Mariners Are Warned!

John Lort Stokes and H.M.S. Beagle in Australia 1837-1843

paperback Edition

Marsden Hordern

First full account of the third and last great hydrographic survey of the Australian coastline undertaken by the British Hydrographic Office.

Awards

Victorian Premier's Literary Award, A. A. Phillips Prize for Australian Studies 1989
The Age Book of the Year Award 1989
Braille Book of the Year 1990
Maritime History Prize 1992

Opinion

'There is literary skill of the highest order in this, and controlled, sensitive imagination. Yet everything in the book is hard, documented fact. It is an extraordinary scholarly as well as literary achievement.' (Francis James, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 August 1989)

'Author Hordern has done a magnificent job of catering for all in his re-creation of Stokes' voyage. He is painstaking and accurate in his descriptions of maritime facts and figures . . . but he also makes life aboard a square-rigger magically and sometimes frighteningly real. (Jocelyn Fogagnolo, The Saturday Mercury, 26 August 1989)

About this Title

John Lort Stokes was commissioned by the British Hydrographic Office in 1837 to survey and chart unknown parts of the Australian coastline. He was the last Royal Navy surveyor to hold such a roving commission--as had Matthew Flinders and Phillip Parker King before him. The voyage lasted six years and his ship was H.M.S. Beagle, of Charles Darwin fame.

Stokes circumnavigated Australia twice. In the north he discovered the Fitzroy, Albert and Flinders rivers and Port Darwin, and in the south charted that graveyard of sailing ships, Bass Strait. A century later, twelve of his charts were still in use.

The occasional breathtaking foolhardiness of this earnest and conscientious man startles the reader, as it must have done his men. On a whim, Stokes twice risked drowning himself and others with him, and he made several daredevil escapes from crocodiles

The stories are gripping, and Marsden Hordern is a gifted and vigorous storyteller. He is ably assisted by the ship's mate, Helpman--a chatty, witty chronicler. Mariners are Warned! is an engrossing biography, written with empathy by a fellow mariner.

Winner of the Age Book of the Year; Victorian Premier's Literary Award (A. A. Phillips Award for Australian Studies); Braille Book of the Year; Australian Maritime History Prize.

Companion volume to King of the Australian Coast, another prize-winning maritime biography by the same author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction

LIEUTENANT STOKES, ASSISTANT SURVEYOR
1 Prelude to the Voyage
2 To the Land of Promise
3 Hopes Deferred
4 In Dampier's Wake
5 Mangroves, Mud and Misery
6 Soldiers in Trouble
7 The Southern Ocean
8 Sydney Society
9 Bass Strait
10 North of Capricorn
11 The River Hunters
12 Darwin Remembered
13 'A noble river'
14 Shadows of Death
15 Houtman's Abrolhos, Timor and the Montebellos
16 Return to Sydney

COMMANDER STOKES, CAPTAIN OF THE BEAGLE
17 New Captain for the Beagle
18 In Flinders's Wake
19 Stokes Plays Politics
20 The Tasmanian Connection
21 Heading for Home

Epilogue
Appendices:
1 Admiralty Instructions for the Voyage
2 The Beagle and Her Equipment
3 Helpman and His Journals

Conversions
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Marsden Hordern is a graduate of Sydney University and founder of a print gallery. His life-long association with the sea includes naval service in peace and war, and much ocean sailing. In early Sydney-Hobart yacht races, he used instruments that Stokes would have understood perfectly.