A trip down under

26 Aug 2011

Following Becky's trip across the pond three months ago, I spent last week on another journey to discuss possible overseas venues for the longitude exhibition we are planning.

My trip included the very splendid Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) in Sydney, where there are great links to our project. This was clear from the moment the plane approached the airport, which is in Botany Bay, where Captain James Cook landed in 1770 during his first circumnavigation on HMS Endeavour. Whether you consider what followed as European settlement or colonisation, it was certainly a significant moment in Australian history, and determined where the First Fleet would land in 1788.

Not surprisingly, Cook and the First Fleet feature in the ANMM's displays, which include material from the Cook voyage and from HMS Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet, which was then wrecked off Norfolk Island in 1790. For our project, the First Fleet's voyage is significant because it was one of several supported by the Board of Longitude. On this occasion they employed William Dawes as astronomer and lent many instruments to the expedition, including Larcum Kendall's marine timekeeper K1, which had previously gone with Cook.

I could go on and on with these links: Matthew Flinders, Captain Bligh and the Bounty, for instance, are all important stories in Sydney and to us. But there are also some other less obvious avenues we are exploring in thinking about the exhibition. One of these concerns VOC voyages to the Dutch East Indies in the seventeenth century. To get to their destination, the Dutch ships would sail east from the Cape of Good Hope until they reckoned it was time to head north to what is now Indonesia. The problem came in estimating that east-west position, which is where some came to grief, most famously the Batavia, which was wrecked off the coast of Western Australia - the beginning of a long and sorry tale. Its story would make a good introduction to the importance of knowing your longitude and to why people were making long voyages in unfamiliar waters.

You can probably tell I'm brimming with ideas from the trip, so let's hope an Australian leg of the tour does come about. Much planning to do before then, though!

Image: material from HMS Sirius on display at the Australian National Maritime Museum. By the way, the anchor is huge!