Exploration

A new high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham led to archaeological excavations at St James’s burial ground under Euston Station. In 2019, archaeologists uncovered a wooden coffin bearing an engraved plate identifying the remains as those of Captain Matthew Flinders (1774–1814); his tombstone had already been removed in the 1840s when the railway station was expanded. Five years after the discovery of his coffin, Flinders was reinterred in his home village of Donington in Lincolnshire. Brothers Robert and Stephen Hannan represented the Australiana Society at the event.

Lieutenant James Cook took various gifts on his voyages of discovery, to distribute to Indigenous people whom he might encounter. Peter Lane draws attention to the only example of one of Cook’s medals found in Australia, a memento of friendly contact between the European explorers and Indigenous Tasmanians in either 1773 or 1777.

Exactly 250 years ago, HMB Endeavour commanded by Lt James Cook was the first British ship to sight the east coast of Australia, then known as the Great South Land or Terra Australis Incognita. As one of the most important exploration milestones in Australia’s history, it now seems to be passing largely unnoticed, a casualty of the present pandemic.

Lieutenant James Cook RN, commanding officer of HMB Endeavour, the renamed collier Earl of Pembroke, sailed on 26 August 1768 from England on a naval and scientific voyage to observe the Transit of Venus, collect natural history specimens and explore the east coast of New Holland. The 250th anniversary of the voyage has reignited interest in Cook, with exhibitions and exploration once more of Newport Harbor for the remains of his ship, re-named Lord Sandwich and sunk to blockade the port in 1778 during the American War of Independence. Yvonne Barber looks at a Cook memento which deserves to be better known.