Naval surgeon and explorer, born in Aswarby, Lincolnshire, EC England, UK. With Matthew Flinders he explored (17951800) the strait between Tasmania and Australia that bears his name. He died while mining in South America.
In 1797, in an open whaleboat with a crew of six, Bass sailed to Cape Howe, the farthest point of south-eastern Australia.
In 1798, this theory was confirmed when Bass and Flinders, in the sloop Norfolk, circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land. In the course of this voyage Bass found and explored the estuary of the Derwent River, where the city of Hobart would be founded, on the strength of his report, in 1803. When the two returned to Sydney, Flinders recommended to Governor John Hunter that the passage between Van Diemen's Land and the mainland be called Bass Strait.
"This was no more than a just tribute to my worthy friend and companion," Flinders wrote, "for the extreme dangers and fatigues he had undergone, in first entering it in a whaleboat, and to the correct judgement he had formed, from various indications, of the existence of a wide opening between Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales."
Bass was an enthusiastic naturalist and botanist, and he forwarded some his botanical discoveries to Sir Joseph Banks in London.
Bass also discovered the Kiama area and made many notes on its botanical complexity and the amazing natural phenomenon, the Kiama Blowhole ,noting the volcanic geology around the Blowhole and contributed much to its understanding.
Marriage and trading
Back in England Bass married Elizabeth Waterhouse, sister of Henry Waterhouse, Bass's former shipmate, captain of the Reliance.
Bass and a syndicate of friends had invested some £10,000 in the a copper-sheathed brig the Venus, and a cargo of general goods to transport and sell in Port Jackson. Bass was the owner-manager and set sail in early 1801.
On passing through Bass Strait on that voyage he recorded it simply as Bass Strait, like any other geographical feature. It seems, as Flinders' biographer Ernest Scott observed, that Bass's natural modesty meant he felt no need to say "discovered by me" or "named after me".
On arrival Bass found the colony awash with goods and he was unable to sell his cargo. What King did do though was contract with Bass to ship salt pork from Tahiti. Food was scarce in Sydney at that time and prices were being driven up, yet pigs were plentiful in the Society Islands and King could contract with Bass at 6 pence a pound where he'd been paying a shilling (12 pence) previously.
Bass also obtained fishing rights over certain waters in New Zealand, from which he expected much, but he didn't plan to put the fishery into action until he returned again to England. Bass and Flinders were both operating out of Sydney during these times, but their stays there didn't coincide.
Final voyage
What became of Bass is unknown.
It's been suspected Bass may also have planned to engage in contraband trade in Chile.
Bass still had much of the general cargo he'd brought to Sydney in 1801 and he may well have been tempted to take some to Chile.
As many months passed with no word of his arrival Governor King and Bass's friends in Sydney were forced to accept that he'd met some misfortune. In England in January 1806 Bass was listed by the Admiralty as lost at sea and later that year Elizabeth was granted an annuity from the widows' fund, back dated to when Bass's half-pay had ended in June 1803. (Bass had made the usual contributions to the fund from his salary.)
Speculation on Bass's fate
A good deal of speculation has taken place about Bass's fate. One story attributed to William Campbell of the brig Harrington has it that Bass was captured by the Spanish in Chile and sent to the silver mines. The Harrington was engaged in smuggling and returned to Sydney some three months after Bass's departure. There are good records of Campbell in 1803, and then in 1805 when he captured a Spanish ship, but Bass is not mentioned at those times. (Three months also seems a little short for Bass to reach Chile and then the Harrington to get back to Sydney.)
The suspicion is that other ships called Venus have been jumbled up in that story. Campbell's connection to the latter might have been projected back onto Bass's Venus.
Adventurer Jorgen Jorgenson wrote about Bass in his 1835 autobiography, claiming Bass had attempted forced trade (ie. Jorgenson probably met Bass, but this account is almost certainly an invention though.
A search of Spanish archives in 1903 by scholar Don Pascual de Gayangos and a search of Peruvian archives in 2003 by historian Jorge Ortiz-Sotelo found no mention of Bass.
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