Nicolas Thomas Baudin was a French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer, most notable for his explorations in Australia and the southern Pacific. He carried a few corms of Gros Michel banana from Southeast Asia, depositing them at a botanical garden on the Caribbean island of Martinique.
King Island is an island in Bass Strait, belonging to the Australian state of Tasmania. It is the largest of four islands known as the New Year Group and the second-largest island in Bass Strait. The island's population at the 2021 census was 1,617 people, up from 1,585 in 2016. The local government area of the island is the King Island Council.
Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. Seal hunting is currently practiced in nine countries: Canada, Denmark, Russia, the United States, Namibia, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden. Most of the world's seal hunting takes place in Canada and Greenland.
New Holland is a historical European name for mainland Australia.
Tonquin was a 290-ton American merchant ship initially operated by Fanning & Coles and later by the Pacific Fur Company (PFC), a subsidiary of the American Fur Company (AFC). Its first commander was Edmund Fanning, who sailed to the Qing Empire for valuable Chinese trade goods in 1807. The vessel was outfitted for another journey to China and then was sold to German-American entrepreneur John Jacob Astor. Included within his intricate plans to assume control over portions of the lucrative North American fur trade, the ship was intended to establish and supply trading outposts on the Pacific Northwest coast. Valuable animal furs purchased and trapped in the region would then be shipped to China, where consumer demand was high for particular pelts.
The Kangaroo Island emu or dwarf emu is an extinct subspecies of emu. It was restricted to Kangaroo Island, South Australia, which was known as Ile Decrés by the members of the Baudin expedition. It differed from the mainland emu mainly in its smaller size. The species became extinct by about 1827.
The King Island emu is an extinct subspecies of emu that was endemic to King Island, in the Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. Its closest relative may be the also extinct Tasmanian emu, as they belonged to a single population until less than 14,000 years ago, when Tasmania and King Island were still connected. The small size of the King Island emu may be an example of insular dwarfism. The King Island emu was the smallest of all known emus and had darker plumage than the mainland emu. It was black and brown and had naked blue skin on the neck, and its chicks were striped like those on the mainland. The subspecies was distinct from the likewise small and extinct Kangaroo Island emu in a number of osteological details, including size. The behaviour of the King Island emu probably did not differ much from that of the mainland emu. The birds gathered in flocks to forage and during breeding time. They fed on berries, grass and seaweed. They ran swiftly and could defend themselves by kicking. The nest was shallow and consisted of dead leaves and moss. Seven to nine eggs were laid, which were incubated by both parents.
The Baudin expedition of 1800 to 1803 was a French expedition to map the coast of New Holland. Nicolas Baudin was selected as leader in October 1800. The expedition started with two ships, Géographe, captained by Baudin, and Naturaliste captained by Jacques Hamelin, and was accompanied by nine zoologists and botanists, including Jean-Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour, François Péron and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur as well as the geographer Pierre Faure.
The maritime fur trade, a ship-based fur trade system, focused largely on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and natives of Alaska. Entrepreneurs also exploited fur-bearing skins from the wider Pacific and from the Southern Ocean.
John Grono was a settler, sailor, ship builder, ship captain, sealer, whaler and farmer who migrated to Australia in 1799 from Wales. Captaining the ship Governor Bligh, he would later go on to be the first European to fully explore and name parts of the southwestern coast of New Zealand's south island including Milford Sound, Bligh Sound and Elizabeth Island.
Anselme Riedlé (1765–1801) was gardener at the Jardin des Plantes who was invited to join the Nicolas Baudin scientific expedition (1800–1804) in the corvettes Géographe and Naturaliste to chart the coast of New Holland (Australia), make scientific observations and collect natural history specimens. This was possibly the largest such voyage of its kind in the early nineteenth century, with a team of 22 savants. He was Head Gardener to a team of 5 gardeners that served on the voyage, the others being Antoine Sautier, Cagnet, Merlot, and Antoine Guichenot. Riedlé had accompanied Baudin on a previous expedition where Riedlé had collected plants in the West Indies.
Sydney Cove was built in 1803 at Rotterdam, Netherlands. She made two voyages to New South Wales, during the first of which she transported convicts, and during the second of which she went whale and seal hunting. Her crew's interaction with the Māori at New Zealand sparked the Sealers' War, a long-running violent feud between sealers and whalers on the one hand, and the Māori on the other. She was last listed in 1823.
Independence, a 35-ton schooner, was the first ship constructed in South Australian waters. The crew of the visiting American sealing brig Union, under the command of Capt. Isaac Pendleton, built her between April and August 1803 at what is now known as American River on Kangaroo Island. Daniel Wright, the ship's carpenter, was in charge of the construction of the Independence at the mouth of Ship Creek, 800m west of the present-day American River oval.
Isaac Pendelton was an American Ship's master and sealer.
James Underwood was a noted shipwright, merchant businessman and distiller in Australia. Born in Bermondsey, London, he was shipped to Australia as a convicted felon in 1790. He learned his trade in Sydney, becoming joint owner of a merchant ship, Diana in 1799. He co-founded Kable & Underwood, along with Henry Kable which was a merchant trading company, and utilised Diana for seal hunting in the Bass Strait.
Pierre Ange François-Xavier Faure was a French geographer who participated in the expedition to the South Seas that Nicolas Baudin led between 1800 and 1803 and that was back in March 1804 in Lorient.
The Hersilia was an American merchant vessel and the first from the United States to visit the South Shetland Islands. During its second voyage it was seized by Vicente Benavides, a Royalist commander in the Chilean War of Independence, who ordered its destruction late in 1821.
Duchess of York was built in 1801 at Calcutta, British India, for the Royal Navy. She served in support of the expedition to the Red Sea (1801-1802) and apparently then was sold for the mercantile trade. She traded in the East Indies, and made some voyages to Port Jackson, New South Wales. Duchess of York was wrecked along the coastline of Madagascar in 1811.
Richard Siddins (1770–1846) was an Australian Master Mariner, Harbour Pilot and Lighthouse Keeper.
Honduras Packet was launched in Spain in 1798 under another name and was renamed when the British captured her in 1800. She was a merchantman that between 1804 and 1809 made one, two, or three voyages seal hunting or whaling in the Southern Fishery. She was also the first vessel to transport Scottish emigrants to Honduras in 1822-23 under Gregor MacGregor's ill-conceived and ill-fated "Poyais scheme". She was last listed in 1828–30.
