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and Walter Jeffery

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Title: The Naval Pioneers of Australia

Author: Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

Release Date: July 22, 2004 [EBook #12992]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE

NAVAL PIONEERS

OF

AUSTRALIA

BY LOUIS BECKE

AND WALTER JEFFERY

AUTHORS OF "A FIRST FLEET FAMILY"; "THE MUTINEER," ETC.

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET

1899

PREFACE

This book does not pretend to be a history of Australia; it merely gathers
into one volume that which has hitherto been dispersed through many. Our
story ends where Australian history, as it is generally written, begins;
but the work of the forgotten naval pioneers of the country made that
beginning possible. Four sea-captains in succession had charge of the
penal settlement of New South Wales, and these four men, in laying the
foundation of Australia, surmounted greater difficulties than have ever
been encountered elsewhere in the history of British colonization. Under
them, and by their personal exertions, it was made possible to live upon
the land; it was made easy to sail upon the Austral seas. After them came
military and civil governors and constitutional government, finding all
things ready to build a Greater Britain. Histories there are in plenty, of
so many hundred pages, devoted to describing the "blessings of
constitutional government," of the stoppage of transportation, of the
discovery of gold, and all the other milestones on the road to nationhood;
but there is given in them no room to describe the work of the sailors--a
chapter or two is the most historians afford the naval pioneers.

The printing by the New South Wales Government of the Historical Records
of New South Wales has given bookmakers access to much valuable material
(dispatches chiefly) hitherto unavailable; and to the volumes of these
Records, to the contemporary historians of "The First Fleet" of Captain
Phillip, to the many South Sea "voyages," and othe