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Captain Cook's claim questioned by coin find
By Nick Squires in Sydney
Last Updated: 2:55am BST 31/08/2007
An archeologist claims to have found a 16th century European coin in a swamp on Australia’s east coast, raising new questions about whether Captain James Cook was beaten to the continent by the Spanish or Portuguese.
The silver coin, which is inscribed with the date 1597, was discovered by a group led by amateur archeologist Greg Jefferys.
A colleague was digging in the sand with a machete when he found the badly corroded coin on Sunday.
It was buried a few inches below the ground in the middle of snake-infested Eighteen Mile Swamp on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland.
If proved to be authentic it will lend weight to the theory that Spanish or Portuguese navigators ‘discovered’ Australia’s eastern seaboard centuries before Capt Cook claimed it for Britain when he landed at Botany Bay in 1770.
Spanish ships based in the Americas explored the Pacific extensively from the early 1500s in search of gold, spices and the fabled Great South Land. They ‘discovered’ the Solomon Islands in 1568 and islands comprising present-day Vanuatu in 1606.
In the same year, the Spanish navigator Luis Baez de Torres sailed through the strait which now bears his name, between Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Mr Jefferys hopes the coin may lead him to the wreck of a 16th or 17th century ship rumoured to be lying beneath the swamp — the so-called ‘Stradbroke Galleon’.
The timber skeleton of the vessel was reportedly noted by a Queensland colonial secretary in the 1890s, and spotted by a Royal Australian Air Force pilot as he flew over the island during the Second World War.
Local legend has it that Aborigines living on the island between the wars found gold coins buried in the sand.
A map of the island published by Shell in the 1920s is marked "wreck of Spanish galleon". Mr Jefferys said the coin was unearthed close to where other historical artifacts, including a lead weight, a brass button and an antique Spanish-style dagger, have been discovered over the years.
"The coin is critical because it’s the only object which we can definitely date," he said yesterday [thurs]. "I’m pretty confident it’s genuine. There’s a mounting body of evidence that either the Spanish or the Portuguese reached Australia."
Ian Jempson, of the Queensland Maritime Museum, which has just held an exhibition of the Spanish exploration of the Pacific, said: "Certainly there are some artifact discoveries which indicate that the Spanish or Portuguese may have been here before Cook.
There’s been the suggestion that Cook drew on maps of Australia which had been drawn up by either the Spanish or Portuguese."
But other experts were skeptical. Andrew Viduka, a shipwreck expert from the Museum of Tropical Queensland, said: "It’s what we call a loose find — it’s an object that could have been put there by anyone at any time.
There’s no archeological context to it.
If it could be proven, it would be hugely exciting but at the moment you can’t infer anything from it." It has long been accepted that Dutch navigators sailed up Australia’s west coast in the 1600s, preceding Capt Cook on the eastern seaboard by nearly 200 years.
Earlier this year a book by an Australian journalist and historian claimed that a small Portuguese fleet charted much of Australia’s coast as early as 1522.
In his book Beyond Capricorn, Peter Trickett argued that a fresh analysis of 16th century charts showed that Portuguese adventurers had secretly discovered and mapped Australia and New Zealand.
http://tinyurl.com/2tadae
All a storm in a tea-cup, really. Cook's claim to fame is not that he discovered Australia, but that he accurately charted it (and claimed it for Britain).
Secret Admiralty Instructions
By Nick Squires in Sydney
Last Updated: 2:55am BST 31/08/2007
An archeologist claims to have found a 16th century European coin in a swamp on Australia’s east coast, raising new questions about whether Captain James Cook was beaten to the continent by the Spanish or Portuguese.
The silver coin, which is inscribed with the date 1597, was discovered by a group led by amateur archeologist Greg Jefferys.
A colleague was digging in the sand with a machete when he found the badly corroded coin on Sunday.
It was buried a few inches below the ground in the middle of snake-infested Eighteen Mile Swamp on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland.
If proved to be authentic it will lend weight to the theory that Spanish or Portuguese navigators ‘discovered’ Australia’s eastern seaboard centuries before Capt Cook claimed it for Britain when he landed at Botany Bay in 1770.
Spanish ships based in the Americas explored the Pacific extensively from the early 1500s in search of gold, spices and the fabled Great South Land. They ‘discovered’ the Solomon Islands in 1568 and islands comprising present-day Vanuatu in 1606.
In the same year, the Spanish navigator Luis Baez de Torres sailed through the strait which now bears his name, between Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Mr Jefferys hopes the coin may lead him to the wreck of a 16th or 17th century ship rumoured to be lying beneath the swamp — the so-called ‘Stradbroke Galleon’.
The timber skeleton of the vessel was reportedly noted by a Queensland colonial secretary in the 1890s, and spotted by a Royal Australian Air Force pilot as he flew over the island during the Second World War.
Local legend has it that Aborigines living on the island between the wars found gold coins buried in the sand.
A map of the island published by Shell in the 1920s is marked "wreck of Spanish galleon". Mr Jefferys said the coin was unearthed close to where other historical artifacts, including a lead weight, a brass button and an antique Spanish-style dagger, have been discovered over the years.
"The coin is critical because it’s the only object which we can definitely date," he said yesterday [thurs]. "I’m pretty confident it’s genuine. There’s a mounting body of evidence that either the Spanish or the Portuguese reached Australia."
Ian Jempson, of the Queensland Maritime Museum, which has just held an exhibition of the Spanish exploration of the Pacific, said: "Certainly there are some artifact discoveries which indicate that the Spanish or Portuguese may have been here before Cook.
There’s been the suggestion that Cook drew on maps of Australia which had been drawn up by either the Spanish or Portuguese."
But other experts were skeptical. Andrew Viduka, a shipwreck expert from the Museum of Tropical Queensland, said: "It’s what we call a loose find — it’s an object that could have been put there by anyone at any time.
There’s no archeological context to it.
If it could be proven, it would be hugely exciting but at the moment you can’t infer anything from it." It has long been accepted that Dutch navigators sailed up Australia’s west coast in the 1600s, preceding Capt Cook on the eastern seaboard by nearly 200 years.
Earlier this year a book by an Australian journalist and historian claimed that a small Portuguese fleet charted much of Australia’s coast as early as 1522.
In his book Beyond Capricorn, Peter Trickett argued that a fresh analysis of 16th century charts showed that Portuguese adventurers had secretly discovered and mapped Australia and New Zealand.
http://tinyurl.com/2tadae
All a storm in a tea-cup, really. Cook's claim to fame is not that he discovered Australia, but that he accurately charted it (and claimed it for Britain).
Secret Admiralty Instructions
http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item.asp?dID=34
]
