How Dutch sailors found Australia and an English Pirate almost beat Captain Cook. On 15 January 1688 - almost 100 years to the day before Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Botany Bay as commander of the First Fleet - another English ship, the sixteen-gun Cygnet, was running downwind on a gentle breeze while closing on the coast of the same continent. Cygnet, however, was 2000 miles to the north-west of where Phillip would anchor HMS Sirius and go ashore to finally establish the first British colony in the Great South Land. To get to this point, Cygnet had crossed the Pacific from the coast of Mexico to the East Indies with a 140-man crew comprising a bunch of unruly seafarers, young and old ... and pirates all.
The fascinating story of the exceptional maritime explorer, Matthew Flinders - the man who put Australia on the map. Shipwrecks, storms, death and danger - Matthew Flinders encountered it all on his courageous quest to circumnavigate and chart the treacherous Terra Australis coastline. From the drama of epic voyages and devastating shipwrecks; his part in the naming of Australia; his cruel imprisonment by the French on Mauritius for six long and harrowing years; the heartbreaking separation from his beloved wife; and the comfort he got from his loyal cat, Trim; to his tragic death at just forty. This is a gripping adventure biography that details the life of Flinders, a true hero whose name is forever woven into the fabric of Australian history.
From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, English buccaneers, privateers, and naval expeditions sought fame and fortune in the distant reaches of the South Sea. Beginning with the voyage of Francis Drake in the 1570s and continuing through that of George Anson in the 1740s, a series of predatory English adventurers pursued Spanish treasure, and for a few the dream of riches came true. For most, the voyages ended in disappointment, and sometimes death. This engrossing book investigates these maritime adventures and how they were described in popular accounts of the time--accounts that affected English consciousness and perceptions of the wider world and that influenced the planning and nature of the later great voyages of James Cook and others. Glyndwr Williams, a leading expert on the exploration of the Pacific Ocean, draws on printed accounts of South Sea voyages as well as unpublished records--buccaneer journals, expedition papers, and government documents from public and private archives. For English seamen preying on Spanish trade and treasure, the South Sea was limited to the waters lapping the shores of Chile, Peru, and Mexico. But the vision was wider for others, Williams reveals. Cartographers at home in England, untrammeled by the constraints and dangers of actual voyaging, produced speculative maps with a vast Terra Australis Incognita, with fabulous Islands of Solomon, and with a promised short passage from Atlantic to Pacific. Satirical and utopian writers from Joseph Hall to Jonathan Swift found ample space in the wide ocean for their fictional travelers. And contemporary published voyage accounts--marvelous, though not necessarily reliable--further blurred the line between real and imaginary, contributing to the alluring, exotic image of the South Sea that took root in English folk memory and long outlasted the age of the buccaneers.
This book draws together words and images of the people who live and work across Australia's farthest horizons, together with the staff of the Australian Inland Mission (AIM) and its successor Frontier Services, who have devotedly served remote families and provided vital services which they would not otherwise have received.
