British naval surgeon and explorer of AustraliaThis article is about the explorer. For other uses, see George B* (disambiguation).

George B* (/bæs/; 30 January 1771 – after 5 February 1803) was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia.

Contents

• 1 Early years
• 2 The voyages of the Tom Thumb and Tom Thumb II
• 3 Whaleboat voyage to Western Port
• 4 Cir*navigation of Tasmania in the Norfolk
• 5 Marriage and trading
• 6 Final voyage
• 7 Speculation on B*'s fate
• 8 Recognition
• 9 See also
• 10 Notes
• 11 References
• 12 External links

Early years

B* was born on 30 January 1771 at Aswarby, a hamlet near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the son of a tenant farmer, George B*, and a local beauty named Sarah (née Newman). His father died in 1777 when B* was 6. He had attended Boston Grammar School and later trained in medicine at the hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire. At the age of 18, he was accepted in London as a member of the Company of Surgeons, and in 1794 he joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon.

He arrived in Sydney in New South Wales on HMS Reliance on 7 September 1795.

Also on the voyage were Matthew Flinders, John Hunter, Bennelong, and his surgeon's *istant William Martin.

The voyages of the Tom Thumb and Tom Thumb II

B* had brought with him on the Reliance a small boat with an 8-foot (2.4:m) keel and 5-foot (1.5:m) beam, which he called the Tom Thumb on account of its size. In October 1795 B* and Flinders, accompanied by William Martin sailed the Tom Thumb out of Port Jackson to Botany Bay and explored the Georges River further upstream than had been done previously by the colonists. Their reports on their return led to the settlement of Banks' Town.

In March 1796 the same party embarked on a second voyage in a larger boat, which they called the Tom Thumb II. During this trip they travelled as far down the coast as Lake Illawarra, which they called Tom Thumb Lagoon. They explored Port Hacking.

Later that year B* discovered good land near Prospect Hill, found lost cattle brought out with the First Fleet, and failed in an attempt to cross the Blue Mountains.

Whaleboat voyage to Western Port

Voyages of George B* Memorial (1912) to the "discovery and naming" of Western Port on 4 January 1798, at Flinders, Victoria.

In 1797, without Flinders, in an open whaleboat with a crew of six, B* sailed to Cape Howe, the farthest point of south-eastern Australia. From here he went westwards along what is now the coast of the Gippsland region of Victoria, to Western Port, almost as far as the entrance to Port Phillip, on the north s* of which is the site of present-day Melbourne. His belief that a strait separated the mainland from Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) was backed up by his astute observation of the rapid tide and the long south-western swell at Wilson's Promontory.

B* visited the Kiama area and made many notes on its botanical complexity and the amazing natural phenomenon, the Kiama Blowhole, noting the volcanic geology around the Blowhole and contributed much to its understanding.

Cir*navigation of Tasmania in the Norfolk

In 1798, this theory was confirmed when B* and Flinders, in the sloop Norfolk, cir*navigated Van Diemen's Land. In the course of this voyage B* visited the estuary of the Derwent River, found and named by Captain John Hayes in 1793, where the city of Hobart would be founded on the strength of his report in 1803. When the two returned to Sydney, Flinders recommended to Governor John Hunter that the p*age between Van Diemen's Land and the mainland be called B* Strait.

"This was no more than a just tribute to my worthy friend and companion," Flinders wrote, "for the extreme dangers and fatigues he had undergone, in first entering it in a whaleboat, and to the correct judgement he had formed, from various indications, of the existence of a wide opening between Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales."

B* was an enthusiastic naturalist and botanist, and he forwarded some of his botanical discoveries to Sir Joseph Banks in London. "In this voyage of fourteen weeks I collected those few plants upon Van Diemen's Land which had not been familiar to me in New South Wales," he wrote to Banks, "and have done myself the honour of submitting them to your inspection." He was made an honorary member of the Society for Promoting Natural History, which later became the Linnean Society. Some of his observations were published in the second volume of David Collins's An Account of the English colony in New South Wales. He was one of the first to describe the Australian marsupial, the wombat.

Marriage and trading

On 8 October 1800, George married Elizabeth Waterhouse at St James's Church, Westminster. She was the sister of Henry Waterhouse, B*'s former shipmate, and captain of the Reliance. In January 1801 B* set sail again for Port Jackson, leaving Elizabeth behind, and though the couple wrote to each other, they did not meet again, as B* never returned from this journey.

B* and a syndicate of friends had invested some £10,000 in the copper-sheathed brig Venus, and a cargo of general goods to transport and sell in Port Jackson. B* was the owner-manager and set sail in early 1801. (Among his influential friends and key business *ociates in the Antipodes was the principal surgeon of the satellite British colony on Norfolk Island, Thomas Jamison, who was subsequently appointed Surgeon-General of New South Wales.)

On p*ing through B* Strait on his 1801 voyage he recorded it simply as B* Strait, like any other geographical feature. It seems, as Flinders' biographer Ernest Scott observed, that B*'s natural modesty meant he felt no need to say "discovered by me" or "named after me".

On arrival B* found the colony awash with goods and he was unable to sell his cargo. Governor King was operating on a strict programme of economy and would not take the goods into the government store, even at a 50% discount. What King did though was contract with B* to ship salt pork from Tahiti. Food was scarce in Sydney at that time and prices were being driven up, yet pigs were plentiful in the Society Islands and King could contract with B* at 6 pence a pound where he'd been paying a shilling (12 pence) previously. The arrangement suited King's thrift, and was profitable for B*. With his partner Charles Bishop, B* sailed from Sydney in the Venus for Dusky Sound in New Zealand where they spent 14 days stripping iron from the wreck of Captain Brampton's old ship the Endeavour. This was made into axes which were used to trade for the pork in Tahiti before returning with the latter to Sydney by November 1802.

In January 1803 B* applied to King for a fishing monopoly extending from a line bisecting the lower South Island of New Zealand from Dusky Sound to Otago Harbour – now the site of the city of Dunedin – and including all the lands and seas to the south, notably the Antipodes Islands, probably on the basis of information from his brother-in-law Waterhouse, the discoverer of the Antipodes archipelago. He expected much from it, but before he heard it had been declined he sailed south from Sydney never to return. B* and Flinders were both operating out of Sydney during these times, but their stays there did not coincide.

Final voyage

What became of B* is unknown. He set sail on his last voyage in the Venus on 5 February 1803 and he and his crew were never seen again. His plan was to go to Tahiti and perhaps on to the Spanish colonies on the coast of Chile to buy provisions and bring them back to Sydney.

It has been suspected B* may also have planned to engage in contraband trade in Chile. Spain reserved the import of goods into her colonies for Spanish ships and Spanish merchants but the colonists needed more than they could supply and shortages and heavy taxation caused high prices, encouraging an extensive illegal trade with foreign vessels. Port Jackson was described by some 19th-century historians as a base for such smuggling Britain's strained relationship with Spain at that time meant British authorities were unconcerned.

B* still had much of the general cargo he had brought to Sydney in 1801 and he may well have been tempted to take some to Chile. Two of his last letters have hints at a venture which he could not name but in any case he set off in 1803, with a diplomatic letter from Governor King attesting his bona-fides and that his sole purpose if he were on the West coast of South America would be in procuring provisions.

As many months p*ed with no word of his arrival Governor King and B*'s friends in Sydney were forced to accept that he had met some misfortune. In England in January 1806 B* was listed by the Admiralty as lost at sea and later that year Elizabeth was granted an annuity from the widows' fund, back dated to when B*'s half-pay had ended in June 1803. B* had made the usual contributions to the fund from his salary.

Speculation on B*'s fate

A good deal of speculation has taken place about B*'s fate. One story, attributed to William Campbell of the brig Harrington, has it that B* was captured by the Spanish in Chile and sent to the silver mines. The Harrington was engaged in smuggling and returned to Sydney some three months after B*'s departure. However, this story dates from 1811 in a report by William Fitzmaurice. There are good records of Campbell in 1803, and then in 1805 when he captured a Spanish ship, but B* is not mentioned at those times. Three months is also too short a time for B* to reach Chile and then the Harrington to get back to Sydney.

Another factor against the South American story is that all British prisoners held by the Spanish in Chile and Peru were freed in 1808 and returned to Europe. If the crew of the Venus had indeed been captured then none of the 25 survived.

Adventurer Jørgen Jørgensen wrote about B* in his 1835 autobiography, claiming B* had attempted forced trade at gunpoint in Chile, and was captured when he let his guard down. Jørgensen probably met B*, but this account is almost certainly an invention. Jørgensen's writing, though entertaining, was often far from factual.

A search of Spanish archives in 1903 by scholar Pascual de Gayangos and a search of Peruvian archives in 2003 by historian Jorge Ortiz-Sotelo found no mention of B*. His ultimate fate remains a mystery.

Recognition

Western Port 200th anniversary of discovery re-enactment plaque.

Australia Post honoured George B* in 1963 with a postage stamp, and again in 1998 in *ociation with Matthew Flinders.

A re-enactment of the whaleboat voyage marked the 200th anniversary of B*'s voyage; the 9 metres (30:ft) "Elizabeth" skippered by Bern Cuthbertson arrived at Western Port on 5 January 1998. A plaque memorialising this was added to the B* and Flinders memorial at Flinders.

The following places commemorate the name of George B*:

• B* Highway (Tasmania)
• B* Highway (Victoria)
• B* Hill, New South Wales
• B* Point
• B* Strait
• B* River
• B*, Victoria (town)
• Division of B*, Tasmania (federal)
• Division of B*, Tasmania (state)
• B* and Flinders Point, Cronulla, New South Wales
• George B* Drive, Batehaven to Moruya Airport, Batemans Bay, New South Wales
• B* Islands (French Polynesia)

See also

• List of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea

Notes

References

• Bowden, Keith Macrae (2006). "B*, George (1771–1803)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University (online:ed.).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
• Estensen, Miriam (2005). The Life of George B*:: Surgeon and Sailor of the Enlightenment. London: National Maritime Museum. ISBN:978-0-948065-68-2.
• Keith Macrae Bowden: George B* 1771–1803: His Discoveries, Romantic Life and Tragic Disappearance. – London, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1952
• A Voyage to Terra Australis by Matthew Flinders at Project Gutenberg
• The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders, R.N. by Ernest Scott

Attribution

:This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain::Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1885). "B*, George". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol.:3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

External links

• Works by George B* at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about George B* at Internet Archive