The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson, by Ida Lee

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Title: The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson
With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N

Author: Ida Lee

Release Date: August 28, 2004 [EBook #7509]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOGBOOKS OF THE LADY NELSON ***

Produced by Sue Asscher

THE LOGBOOKS OF
THE LADY NELSON

WITH THE JOURNAL OF HER FIRST COMMANDER
LIEUTENANT JAMES GRANT, R.N.

BY

IDA LEE, F.R.G.S.
(MRS. CHARLES BRUCE MARRIOTT.)

AUTHOR OF:
THE COMING OF THE BRITISH TO AUSTRALIA,
[and]
COMMODORE SIR JOHN HAYES, HIS VOYAGE AND LIFE.

WITH SIXTEEN CHARTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE ORIGINALS
IN THE ADMIRALTY LIBRARY.

GRAFTON & CO.
69 GREAT RUSSELL STREET
LONDON. W.C.

First Published in 1915.

TO THE MEMORY OF MY GRANDFATHER,
WILLIAM LEE,
ONE OF AUSTRALIA'S PIONEERS.

PREFACE.

The objects for which the Lady Nelson's voyages were undertaken render
her logbooks of more than ordinary interest. She was essentially an
Australian discovery ship and during her successive commissions she was
employed exclusively in Australian waters. The number of voyages that she
made will perhaps never be accurately known, but her logbooks in
existence testify to the important missions that she accomplished. The
most notable are those which record early discoveries in Victoria: the
exploration of the Queensland coast: the surveys of King Island and the
Kent Group: the visits to New Zealand and the founding of settlements at
Hobart, Port Dalrymple, and Melville Island. Seldom can the logbooks of a
single ship show such a record. Their publication seemed very necessary,
for the handwriting on the pages of some of them is so faded that it is
already difficult to decipher, and apparently only the story of Grant's
voyages and the extracts from Murray's log published by Labilliere in the
Early History of Victoria have ever before been published. In
transcription I have somewhat modernized the spelling where old or
incorrect forms tended to obscure the sense, and omitted repetitions, as
it would have been impossible