Today in History—February 5: The Life and Disappearance of George Bass

On this day in 1803, 32-year-old English explorer George Bass set sail from Sydney aboard the Venus with a crew of 25, bound for Tahiti. No one knows if they made it. The ship and its men vanished without a trace.

Bass was already something of a legend. Trained as a Royal Navy surgeon—and increasingly known as a keen naturalist and botanist—he arrived in Australia in 1795 aboard the HMS Reliance, one of the earliest expeditions to Britain’s new colony. On that voyage Bass met gifted sailor and cartographer Matthew Flinders. The two became close friends—and relentless explorers.

Bass brought along his library and his tiny boat, just 8 by 5 feet, named Tom Thumb. He and Flinders (and often Flinders’s 14-year-old servant, William Martin) used it to dart along the coast, charting tides and recording unfamiliar plants, animals, and landscapes no European had described before.

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In 1796 they became the first Europeans to reach Lake Illawarra. Hoping to avoid conflict with local Aboriginal people, they moved quietly. When they did encounter a band of men, Bass entertained them by repairing a paddle; Flinders offered them haircuts. Everyone parted amicably.

Bass suspected—based on tides—that a strait separated New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). In 1798 he and Flinders proved it—by spending three months sailing around Tasmania. Bass returned from that trip with one of Europe’s first descriptions of a wombat, an encounter that colony official David Collins described: Bass “lifted him off the ground and laid him upon his back, along his arm, like a child. He carried the beast upwards of a mile…all of which he took in good part.” (Eventually the wombat stopped being in “good part” and tore Bass’s coat.)

Upon return, Flinders persuaded the colony’s governor to name the passage Bass Strait. (When was the last time you petitioned a governor to name something after your best friend?)

Bass returned to England, married the sister of the captain of the Reliance, and raised capital to invest in a copper-sheathed ship, the Venus. In 1801 he sailed back to Australia with goods to sell—only to find the colony oversupplied. Disappointed, he chose a new trading destination: South America by way of Tahiti, a risky route often beset by Spanish pirates.

In 1806 he and his crew were declared lost at sea, and his widow was granted his pension.

The man disappeared, but the map remembers. In addition to Bass Strait, there’s Bass Highway, Bass River, Bass (town), Bass Point, Bass Hill, Division of Bass (federal and state), George Bass Drive, and Bass and Flinders Point.

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