three of the company, and took Cornelis himself prisoner. One of them, by name Wouterlos, who escaped from this rout, returned the following day to renew the attack, but with little success.

"Pelsart arrived during these occurrences in the frigate _Sardam_.

As he approached the wreck he observed smoke from a distance, a circ.u.mstance that afforded him great consolation, since he perceived by it that his people were not all dead. He cast anchor, and threw himself immediately into a skiff with bread and wine, and proceeded to land on one of the islands. Nearly at the same time a boat came alongside with four armed men. Weybehays, who was one of the four, ... informed him of the ma.s.sacre, and advised him to return as speedily as possible to his vessel, for that the conspirators designed to surprise him, having already murdered twenty-five persons, and to attack him with two shallops, adding that he himself had that morning been at close quarters with them.

Pelsart perceived at the same time the two shallops coming towards him, and had scarcely got on board his own vessel before they came alongside. He was surprised to see the people covered with embroidery of gold and silver and weapons in their hands, and demanded of them why they approached the vessel armed. They replied that they would inform him when they came on board. He commanded them to cast their arms into the sea, or otherwise he would sink them. Finding themselves compelled [Sidenote: 1629]

to submit, they threw away their weapons, and being ordered on board, were immediately placed in irons. One of them, named Jan de Bremen, confessed that he had put to death or a.s.sisted in the a.s.sa.s.sination of twenty-seven persons. The same evening Weybehays brought his prisoner on board.

"On the 18th day of September the captain and the master-pilot, taking with them ten men of Weybehays' company, pa.s.sed over in boats to the island of Cornelis. Those who still remained thereon lost all courage as soon as they saw them, and allowed themselves to be placed in irons."

Pelsart remained another week at the Abrolhos, endeavouring to recover some of the _Batavia's_ treasure, and succeeded in finding all but one chest. The mutineers were tried by the officers of the _Sardam_, and all but two were executed before the s.h.i.+p left the scene of their awful crime.