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C1814
Cape Catastrophe taken Feb 20 1802 at 3h 40′.
Artist:
Rare coastal profile of Cape Catastrophe, the headland of Jussieu Peninsula, on Eyre Peninsula, South Australia by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia on the Investigator. Flinders Feb 20, 1802: In the afternoon the wind … Read Full Description
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Details
Full Title:
Cape Catastrophe taken Feb 20 1802 at 3h 40′.
Date:
C1814
Artist:
Condition:
In good condition.
Technique:
Hand coloured copper engraving.
Image Size:
430mm
x 35mm
AUTHENTICITY
Genuine antique
dated:
1814
Description:
Rare coastal profile of Cape Catastrophe, the headland of Jussieu Peninsula, on Eyre Peninsula, South Australia by William Westall, artist on board Matthew Flinders seminal survey of the Australia on the Investigator.
Flinders Feb 20, 1802:
In the afternoon the wind favoured us by veering to south-by-west, and the passage between the projection of the hill and Isle Williams, (Atlas, Pl. XVII.)image seeming to be clear, we steered through it with good soundings, the least being 12 fathoms, upon rippling water. Three miles further the main land formed a point, and took the uncommon direction of N. 15° W.; but to the eastward, there was a large piece of land, whether island or main we could not tell, and several small islands lay between. The opening was four miles wide; and we steered into it, passing through ripplings of tide with irregular soundings. No land could be seen to the north-east, but the night was coming on; and as the eastern land sheltered us from the present wind, we ran within half a mile of the shore and anchored in 3½ fathoms. The master was sent to sound about the ship; and finding we had not a sufficient depth for swinging toward the shore, the anchor was tripped and let go further out, in 7 fathoms, on a sandy bottom. No part of the eastern land was visible beyond the bearing of N. 76° E., distant one mile and a half; and the furthest extreme of what we could be certain was main land bore N. 17° W. A tide from the north-eastward, apparently the ebb, ran more than one mile an hour; which was the more remarkable from no set of tide, worthy to be noticed, having hitherto been observed upon this coast. No land could be seen in the direction from whence it came; and these circumstances, with the trending of the coast to the north, did not fail to excite many conjectures. Large rivers, deep inlets, inland seas, and passages into the Gulph of Carpentaria, were terms frequently used in our conversations of this evening; and the prospect of making an interesting discovery seemed to have infused new life and vigour into every man in the ship.
From of Flinders hydrographic atlas, A voyage to Terra Australis…, sheet XVII, London : G. and W. Nicol, 1814.
Full title of the atlas;A Voyage to Terra Australis, undertaken for the purpose of completing the discovery of that vast country, and prosecuted in the years 1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty’s Ship The Investigator and subsequently in the armed vessel Porpoise and Cumberland schooner.Â
William Westall (1781 - 1850)
Westall was a landscape artist born at Hertford, England. He was taught to draw by his elder half-brother Richard (1765-1836), a water-colour painter, Royal Academician and painting teacher to Princess Victoria. In 1799 he was admitted to the Royal Academy School, where he was studying when at 19 he was appointed landscape artist with Matthew Flinders' Investigator expedition to Australia, at a salary of 300 guineas. During the voyage he made a large number of pencil-and-wash landscapes in places visited by the Investigator and a series of coast profiles in pencil. When the Porpoise ran aground on Wreck Reef his sketches were 'wetted and partly destroyed' and, while Westall travelled in China, the drawings, regarded as part of the official record of the voyage, were taken by Lieutenant Robert Fowler to England. There, at the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks, they were handed to Richard Westall to be 'restored to a proper state'. After spending some time in China and India Westall returned to London in February 1805 and sought access to the sketches to paint a picture for exhibition at the Royal Academy and showed a View of the Bay of Pines at the academy later in the year. In the summer of 1805 Westall went to Madeira and twelve months later to Jamaica. After returning to England he painted a series of water-colour views of the places he had visited and these were shown in a Brook Street gallery and at the Associated Artists' exhibition in 1808. Later he received commissions from the Admiralty to paint nine pictures to illustrate Flinders' A Voyage to Terra Australis … (1814), and was engaged by several London publishers to paint water-colours to be reproduced as aquatints.
