George Bennet was born in Sheffield in 1774. He is chiefly remembered for his epic missionary voyage of 1821–29, which he undertook with Rev. Daniel Tyerman. Their task was to visit the sprawling southern stations of the London Missionary Society. Setting sail from London in the whaler ‘Tuscan’ on 2 May 1821, they voyaged via Cape Horn to Tahiti and other South Sea islands. In 1824 they visited Australia and New Zealand, before sailing through the Torres Strait to Java, Singapore, Canton and Calcutta. They travelled through southern India and sailed from Madras for Mauritius and Madagascar. Tyerman’s health broke down while in India and he died at Antananarivo in Madagascar on 30 July 1828. Bennet continued home via South Africa, having travelled some 90,000 miles. An account of this missionary circumnavigation was published in 1832 as ‘Journal of voyages and travels by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq.: deputed from the London Missionary Society, to visit their various stations in the South Sea Islands, China, India, etc. between the years 1821 and 1829’.