Phillip Parker King, assigned to survey the…
January 1818 CE
Phillip Parker King, assigned to survey the parts of the Australian coast not already examined by Matthew Flinders, will make four voyages between December 1817 and April 1822.
Among the nineteen-man crew are Allan Cunningham (botanist), John Septimus Roe and the aborigine Bungaree.
The first three trips are in the seventy-six-ton cutter HMS Mermaid.
The Admiralty has instructed King to discover whether there is any river 'likely to lead to an interior navigation into this great continent'.
The Colonial Office had given instructions to collect information about topography, fauna, timber, minerals, climate, and the natives and the prospects of developing trade with them.
King was born on Norfolk Island, to Philip Gidley King and Anna Josepha King née Coombe, and named after his father's mentor, Arthur Phillip, which explains the difference in spelling of his and his father's first names.
He had been sent to England for education in 1796, and had joined the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, in 1802.
King had entered the Royal Navy in 1807, where he was commissioned lieutenant in 1814.
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