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Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia: / A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook. cover

Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia: / A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook.

Chapter 14: APPENDIX II.
By Richard Henry Major
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About This Book

The volume assembles translated documents, manuscript-map extracts, official reports, voyage journals, and shipwreck narratives that record early European contact with the southern continent prior to Cook. An editor’s introduction contextualizes cartographic evidence and documentary gaps, and the selections present navigators’ observations of coasts, search and rescue expeditions, and successive coastal surveys, accompanied by contemporary maps and binding instructions. The material exposes uncertainties in attribution, instances of concealment or lost records, and evolving geographic knowledge as crews charted and revisited the island and adjacent lands. Readers are offered primary-source testimony illustrating how seafaring reports, maps, and administrative dispatches combined to shape early understandings of the region’s coastline.

APPENDIX II.

Saturday, December 10th, 1695.

Touching the report of the Commissioners, who, in compliance with the Commissarial resolution of the 8th c., have given due attention to the subject of the search and inquiry after the ship De Ridderschap van Hollandt, and to the inquiry to be connected therewith, viz., as to the nature of the South Land, and of the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam, and matters connected therewith, together with the sending of an expedition thither for the purpose of the inquiry;—on deliberation and in conformity with the advice of the above-mentioned Commissioners, it has been resolved and found good:—that the said voyage shall be undertaken not from Batavia, as has been heretofore thought good, and in favour of which this Assembly had given instructions in its missive to the General and Council from the 10th of last month, and which is hereby altered in so far—but from the Cape of Good Hope, and in the beginning of October next; that for this purpose the Chamber Amsterdam shall equip and get ready for sea by March next, a suitable frigate, 110–112 feet long, to be built by the said Chamber, and which is to have the name of Geelvinck, together with two sailing galiots, under the command of and accompanied by the skipper Willem de Vlamingh, provided with such necessaries as shall be thought proper.

That furthermore, the said De Vlamingh shall, if he can do so without much loss of time, and as it were en passant, touch at the islands of Tristan d’Acunha, on this side of the Cape, in 37´ south latitude, to examine them as much as he can, and under such instructions as shall be handed over to him. The Chamber Amsterdam being hereby once more requested and authorized, to arrange and carry into execution what has been said above with regard to the South Land and Tristan d’Acunha, and to prepare such instructions as shall be thought proper.

Lastly, that De Vlamingh shall in his instructions be ordered to touch on the islands St. Paul and Amsterdam, lying directly on his track in ... degrees south latitude, and to examine their situations; also, whether any signs of men from wrecked ships are to be found, especially from the Ridderschap van Hollandt.