Navigating by the Southern Cross

Kenneth Morgan is a Professor of History at Brunel University, London, UK. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has served on the editorial board for the International Journal of Maritime History. His research and teaching interests include the British Atlantic world, maritime history, imperialism, slavery and abolitionism.

In charting the European maritime exploration of Australia, Navigating by the Southern Cross takes us on a fascinating and meticulously researched voyage of historical discovery. Informed by the latest scholarship and drawing on an impressively wide range of sources, Kenneth Morgan’s account alerts us to the multinational nature of maritime exploration, information gathering, and knowledge production in this process. The book succeeds in combining the stories of individual voyages of exploration – as well as the strengths and weaknesses, foibles and eccentricities, of their leaders – with the history of technological advances and the scientific approaches that informed much of this work. Navigating by the Southern Cross offers an erudite, authoritative, and richly textured account, which will appeal to anyone interested in maritime history, the history of exploration, or the history of the great southern land that came to be known as Australia.

• List of aAbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Terra Australis Incognita 2 Seventeenth-century Dutch Exploration 3 Tasman’s Voyages 4 From Tasman to Cook 5 Cook, the Endeavour and the East Coast 6 French Voyages to Terra Australis 7 English Voyages in the Age of Bligh and Vancouver 8 Flinders and the Investigator 9 Baudin’s Expedition 10 Phillip Parker King’s Australian Surveys 11 The Hydrographic Surveyors Conclusion Bibliography