George Bass.

George Bass was born on 30 January 1771 at Aswarby, a hamlet about 20 miles from Boston. His father died in 1777 when Bass was 6 and he and his Mother moved to Boston. He attended Boston Grammar School and later trained in medicine at the hospital at Boston. At the age of 18 he was accepted in London as a member of the Company of Surgeons, and in 1794 he joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon.

George Bass.

 

He arrived in Sydney on HMS Reliance on 7 September 1795. Also on the voyage was Matthew Flinders. Together with Flinders, he sailed more than 18 000 kilometres exploring the coastline of Australia and proved that Tasmania was an island. Soon after they arrived in Australia, Bass and Flinders explored the coastline south of Sydney in a tiny boat called the Tom Thumb. Bass who was 24, and Flinders who was only 21 were both very adventurous. Very few people would have had the courage to sail into the open sea in such a small boat. During this trip they explored the land south of Sydney and found land suitable for settlement.

Memorial in St. Botolphs church (The Stump).

 

In 1797 Bass left Sydney in a whaleboat. He took with him 6 sailors and 6 weeks' supply of food. Before reaching Western Port, he came across a party of 7 escaped convicts and promised to rescue them on his return. He then sailed on to Western Port on the southern coast of Australia. Strong winds forced him to stay here for nearly 2 weeks. Bass suspected that there must be a strait of water separating the mainland from Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's land). He rescued the convicts on his way back and sailed back to Port Jackson, after exploring 300 miles of previously unknown coastline. In 1798, Bass and Flinders set off in the Norfolk to sail around Van Diemen's Land. The Norfolk was the first boat to be built in the colony and was built by the prisoners on Norfolk Island. Bass and Flinders discovered and explored the Tamar River. They then spent another 3 weeks mapping the north coast of Tasmania before they sailed down the west coast. They sailed down the Derwent River where Hobart now stands and then set sail for Sydney. They had proved that Van Diemen's Land was an island by sailing right round it. Flinders named the strait, Bass Strait, after George Bass. The discovery of this strait meant that ships could save days when sailing to England, by sailing straight along the south coast, rather than right around the bottom of Tasmania. This was their last voyage together. Bass sailed from Sydney in 1803 to travel to South America. He disappeared and was never heard of again.

 

Bass lived for a time at the Crown and Anchor in London Road Boston, the pub is now demolished but this sign was saved and embedded in the wall at the site.

Around Boston. Matthew Flinders.

Matthew Flinders (March 16, 1774 - July 19, 1814) was born in Donington, a village about 10 miles from Boston, he was an explorer, naval officer and navigator and he circumnavigated Australia and mapped much of its coastline.
Flinders first sailed to Australia in 1795 for the British Navy aboard a ship called the "Reliance." He and his friend George Bass (the ship's surgeon who had lived in Boston) bought an 8-foot-long boat called the "Tom Thumb" in order to explore the treacherous coastline of southern Australia. They first sailed south of Sydney (to Botany Bay) and rowed up the Georges River. During the years 1795 to 1798, they mapped much of the southeast coast of Australia and sailed completely around the island of Tasmania. Flinders returned to England on the "Reliance" in 1800.

Matthew Flinders.

In 1801, Flinders returned to Australia as captain of the 334-ton ship called the "Investigator." He first sighted land at Cape Leeuwin (the southwest tip of Australia). On this second trip, he mapped Australia's entire southern coast, from Cape Leeuwin to the Spencer Gulf (which he sailed up) to the Bass Strait (named for his friend George Bass, it separates mainland Australia from the southern island of Tasmania). On July 22, 1802, he sailed to the east coast of Australia, mapping the coastline from Port Jackson (where Sydney is located) up to the Gulf of Carpentaria. He continued west and then south, sailing completely around Australia; he returned to Port Jackson on June 9, 1803, even though his boat was leaking badly. This was the first time anyone had sailed around Australia.

On his way back to England in the autumn of 1803 (on a different ship, the "Cumberland"), Flinders had to make a stop for ship repairs at Île de France (now called Mauritius) in the western Indian Ocean. Thinking he was a spy, the French kept him prisoner for six and a half years and stole his charts and papers (he was released when the British took over the island). He didn't arrive home until 1810, and reached home sick and a forgotten man. He wrote an account of his travels, called "Voyage to Terra Australis Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of that Vast Country," and died the day after it was published.

The bronze statue below, erected in Donington Market Place in March 2006, also features Trim, his cat, which travelled on voyages to Australia with him but disappeared on Mauritius.

Old Boston buses



This Leyland bus was built in September 1927 and was acquired by the Lincolnshire Road Car Co. in 1931, for whom it worked out of Boston as No.132. It was exported in the 1950s and became a caravan, and is now rotting somewhere in Tasmania!

One of Sharpe's buses in its overnight storage position at their depot in Pipe Office Lane, Boston.

Above: A Kyme's bus in Bond Street at the side of the now demolished Regal Cinema. Below: A Kyme's bus in the Market Place.