Bass Strait is a strait separating the island of Tasmania from the Australian mainland, and also providing the most direct waterway between the Great Australian Bight and the Tasman Sea. Formed 8,000 years ago by rising sea levels, the strait was named after English explorer and physician George Bass.
King Island is an island in the Bass Strait, belonging to the Australian state of Tasmania. It is the largest of three islands known as the New Year Group, and the second-largest island in Bass Strait. The island's population at the 2016 census was 1,585 people, up from 1,566 in 2011. The local government area of the island is the King Island Council.
Flinders Island, the largest island in the Furneaux Group, is a 1,367-square-kilometre (528 sq mi) island in the Bass Strait, northeast of the island of Tasmania. Flinders Island is part of the state of Tasmania, Australia. It is 54 kilometres (34 mi) from Cape Portland and is located on 40° south, a zone known as the Roaring Forties.
The Furneaux Group is a group of approximately 100 islands located at the eastern end of Bass Strait, between Victoria and Tasmania, Australia. The islands were named after British navigator Tobias Furneaux, who sighted the eastern side of these islands after leaving Adventure Bay in 1773 on his way to New Zealand to rejoin Captain James Cook. Navigator Matthew Flinders was the first Westerner to explore the Furneaux Islands group in the Francis in 1798, and later that year in the Norfolk.
Cape Barren Island, part of the Furneaux Group, is a 478-square-kilometre (185 sq mi) island in the Bass Strait, off the north east coast of Tasmania, Australia. The largest island of the Furneaux Group, Flinders Island, lies to the north, with the smaller Clarke Island to the south. The highest point on the island is Mount Munro at 715 metres (2,346 ft). Mount Munro is probably named after James Munro, a former convict and then sealer, who lived from the 1820s for more than 20 years with several women on nearby Preservation Island.
Cataraqui was a British barque which sank off the south-west coast of King Island in Bass Strait on 4 August 1845. The sinking was Australia's worst ever maritime civil disaster incident, claiming the lives of 400 people.
His Majesty's Armed Survey Vessel Lady Nelson was commissioned in 1799 to survey the coast of Australia. At the time large parts of the Australian coast were unmapped and Britain had claimed only part of the continent. The British Government were concerned that, in the event of settlers of another European power becoming established in Australia, any future conflict in Europe would lead to a widening of the conflict into the southern hemisphere to the detriment of the trade that Britain sought to develop. It was against this background that Lady Nelson was chosen to survey and establish sovereignty over strategic parts of the continent.
Sir Charles Hardy Islands is in the reef of the same name adjacent to Pollard Channel & Blackwood Channel about 40 km east of Cape Grenville off Cape York Peninsula.
Sydney Cove was the Bengal country ship Begum Shaw that new owners purchased in 1796 to carry goods to Sydney Cove, and renamed for her destination. She was wrecked in 1797 on Preservation Island off Tasmania while on her way from Calcutta to Port Jackson. She was among the first ships wrecked on the east coast of Australia.
Neva was a three-masted barque launched in 1813. She made two voyages transporting convicts to Australia. On her second voyage carrying convicts she wrecked in Bass Strait on 13 May 1835. Her loss was one of the worst shipwrecks in Australian history; 224 lives were lost.
George III was a British penal transportation convict ship that was shipwrecked with heavy loss of life during her last voyage when she was transporting convicts from England to the Australian Colonies. She was wrecked in the southern end of the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, Van Diemen's Land, with the loss of 134 of the 294 people on board.
The Brothers was a 40-ton schooner wrecked in Bass Strait, Tasmania in 1816. She was under the command of Captain William Hilton Hovell. On 25 June 1816 the ship was anchored near the Kent Group in Bass Strait in an easterly gale when the cables broke and she was driven ashore. The cargo of twenty tons of salt and 800 bushels of wheat were lost overboard. One seaman, Daniel Wheeler, was drowned. For ten weeks the survivors lived on wheat washed ashore and whatever else they could scavenge until they were rescued by the brig, Spring under the command of Captain Bunster. The survivors arrived in Sydney on 6 September 1816.
The Judgement Rocks, part of the Kent Group, is a small unpopulated 0.39-hectare (0.96-acre) granite islet and some associated bare rocks, located in the Bass Strait, lying off the north-east coast of Tasmania, between the Furneaux Group and Wilsons Promontory in Victoria, Australia. The islet and associated rocks are contained within the Kent Group National Park.
The islands and reefs of the Capricorn and Bunker Group are situated astride the Tropic of Capricorn at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, approximately 80 kilometres east of Gladstone, which is situated on the central coast of the Gladstone Region, Queensland, Australia.
Daphne was a brig constructed in Java that arrived in Australia in 1814. She was wrecked without loss of life on 26 October 1819 in the Kent Group in Bass Strait. She was on a voyage from Port Jackson to India.
John Palmer was a schooner of 37 tons (bm) that J. & W. Jenkins constructed in Cockle Bay, Sydney in 1814; she was owned by D. H. Smith of Sydney, and registered there. She was wrecked with loss of life on 23 November 1819 in the Kent Group in Bass Strait.
