1803: New Zealand’s Founding Father George Bass…almost
October 10, 2019
By AHNZ
George Bass was nearly the founding father of New Zealand and would have been but for his mystery death. Famous in Australia for many things, especially identifying Tasmania as an island separated from the mainland by Bass Straight, we hardly know him at all.
Like Logan Campbell, Father of Auckland, Bass came Down Under to Australia as ship’s surgeon then became a trader. Bass, like Campbell, realised his shot at fortune was not Port Jackson but New Zealand. The great difference was time and place. Campbell went in for his beloved Auckland in 1840 but Bass was attracted to the southern coast at the turn of the century.
Pacific Shopping Trip
Off the back of being a celebrated explorer in New Holland (Australia,) George Bass returned home to England to raise a stake. Australia, he figured, had a bright future with him in it provided he could return with some capital and a ship of his own. In 1801 he married his wife then kissed her goodbye, setting out in his new ship Venus laden with trade stores from his GoFundMe fundraiser back home. Sadly, George would never meet his wife, Elizabeth, again.
Back at Port Jackson (Sydney) what they wanted was meat, not trade goods. NSW Governor Philip King (image left) told Bass what he could do if he wanted to make some proper money and gave him the authority to do it. Get out there in your ship, bring us back some meat!
Bass arrived back at Port Jackson and “…found this report all too true: foods wer plentiful and, under the year-old rule of P.G. King, credit was not….King offered a brighter prostpect. True to his own instinct for commercial enterprise, he had determined to relieve the colony’s want of fresh meat by bringing pork from Tahiti.”- Roe (1967)
Bass carefully stowed his cargo in Australia then set out to go shopping. His first stop was Dusky Sound where there was an old derelict ship the Venus crew could salvage for trade iron and timber to build casks. From 6-21 December, 1801, Bass worked in and explored this part of New Zealand. There was nobody around to trade for salt pork so he moved on to Tahiti. But, he liked it and would be back.
If the southern Maori did have something to trade at this point our history would have been very different. Bass had guns to trade that instead ended up being used in the Tahitian’s own Musket Wars. If the southern Maori had been armed at this point they could have changed the fate of the Ngai Tahu. Resisted Te Rauparaha and perhaps even met the unstoppable force of Hongi Hika.
The Man Who Would Be King
The grocery supply run of Venus worked out great, King was very happy and for Bass the world was now his oyster. Bass decided he would make New Zealand, the southern bit at least, his kingdom. First he had to go back to Blighty for Elizabeth and also liquidate all those goods sitting in storage all this time. In January 1803 Bass boldly requested of his friend, the Governor, a monopoly of the southern coasts of New Zealand. It was a massive area, full of fish and timber and other resources. And, don’t forget, man-eating natives.
“The Governor, who had reason to be grateful to Bass, gave his approval to the proposal; but before Bass could consider setting out upon the enterprise, he had to dispose of the remaining stocks of merchandise.”- Howard (1940)
This would have made Bass a King indeed, the most powerful figure in our history who would preside over all the sealing era then the whale era to follow. Instead, this niche would be filled later by Johnny Jones. Bass could have had it all and been the founding father of New Zealand. Our first capital would probably have been at Dunedin or Riverton and the Hobson Gang of 1840 would never have gotten off the ground.
Instead, on 5 February, 1803, Bass and the Venus crew were seen for the last time as they sailed out of Port Jackson. Their first stop was Dusky Sound, and some say this was their last. Others speculate that Bass made it to Chile but his cargo and crew were impounded and imprisoned. George Bass may have died enslaved in Spanish silver mines. Nobody knows. It’s one of New Zealand’s greatest mysteries.
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Ref. The Journal and Letters of Captain Charles Bishop on the North-West Coast of America, In the Pacific and in New South Wales 1794-1799; Roe (1967)
Ref. Rakiura- Stewart Island, New Zealand; Howard (1940)
2 thoughts on "1803: New Zealand’s Founding Father George Bass…almost"
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The article below highlights a little more intrigue relating to George Bass. I contacted the Australian Broadcasting Corportation [ABC] in 2018 but they do not have a record of the 1953 “radio investigation”:-
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/142631164
South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus, NSW
Monday, 27.07.1953, Page 2
Story of Bass
Every Australian schoolchild learns about the voyage of the “Tom Thumb,” and how Bass and Flinders acted as barber to a group of blackfellows. Such foot-notes can add zest to history, but Barbara Jefferis feels that the text books have perhaps been a little unfair and that Bass in particular “has no epitaph”
So she has made a radio investigation “In Search of Bass.” The explorer was born in Boston, Lincolnshire— birthplace also of Sir John Franklin, Sir Joseph Banks, and several of Cook’s sailors. He was apprenticed to an apothecary. The feature gives a brief account of the voyages follows Bass’s trading ventures in the Pacific, and later smuggling exploits in Peru, where all trace vanishes.
Did Bass perish in the Pacific? Or does the recent discovery of his ring in possession of a Maori point to his end in New Zealand? The impression is of an adventure-loving, not over-scrupulous character, as well as something of a botanist and zoologist (he left a valuable collection of drawings of Australian animals and flowers).
The programme will be heard this Friday at 9.15 p.m. from 2FC.
Thanks for that.
This business with the ring sounds interesting. Nothing turned up in the NZ newspapers about that. We don’t tend to talk much about George over here.