and from its
size had obtained the name of Tom Thumb.") In this diminutive craft the
two friends made preparations for setting out along the Coast. Taking
with them only one boy, named Martin, with provisions and ammunition for
a very short trip, they sailed the Tom Thumb out of Port Jackson and made
southward to Botany Bay, which they entered. They pushed up George's
River, which had been only partly explored, and pursued their
investigation of its winding course for twenty miles beyond the former
limit of survey. Upon their return they presented to Hunter a report
concerning the quality of the land seen on the borders of the river,
together with a sketch map. The Governor was induced from what they told
him to examine the country himself; and the result was that he founded
the settlement of Bankstown, which still remains, and boasts the
distinction of being one of the pioneer towns of Australia.

The adventurers were delayed from the further pursuit of their ambition
by ship's duties. The Reliance was ordered to convey to Norfolk Island an
officer of the New South Wales Corps required for duty there, as well as
the Judge Advocate. She sailed in January, 1796. After her return in
March, Bass and Flinders, being free again, lost no time in fitting out
for a second cruise. Their object this time was to search for a large
river, said to fall into the sea to the south of Botany Bay, which was
not marked on Cook's chart. As before, the crew consisted only of
themselves and the boy.

It has always been believed that the boat in which this second cruise was
made, was the same Tom Thumb as that which carried the two young
explorers to George's River; indeed, Flinders himself, in his Voyage to
Terra Australis, Volume 1, page 97, says that "Mr. Bass and myself went
again in Tom Thumb." But in his unpublished Journal there is a passage
that suggests a doubt as to whether, when he wrote his book, over a
decade later, he had not forgotten that a second boat was obtained for
the second adventure. He may not have considered the circumstance
important enough to mention. At all events in the Journal, he writes: "As
Tom Thumb had performed so well before, the same boat's crew had little
hesitation in embarking in another boat of nearly the same size, which
had been since built at Port Jackson." There was, it is evident, a second
boat, no larger than the first, or that fact would have been mentioned,
and she was also known as the Tom Th