Plan of Adventure Bay on Van Diemens Land. View of the South Side of Adventure Bay

English edition of the Plan of Adventure Bay in Van Diemens Land. (with) View of the south side of Adventure Bay, Tasmania, from the accounts of Captain James Cook’s second voyage of exploration.

Captain Tobias Furneaux named the bay after his ship HMS Adventure in March 1773, after becoming separated from Captain James Cook during the second voyage.

On 29 November next year he was promoted commander and appointed captain of H.M.S. Adventure under James Cook’s overall command in H.M.S. Resolution. The expedition sailed from Plymouth in July 1772, called at Cape Town in November, and headed south and east. On 8 February 1773 the ships were separated in fog and Adventure made for the agreed rendezvous, Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand. En route Furneaux directed his course for Van Diemen’s Land, sighting South West Cape on 9 March, becoming the first English vessel to retrace Tasman’s 1642 discoveries. Adventure lay off Bruny Island from 11 March 1773 ‘wooding and watering’ in this haven, which Furneaux called Adventure Bay. Other features in the region he named were the Mewstone, the Friars, Fluted Cape and Penguin Island. Sailing north on 15 March, Furneaux named St Patrick’s Head, St Helen’s Point, Bay of Fires and Eddystone Point, all on 17 March. Next day he noted ‘the land trenches away to the westward, which I believe forms a deep bay’; it was, in fact, the entrance to Banks Strait. On this day islands were sighted, the land high and rocky, and the south-eastern point was named Cape Barren. He considered investigating whether a strait lay westward but decided to rejoin his commander and on 19 March the vessel ‘haul’d up for New Zealand’. Furneaux later declared that ‘it is my opinion that there is no strait between New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land’, a view he persuaded Cook to accept. Adventure and Resolution were united in New Zealand in May 1773 and in August Furneaux re-visited Tahiti where the Tahitian Omai was taken on board. The vessels were again separated in October and Furneaux returned to England, arriving at Spithead in July 1774.