On This Day April 29, 1770

Captain James Cook discovers and names Botany Bay.

  James Cook was born at Marton in North Yorkshire, on 27 October 1728. As the son of a farm labourer, he held no great ambitions, being apprenticed in a grocer/haberdashery when he was 16. Lack of aptitude in the trade led his employer to introduce Cook to local shipowners, who took him on as a merchant navy apprentice. Here he was educated in algebra, trigonometry, navigation, and astronomy, which later set Cook up to command his own ship.

Cook was hired in 1766 by the Royal Society to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. Following this, Cook's next orders were to search the south Pacific for Terra Australis Incognita, the great southern continent that many believed must extend around the southern pole. He came across New Zealand, which Abel Tasman had discovered in 1642, and spent some months there, charting the coastline.

Nearly a year later, Cook set sail west for New Holland, which was later to become Australia. On 29 April 1770 Cook's vessel, the Endeavour, sailed into Botany Bay, after first sighting the eastern coast of Australia ten days earlier. He described the bay as being "tolerably well sheltered", and initially named it Stingray Bay, after the large numbers of stingray he noted. The name was later changed to Botany Bay due to the vast numbers of new and unique botanical specimens noted by the ship's botanists, including Joseph Banks. Cook named Cape Solander and Cape Banks after Banks and Finnish botanist Daniel Solander. He then landed at Kurnell, allowing the cabin boy, Isaac Smith, to be the first known European to step foot on the soil of "New South Wales".

On This Day April 28, 1789

Fletcher Christian leads the mutiny against Captain Bligh on the 'HMS Bounty'.

Fletcher Christian was born in Cumberland, England, on 25 September 1764. He went to sea at the age of sixteen, and two years later he sailed aboard HMS Cambridge where he met William Bligh for the first time. Bligh, born on 9 September 1754, had also started his seagoing career at the age of 16, quickly rising through the officer ranks. Bligh and Christian were very close during their early years together.

The 'HMS Bounty' sailed with a crew of 45 men from Spithead, England in December 1787 under Captain William Bligh, bound for Tahiti. Their mission was to collect breadfruit plants to be transplanted in the West Indies as cheap food for the slaves. After collecting those plants, Bounty was returning to England when, on the morning of 28 April 1789, Fletcher Christian and part of the crew mutinied, taking over the ship, and setting the Captain and 18 crew members adrift in the ship’s 23-foot launch. Captain Bligh sailed nearly 6000km back to England, arriving there on 14 March 1790, where he was initially court-martialed and ultimately acquitted. The mutineers took HMS Bounty back to Tahiti, and collected 6 Polynesian men and 12 women. They then continued on to Pitcairn Island, arriving there on 15 January 1790. After burning the ship they established a settlement and colony on Pitcairn Island that still exists.

In 1808, Captain Mayhew Folger of the American sealing ship 'Topaz' landed at Pitcairn Islands. By that stage, many of the mutineers had succumbed to disease, suicide or been victims of murder. Of all the men, both whites and Polynesians, only John Adams survived. Adams, by then a changed man after his conversion to Christianity, went on to become the respected leader on Pitcairn. He died on 5 March 1829, forty years after the mutiny.

On This Day April 27, 1971

Relics from the wreck of The Batavia are recovered in Houtman Abrolhos, off the coast of Western Australia.

The 'Batavia' was a ship built in Amsterdam in 1628. On 29 October 1628, the newly built Batavia, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company, sailed from Texel for the Dutch East Indies to obtain spices. During the voyage two of the crew, Jacobsz and Cornelisz, planned to hijack the ship, with the aim of starting a new life somewhere using the supply of trade gold and silver on board. After stopping at South Africa for supplies, Jacobsz deliberately steered the ship off course away from the rest of the fleet, planning to organise a mutiny against the captain at some stage.

On 4 June 1629 the ship struck a reef near Beacon Island, part of the Houtman Abrolhos island group off the Western Australian coast. 40 drowned but most of the crew and passengers were taken to nearby islands in the ship's longboat and yawl. The captain organised a group of senior officers, crew members and some passengers to search for drinking water on the mainland. Unsuccessful, they then headed north to the city of Batavia, now Jakarta. Their amazing journey took 33 days and all survived.

After they arrived in Batavia, a rescue attempt was made for the other survivors, but it was discovered that a mutiny had taken place. Cornelisz had planned to hijack any rescue ships, and organised the murder of 125 men, women and children. The rescue party overcame the mutineers, executing the major leaders, including Cornelisz. Two minor offenders were abandoned on Australia's mainland, and others were taken to be tried in Batavia. The mutiny and murders brought infamy to the story of the lost Batavia.

On 27 April 1971, relics and artifacts from the Batavia wreck were salvaged, later followed by the stern of the ship. In 1972 The Netherlands transferred all rights to Dutch shipwrecks on the Australian coasts to Australia. Some of the items, including human remains, which were excavated, are now on display in the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle, Australia. Others are held by the Geraldton Region Museum. Included in the relics is a stone arch which was intended to serve as a welcome arch for the city of Batavia.

On This Day April 27, 1521

Sailor and explorer Magellan is killed by natives in the Philippines.

Ferdinand Magellan was born in Sabrosa, near Vila Real in the province of Trás-os-Montes, Portugal, in the year 1480. He became the first person to lead an expedition sailing westward from Europe to Asia and to cross the Pacific Ocean.

In 1519, with the intention of reaching the Spice Islands by sailing west around South America, Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean, sailing across it. He did not complete his final voyage as he was killed during the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines, on 27 April 1521. Magellan did not complete the entire circumnavigation, but as the leader of the expedition, he is credited with being the man who led the first successful attempt to circumnavigate the Earth. He died further west than the Spice Islands, which he had visited on earlier voyages, making him one of the first individuals to cross all the longitudes of the globe.

The Strait of Magellan is a navigable, but extremely hazardous, route immediately south of mainland South America, and an important natural passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. Magellan was the first European to navigate the strait in 1520, during his global circumnavigation voyage.

On This Day April 24, 1804

The first cemetery is established in the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, Australia.

The first European explorer to report the existence of what is now called Tasmania was Dutch seaman Abel Janszoon Tasman, of the Dutch East India Company. In November 1642, he discovered a previously unknown island on his voyage past the "Great South Land", or "New Holland", as the Dutch called Australia. He named it "Antony Van Diemen's Land" in honour of the High Magistrate, or Governor-General of Batavia.

Hobart is the capital city of Tasmania, Australia, and is the second oldest city in Australia, with Sydney being the oldest. The city began as a penal colony at Risdon Cove on the Derwent River in Van Diemen's Land in 1803 to offset British concerns over the presence of French explorers. On 24 April 1804, the first cemetery was established on Van Diemen's Land. Named St David's Cemetery, it has since been transformed into St David's Park.

On This Day April 22, 1788

Governor Arthur Phillip sets out to explore Sydney Harbour.

Captain Arthur Phillip was Governor of the colony of New South Wales, the first settlement of Europeans on Australian soil. Phillip was a practical man who suggested that convicts with experience in farming, building and crafts be included in the First Fleet, but his proposal was rejected. Thus, he faced many obstacles in his attempts to establish the new colony, including the fact that British farming methods, seeds and implements were unsuitable for use in the different climate and soil.

On 22 April 1788, less than three months after the arrival of the First Fleet to Australia, Phillip set out to explore Sydney Harbour, in search of more land suitable for settlement. Together with eleven men and enough provisions for six days, Phillip travelled as far as he could by boat up Sydney Harbour, tracing the Parramatta River to the point where Parramatta itself would be established six months later, as Rose Hill. The party then spent four days travelling overland towards the Blue Mountains. Further progress was halted by ravines and untraversible countryside, and insufficient supplies, and Phillip returned to Sydney Cove determined to send out further exploration parties.

On This Day April 20, 1657

 The Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife was a military operation in the Anglo–Spanish War (1654–1660) in which an English fleet under Admiral Robert Blake attacked a Spanish treasure fleet that had already landed the treasure at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands. Most of the Spanish merchantmen were scuttled and the remainder were burnt by the English.

England had decided to support France in her war in the Low Countries with the Spanish. War was openly declared in October 1655 and endorsed when the Second Protectorate Parliament assembled the following year. One of the prime enterprises was the blockade of Cadiz, which had not previously been attempted on such a scale. Robert Blake was to be in charge and also to come up with methods that he had used in his previous encounters with the Dutch and Barbary pirates.

Blake kept the fleet at sea throughout an entire winter in order to maintain the blockade. A further six ships were sent from England as reinforcements towards the end of 1656, including the George, which became Blake's flagship. In February 1657, Blake received intelligence that the convoy from Mexico was on its way across the Atlantic. Although his captains wanted to search for the Spanish galleons immediately, Blake refused to divide his forces and waited until victualling ships from England arrived to re-provision his fleet at the end of March. In the meantime a Spanish convoy was destroyed by one of Blake's captains; Richard Stayner. After this Blake (with only two ships to watch Cadiz), sailed from Cadiz Bay on 13 April 1657 to attack the plate fleet, which had docked at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands to await an escort to Spain.

Blake's fleet arrived off Santa Cruz on 19 April. Santa Cruz lies in a deeply-indented bay and the harbour was defended by a castle armed with forty guns and a number of smaller forts connected by a triple line of breastworks to shelter musketeers. Seventeen Spanish ships were moored in a semicircle in the harbour under cover of the shore batteries, including seven great galleons of the plate fleet.

In an operation similar to the raid on the Barbary pirates of Porto Farina in Tunisia in 1655, Blake planned to send twelve frigates under the command of (now) Rear-Admiral Stayner in the Speaker into the harbour to attack the galleons while he followed in the George with the rest of the fleet to bombard the shore batteries.

The attack began at 9 o'clock in the morning of 20 April. Steyner's division manoeuvred alongside the Spanish ships, which protected the English ships to some extent from the guns of the castle and forts. No shot was fired from the English ships until they had moved into position and dropped anchor. Blake saw what the Spanish had not; that the six galleons masked the fire of the other ten ships.While the frigates attacked the galleons, Blake's heavier warships sailed into the harbour to bombard the shore defences. Blake ordered that no prizes were to be taken; the Spanish fleet was to be utterly destroyed. Most of the Spanish fleet, made up of smaller armed merchantmen, were quickly silenced by the superior gunnery of Stayner's warships. The two great galleons, strongly built and powerfully armed, fought on for several hours. Blake's division cleared the breastworks and smaller forts; smoke from the gunfire and burning ships worked to the advantage of the English by obscuring their ships from the Spanish batteries.

Around noon, the flagship of the Spanish admiral Don Diego de Egues caught fire; shortly afterwards it was destroyed when the powder magazine exploded. English sailors took to boats to board Spanish ships and set them on fire. By 3 o'clock in the afternoon, all sixteen Spanish ships in the harbour were sunk, surrendered or ablaze. Contrary to orders, the Swiftsure and four other frigates each took a surrendered ship as a prize and attempted to tow it out of the harbour. Blake sent peremptory orders that the prizes were to be burnt. He had to repeat his order three times before the reluctant captains obeyed.

Having achieved its objective of destroying the Spanish vessels, the English fleet was faced with the hazardous task of withdrawing from Santa Cruz harbour under continuing fire from the forts. According to accounts the wind miraculously shifted from the north-east to the south-west at exactly the right moment to carry Blake's ships out of the harbour. However, this story is probably based upon a misunderstanding of a report pertaining to general weather conditions on the voyage as a whole.The English fleet worked its way back out to the open sea by warping out, or hauling on anchor ropes, a tactic Blake had introduced during the raid on Porto Farina. The Speaker, which was the first ship to enter the harbour and last to leave, had been badly damaged, but no English ships were lost in the battle.

The Spanish treasure from Mexico had been unloaded and secured ashore. Blake was unable to seize it but it was also temporarily unavailable to the government in Madrid. Having had no more than forty-eight men killed and 120 wounded, Blake's victory established England's reputation as a leading European naval power.

News of the victory reached England the following month. On 28 May, Parliament voted to reward Blake with a jewel worth £500, which was equivalent to the reward voted to General Thomas Fairfax for his victory at the Battle of Naseby in 1645. Richard Stayner was knighted by Oliver Cromwell.Blake received orders to return home in June. He made one further voyage to Salé in Morocco, where he succeeded in concluding a treaty to secure the release of English slaves. He returned to Cadiz in mid-July and handed command of the fleet to his flag captain, John Stoakes. Leaving nineteen ships to maintain the blockade, Blake sailed for England with eleven ships most in need of repair. However, Blake's health was in terminal decline. Worn out by his years of campaigning, he died aboard his flagship the George on 7 August 1657 as his fleet approached Plymouth Sound.

On This Day April 19, 1770

Captain Cook and his crew first sight the eastern coast of Australia.

     Captain James Cook was not the first to discover Australia, as he was preceded by numerous Portuguese and Dutch explorers. However, he was the first to sight and map the eastern coastline. Cook's ship, the 'Endeavour', departed Plymouth, England, on 26 August 1768. After completing the objective of his mission, which was to observe the transit of Venus from the vantage point of Tahiti, Cook went on to search for Terra Australis Incognita, the great continent which some believed to extend round the pole. He first came across New Zealand, which had already been discovered by Abel Tasman in 1642. He spent some months there, charting the coastline. Nearly a year later, he set sail east.

On 19 April 1770, officer of the watch, Lieutenant Zachary Hicks, sighted land and alerted Captain Cook. Cook made out low sandhills which he named Point Hicks, although he did not yet know whether they formed part of an island or a continent. Point Hicks lies on the far southeastern corner of the Australian continent, and Cook chose to fly before unfavourable winds up the eastern coast. Cook went on to chart the east coast of what was then known as New Holland, and claimed it for Great Britain under the name of New South Wales.

On This Day April 14, 1912

The luxurious and unsinkable 'Titanic' hits an iceberg, eventually sinking, killing 1517 people.

The RMS Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world at the time of its launching. It was a White Star Line ocean liner built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland and, along with its sister ships Olympic and the soon to be built Britannic, was intended to compete with rival company Cunard Line's Lusitania and Mauretania. For its time, the ship was unsurpassed in its luxury and opulence. The ship offered an onboard swimming pool, gymnasium, a Turkish bath, library and squash court. Its ornate interior design, elaborate wood panelling, expensive furniture and other elegant decorations placed it in a class of its own. Further, it was considered the pinnacle of naval architecture and technological achievement, and reported by The Shipbuilder magazine to be "practically unsinkable.

The Titanic departed on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, bound for New York City, New York, on Wednesday, 10 April 1912, with Captain Edward J. Smith in command. On 14 April 1912, the temperatures had dropped to near freezing. Captain Smith, in response to iceberg warnings received via wireless over the previous days, had altered Titanic's course about 20 km south of the normal shipping route. At 1:45pm, a message from the steamer Amerika warned that large icebergs lay in Titanic's path, but this warning, and others, were never relayed to the bridge. The ship hit an iceberg shortly after 11:40pm on the 14th, buckling the hull in several places and popping out rivets below the waterline over a length of 90 metres. The watertight doors closed as water started filling the first five watertight compartments, one more than Titanic could stay afloat with. The huge volume of water weighed the ship down past the top of the watertight bulkheads, allowing water to flow into the other compartments.

Some first- and second-class passengers were able to access the lifeboats quickly, but third-class passengers, many of whom were immigrants hoping to find a better life in America, were unable to navigate their way to the lifeboats through the complex of corridors. While all first- and second-class children save one survived the sinking, more third-class women and children were lost than saved. In all, 1517 people were lost in the disaster, whilst 706 survived. Most of the deaths were caused by victims succumbing to hypothermia in the -2°C water.

On This Day April 10, 1912

The RMS Titanic departs on its maiden voyage.

 The RMS Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world at the time of its launching. It was a White Star Line ocean liner built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland and, along with its sister ships Olympic and the soon to be built Britannic, was intended to compete with rival company Cunard Line's Lusitania and Mauretania. The interior of the luxury ship was completed in January 1912, and the finishing touches were completed by early February. the Titanic was considered the pinnacle of naval architecture and technological achievement, and reported by The Shipbuilder magazine to be "practically unsinkable.

The Titanic underwent sea trials near Belfast for a total of 30 minutes in the opening days of April, and the trials were deemed successful. The ship then departed on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, bound for New York City, New York, the day after the sea trials, Wednesday, 10 April 1912, with Captain Edward J Smith in command.

On 14 April 1912, the Titanic sank. Captain Smith, in response to iceberg warnings received via wireless over the previous days, had altered Titanic's course about 20 km south of the normal shipping route. At 1:45pm, a message from the steamer Amerika warned that large icebergs lay in Titanic's path, but this warning, and others, were never relayed to the bridge. The ship hit an iceberg shortly after 11:40pm on the 14th, buckling the hull in several places and popping out rivets below the waterline over a length of 90 metres. The watertight doors closed as water started filling the first five watertight compartments, one more than Titanic could stay afloat with. The huge volume of water weighed the ship down past the top of the watertight bulkheads, allowing water to flow into the other compartments. While some passengers were able to access the lifeboats quickly, third-class passengers, many of whom were immigrants hoping to find a better life in America, were unable to navigate their way to the lifeboats through the complex of corridors. All first- and second-class children save one survived the sinking, but more third-class women and children were lost than saved. In all, 1517 people were lost in the disaster, whilst 706 survived.

Titanic - 100 Years

This month marks the 100th anniversy of the sinking of the Titanic - one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history and by far the most famous.

RMS Titanic was a class passenger liner. The second of a trio of superliners, she and her sisters, RMS Olympic and HMHS Britannic, were designed to dominate the transatlantic travel business for the White Star Line.

Built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world.  Titanic's designers used the most advanced technology available at the time and the ship was popularly believed to be "

During Titanic's maiden voyage unsinkable."she struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on Sunday April 14, 1912, and sank two hours and forty minutes later, after breaking into two pieces.