16 November: Boreham on George Bass

The Saga of the Sea
It was on November 16 that George Bass and Matthew Flinders sighted Cape Ronal and next day sailed into the Derwent in the course of their famous adventure. Tasmania will always reflect with gratitude on the incalculable debt that it owes to the two men who gave her geographical status and a place of her own on the map. The feat was accomplished by two young fellows who amused themselves, during the dying months of the 18th century, in knocking about the Australian coast in a whaleboat. The chubby-checked youth with the fair hair is George Bass; his slimmer, darker, and younger companion is Matthew Flinders. In the course of their gipsyings, they convinced themselves beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Van Diemen's Land was an island; but the trouble was that they had no evidence that would satisfy the scientists. In their dilemma they appealed to Governor Hunter.

"The problem is simplicity itself," retorted His Excellency. "If it's an island, take a sloop and sail round it!" They did, and, on their return, on January 12, 1799, Flinders insisted that the intervening strait must be named after his companion. The compliment was fitting, for as Mr. C. R. Long has shown, Bass' achievement was one of real grandeur. He did a most amazing and most valuable piece of work and did it under conditions that might have daunted the bravest.

The Magnetism Of The Undiscovered
Born in the same year as Sir Walter Scott and Mungo Park, George Bass became a naval surgeon. The duties of a master mariner were scarcely in his line. He came to Australia in 1795 in the Reliance, the ship that brought out Capt. Hunter to succeed Capt. Arthur Phillip as Governor. Matthew Flinders was a midshipman in the same vessel. Indeed, Flinders attributes his own passion for exploration to the influence that Bass acquired over his plastic and impressionable mind in the course of that memorable voyage. "For," as Flinders told Sir Joseph Banks many years afterwards, "George Bass was a man with the true spirit of the pioneer, one whom no danger could ever daunt. The association of Bass and Flinders deserves to be treasured among the classical records of the world's finest friendships.

With Bass, pathfinding was a passion. The Reliance had scarcely cast anchor in Sydney Harbour when the young surgeon set off to explore the thickly-wooded country round Port Jackson. Within a few weeks, he had built the first of two tiny vessels eight feet long—each of which he named "Tom Thumb"—and put out to sea to examine and chart the coast of New South Wales. A stranger to fear, he would dare a thousand deaths to solve a problem that was teasing his curiosity. When, for example, he heard that the Blue Mountains had never been crossed, and that the blacks had confidently predicted that no way over those haughty heights would ever be discovered, Bass immediately organised an expedition, and, if he had been given time to persevere, probably would have won for himself the laurels that afterwards adorned Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth.

Gave Tasmania A Place On The Map
Capt. Cook himself often looked wistfully at the expanse of blue waters to the north of Van Diemen's Land, and longed to apply himself to the intriguing problem that they presented; but he had other fish to fry and never found time to pursue the challenging investigation. Bass felt in his very bones that a through passage existed; he enlisted the co-operation of Flinders; they acquired the sloop; and, to the vast enrichment of geographical science, they achieved their historic triumph.

Few monuments immortalise the fame of George Bass. At one time he was esteemed the most audacious of all our navigators. Snuff boxes made out of the boats in which he had sailed were treasured relics among seafaring men. Yet his name has been allowed to fade from human memory just as he himself faded from human sight. He sailed from Sydney for South America at the age of 32, and has never since been heard of. A legend declared that he fell into the hands of the Spaniards and perished as a worn-out slave in the South American mines. Dr. Keith Bowden, who has sifted the matter exhaustively, believes that his ship was lost with all hands on the treacherous New Zealand coast. Nobody knows. We only know that, representing that honest, unselfish and God-fearing type of seaman to which our Empire owes so much, he involved us in a debt of gratitude that we can never hope to pay.

F W Boreham

Image: George Bass