English navigator, explorer and man of science, born on 14.03.
at Donington near Boston in Lincolnshire, entered the Royal Navy
on 23.10.1789. After serving on different ships, he was sent on
HMS Reliance to New South Wales, where he and his friend George
Bass explored the coast south of Botany Bay. After a voyage to
the Cape of Good Hope, where he was promoted to a lieutenancy,
he surveyed in February 1798 the Furneaux Islands north of
Tasmania and went with Bass in September on the 25 ton sloop
Norfolk to prove by circumnavigation that Van Diemen's Land was
an island. In the Summer of 1799, he surveyed the coast north of
Port Jackson as far as Moreton Bay and Hervey's Bay. On his
return to England, he was appointed to the command of an
expedition for the thorough exploration of Terra Australis, as
the southern continent was still called. He is said to have been
the first person to give the continent its present name. On
18.06.1801, the expedition left Spithead on the 334 tons sloop
Investigator with instruc