dgewater and Cato.
The Cato's Bank.
Shipwreck of the Porpoise and Cato in the night.
The crews get on a sand bank; where they are left by the Bridgewater.
Provisions saved.
Regulations on the bank.
Measures adopted for getting back to Port Jackson.
Description of Wreck-Reef Bank.
Remarks on the loss of M. de La Perouse.

[EAST COAST. PORT JACKSON]

1803

The third volume of my log book and journal having been lost in the
events which succeeded the decay of the Investigator, I have had recourse
to a memorandum book and to officers journals to supply the dates and
leading facts contained in the first three chapters following;
fortunately, my bearings and the astronomical observations taken by
lieutenant Flinders and myself were preserved, as also were the rough
charts, with one exception; so that there are few cases where this
department of the voyage will have materially suffered. There are,
however, many circumstances related in these chapters, which either do
not enter at all, or are slightly mentioned in the officers journals; for
these, my public papers and copies of letters have principally furnished
materials, and a tolerably faithful memory has supplied the rest. It
seemed necessary to explain this, that the reader may know to what the
deficiencies and abridgments in some parts of these chapters are to be
attributed; and this being premised, I resume the narrative of our
preparations for returning to England.

20 JULY 1803

On July 20, lieutenant Fowler quitted the Investigator, with the crew
selected for him, and took the command of His Majesty's armed vessel
_Porpoise_; and on the following day I went on board with the rest of my
officers and people, to go with him as passengers. Amongst other
preparations for the voyage, a green house was set up on the quarter deck
of that ship; and the plants collected in the Investigator from the
south, the east, and north coasts of Terra Australis were deposited in
it, to be conveyed to His Majesty's botanical garden at Kew; and as we
had had the misfortune to lose the gardener of the expedition, and Mr.
Brown, the naturalist, remained behind, a man from Port Jackson was
engaged to take care of the plants during the passage.

The examination of Torres' Strait was one of the most important articles
of my instructions which had been executed only in part; and although I
could not pretend to make any regular survey in the Porpoise, it was yet
desirable to pass again