led at
Waterhouse Island, off the north-east coast of Van Diemen's Land, misled
by its name into thinking that he would find fresh water there. The
island was named after Captain Henry Waterhouse of the Reliance, but
Baudin, unaware of this, considered that it belied its name. "It does not
seem," he wrote, "to offer any appearance of water being discoverable
there, and I am persuaded that it can have been named Water House only
because the English visited it at a time when heavy rains had fallen."*
(* Baudin's Diary, manuscripts, Bibliotheque Nationale: "Je suis persuade
qu'on ne l'a nomme Wather House que par ce que les Anglais qui l'ont
visite y auront eu beaucoup de pluie.") Baudin passed Port Phillip,
rounded Cape Otway, and coasted along till he came to Encounter Bay,
where occurred an incident with which we shall be concerned after we have
traced the voyage of Flinders eastward to the same point.

CHAPTER 14. SOUTH COAST DISCOVERY.

We now resume the story of Flinders' voyage along the southern coast of
Australia, from the time when he made Cape Leeuwin on December 6th, 1801.

That part of the coast lying between the south-west corner of the
continent and Fowler's Bay, in the Great Australian Bight, had been
traversed prior to this time. In 1791 Captain George Vancouver, in the
British ship Cape Chatham, sailed along it from Cape Leeuwin to King
George's Sound, which he discovered and named. He anchored in the
harbour, and remained there for a fortnight. He would have liked to
pursue the discovery of this unknown country, and did sail further east,
as far as the neighbourhood of Termination Island, in longitude 122
degrees 8 minutes. But, meeting with adverse winds, he abandoned the
research, and resumed his voyage to north-west America across the
Pacific. In 1792, Bruny Dentrecasteaux, with the French ships Recherche
and Esperance, searching for tidings of the lost Laperouse, followed the
line of the shore more closely than Vancouver had done, and penetrated
much further eastward. His instructions, prepared by Fleurieu, had
directed him to explore the whole of the southern coast of Australia; but
he was short of water, and finding nothing but sand and rock, with no
harbour, and no promise of a supply of what he so badly needed, he did
not continue further than longitude 131 degrees 38 1/2 minutes east,
about two and a half degrees east of the present border line of Western
and South Australia. These navigator