HM Colonial Sloop Norfolk
In 1798, the 25 tonnes Sloop Norfolk started life as the longboat of HMS Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet to Botany Bay. This longboat was made bigger, extended , replanked and redecked with planks made from Norfolk Pine. Usually Norfolk Pine was used for masts and spars and not used for planking on the hull of the ship.
The sloop Norfolk carried materials between the Norfolk Island and Sydney.
The sloop Norfolk was confiscated by Governor Hunter on its arrival at Port Jackson in June,
because construction of boats large enough for convicts to seize and escape was forbidden.
Hunter fitted the sloop Norfolk for a voyage to confirm the existence of the strait and to circumnavigate Van Diemen’s Land.
In 1798 the sloop Norfolk sailed from Sydney Cove under Lieutenant Matthew Flinders and crew of 8 on an exploratory voyage.
Flinders circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land(Tasmania), and proved it was not part of the mainland,
Matthew Flinders travelled to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in the colonial sloop Norfolk with George Bass in 1798-1799.
With Flinders in command and with Bass, eight other men and provisions for three months, he left on 7 October 1798.
They returned to Port Jackson on 12 January 1799. Hunter named the strait in honour of Bass.
Later in 1799, Flinders was given official permission to set off in the sloop Norfolk to explore northward discovering the size of Moreton Bay. Matthew Flinders, with his aboriginal friend Bongaree, his brother Samuel, and
a small crew travelled north in the Norfolk to explore the Moreton Bay and Hervey Bay areas.
Flinders landed at numerous places, made contact with aborigines,
climbed one of the Glasshouse Mtns, and continued his coastal surveys and charting.
In 1800, the Governor Captain John Hunter's fears of a hijack proved to be well founded: HM Colonial sloop Norfolk was seized by 15 convicts while returning to Sydney from the Hawkesbury River with a cargo of wheat. Their intention was to sail her to the Molluccas but she ran aground on the coast north of Sydney and was lost. The exact point was Pirate Point, a sandbar inside Newcastle harbour which was so named when the government sloop Norfolk, which had been seized by convicts at the Hawkesbury in 1800, was wrecked there.
An alternative source claims that in 1800 The Colonial Sloop NORFOLK came to an end (under someone else's command) when she was wrecked in Tahiti.
|
Home
Australia Index
James Craig
The Duyfken
Sloop Norfolk
Baudin & Flinders
Newcastle Maritime
Aubrey/Maturin Books
|
