1. George Bass was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia.
19 Facts About George Bass
1. 2.
George Bass's father died in 1777 when Bass was six.
3.
Later that year George Bass 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.
4.
In 1797, without Flinders, in an open whaleboat with a crew of six, George Bass sailed to Cape Howe, the farthest point of south-eastern Australia.
5.
George Bass 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.
6.
George Bass was an enthusiastic naturalist and botanist, and he forwarded some of his botanical discoveries to Sir Joseph Banks in London.
7.
George Bass was one of the first to describe the Australian marsupial, the wombat.
8.
On 8 October 1800, George Bass married Elizabeth Waterhouse at St James's Church, Westminster.
9.
George Bass was the sister of Henry Waterhouse, Bass's former shipmate, and captain of the Reliance.
10.
In January 1801 George Bass set sail again for Port Jackson, leaving Elizabeth behind, and though the couple wrote to each other, they did not meet again, as George Bass never returned from this journey.
11.
George Bass was the owner-manager and set sail in early 1801.
12.
George Bass expected much from it, but before he heard it had been declined he sailed south from Sydney never to return.
13.
George Bass set sail on his last voyage in the Venus on 5 February 1803 and he and his crew were never seen again.
14.
George Bass's 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.
15.
George Bass 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.
16.
In England in January 1806, George Bass was listed by the Admiralty as lost at sea, and later that year Elizabeth was granted an annuity from the widows' fund, backdated to when George Bass's half-pay had ended in June 1803.
17.
George Bass had made the usual contributions to the fund from his salary.
18.
One story, attributed to William Campbell of the brig Harrington, has it that George Bass was captured by the Spanish in Chile and sent to the silver mines.
19.
Three months is too short a time for George Bass to reach Chile and then the Harrington to get back to Sydney.