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THE EXPEDITION UNDER LIEUTENANT- 

 GOVERNOR COLLINS IN 1803-4. 



BY JAMES BACKHOUSE WALKER. 

 Eead 14th October, 1889. 



1. The Origin of the Expedition and the 

 Voyage to Port Phillip. 



In former papers which I have had the honor to read 

 before the Royal Society, I have endeavoured to trace 

 the influence of French rivah-y in hastening the English 

 settlement of Australia. I have shown that to the 

 pioneer work of French navigators we owe the first 

 admirable surveys of the southern coasts of Tasmania, 

 and that it was wholly due to the apprehensions that 

 those surveys excited that Governor King sent Lieut. 

 Bowen from Port Jackson to take possession of the 

 Derwent. 



I have also briefly touched on the explorations of our 

 own English sailors in the neighbourhood of the Derwent 

 and in Bass' Strait, and the influence of their reports in 

 deciding the choice of localities for new colonies, while I 

 have followed the misfortunes of the unlucky settlement 

 at Risdon, and described its collapse after a short and 

 troubled life of little more than half a year. 



The real history of Tasmania as an English colony 

 begins with the departure from England, in the spring of 

 1803, of the expedition of Lieutenant-Governor Collins,* 

 the founder of Hobart; and it is with the origin and 

 misadventures of that expedition on its way to the 

 Derwent that I have to deal in the present paper. 



The project of the English Government to found a 

 colony on the shores of Bass' Strait, and the unsuccess- 

 ful attempt of Governor Collins to plant that settlement 



*The first lieutenant of the Calcutta published a narrative of the 

 voyage of the expedition to Port Phillip, and of its failure there. 

 "Account of a Youige to establish a Colony at Port Phillip, in 

 Bass' Straits, in H.M.S. Calcutta, in 1802-8-4. By James 

 Kingston Tuckey." London, 180.5. 



The principal official documents relating to the expedition down 

 to the date of its departure from Port Phillip, have been printed by 

 Mr. Francis Peter Labilliere, in his '• Early History of the Colony 

 of Victoria," 2 vols., London, 1878, and also by Mr. James 

 Bonwick, in his '' Port Phillip Settlement," London, 1883. The 

 Rev. "Robert Knopwood's Diary has been printed by Mr. John J. 

 Shillinglaw in his " Early Historical Records of Port Phillip," 

 Melbourne, 1878 ; 2nd edition, 8vo., 1879. The diary was copied 

 from the original (hen in the possession of the late Mr. Vernon W, 

 Hookey, of Hobart, 



