LXXXII. NEW SOUTH WALES LIGHTHOUSES. 



NEW SOUTH WALES LIGHTHOUSES. 

 By H. R. CARLETON, m.a.l, m. inst. c. e. 



[Presented to and discussed at the Engineering Section of the Royal Society 

 o/N.S. Wales, December 21,1898.'] 



Coast Surveys. 

 If one of the early navigators could revisit the shores of 

 Australia, he might well wonder how he could have done such 

 good work without the lighthouses, lifeboats, pilot steamers, charts 

 and sailing directions which we now look upon as necessities of 

 our maritime life. Those old mariners from Eredia in 1601, 

 De Quiros and Torres in 1606, Edel in 1623, Peter Nuzts in 1627, 

 JDampier and Cook in 1770, had rough work exploring and 

 charting the broken coast line of Australia, and R. de Vaugondy's 

 map of New Holland in 1752 shows how wonderfully these early 

 chartographers could utilise the primitive appliances at their com- 

 mand. It was not until 1799, or twenty-nine years after Cook 

 landed at Botany Bay, that a systematic attempt to obtain a chart 

 of the coast of Australia was made, but in that year Commander 

 M. Flinders, in the sloop Investigator, commenced a survey em- 

 bracing the whole of the east coast, from Cape Howe to Cape 

 York. His chart of Terra Australis was published in 1814, and 

 copies are now very rare. Soundings were taken about every 

 three miles on the ship's course, and the principal islands, reefs, 

 shoal patches, land marks, etc., sketched in. 



These early reconnaisance surveys have proved to be remark- 

 ably accurate when we consider the nature of the work and the 

 class of instruments then available. Almost the whole of this 

 work is done from the vessel's deck while working along the coast 

 under sail, checking being done by astronomical observations as 

 often as circumstances will permit. In these days of patent logs, 

 sounding machines, and steam launches, such work is compara- 

 tively simple and expeditious, but before steam vessels were 

 known, or patent logs invented, the work required more seaman- 

 ship, and more time to attain anything like a fair amount of 

 correctness. 



