France

1801-03

Nicolas Baudin and Jacques Felix Emmanuel Hamelin explore the west coast from Cape Leeuwin to the far north, then south coast. Hamelin’s crew find the de Vlamingh plate at Cape Inscription, Dirk Hartog Island. Replaces the plate on a new post and leaves an engraved lead plaque commemorating the French expedition.

Britain

1801-03

Matthew Flinders explores the coast.

America

1803

American: Meets the French at the Bay of Two Nations (Two Peoples Bay).

Britain

1810

Wreck of the British South Seas whaler believed to be the Lively (formerly the French prize Abeille) at Rowley Shoals. Marked on Phillip Parker King’s 1829 Admiralty chart: ‘Coral Reef on which the Lively was lost’.

America

1811

American China trader Rapid en route from Boston to the East Indies wrecked at Point Cloates.

Portugal

1816

Portuguese dispatch vessel en route from Lisbon to Macau under the command of Captain João Joaquim de Freitas ran aground on Ningaloo Reef on 26 November 1816. Earliest known wreck of a Portuguese ship on the Western Australian coast. Survivors set off in the ship’s boat and stopped once further up the coast to make repairs to the vessel.

Portugal

1816 - 17

Luis Antonio da Silva Beltrao, pilot of the Emillia, hired to chart the navigational dangers in the vicinity of Point Cloates for the proposed salvage of the Correio da Azia. All charts of the region still based on de Vlamingh’s surveys. While more recent charts were available, namely those of Flinders and de Freycinet, neither of these explorers had charted this part of the Australian coast as the Portuguese and many others had thought.

Britain

1817 - 1822

Phillip Parker King’s triple circumnavigation. Discover both Hartog and de Vlamingh’s plates have been removed from Cape Inscription. Leaves commemoration of his voyage in the Bathurst in 1822: the name ‘KING’ is marked out in nails on the post erected by Hamelin in 1801.

France

1818-20

Louis and Rose de Freycinet land at Shark Bay. Remove the de Vlamingh plate from Cape Inscription.

France

1822

Louis Duperrey voyage—first of the major circumnavigations, ostensibly for reasons of science. Ordered to stop at the Land of Leeuwin on the south-west coast of New Holland to examine the nature of the soil, in particular at Swan River and King George Sound, to see if that part of New Holland was ‘suited to receiving a settlement’. Expedition forced to by-pass the south-western coast and sail direct to Port Jackson on account of illness, the poor state of the ship and the dangers of the coast.

France

1824

Hyacinthe Bougainville (a member of the Baudin expedition), was also sent to report on the suitability of ‘Leeuwin Land’. Like Duperrey, he avoided it, using the same excuses for not carrying out this part of his orders.

France

1826

Dumont D’Urville anchored in King George Sound to carry out repairs to his ship and give the crew a rest. His main task was to survey and examine the resources of New Zealand as a potential colony and naval base, and report on a place where the French government could send convicts. The artist with the expedition Louis Auguste de Sainson carefully made sketches of the area and its inhabitants.

Britain

1826

Major Edmund Lockyer arrived at King George Sound on the Amity to claim the area for Britain.

Britain

1827

James Stirling surveys the Swan River and recommends the area be developed as a British settlement and naval station—a warning against possible French ambitions on the western coast.

Britain

1829

Captain Charles Fremantle arrives at Swan River to take formal possession on behalf of Britain of all of Australia not included in the colony of New South Wales.

Britain

1829

Stirling was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the new colony. He returned with settlers and on 18 June 1829 the Swan River Colony was proclaimed.