Majesty's dominions upon the west coast of America, "this instrument is intended to declare my full belief that his sole object in going there will be to procure food, without any view to private commerce or any other view whatsoever."
Notwithstanding the terms of this certificate, however, there is clear evidence that Governor King was fully aware of the nature of the trade conducted with the Spanish-American colonies by vessels using Port Jackson; and though it may be that Bass did not tell him in so many words what his whole intentions were, King knew that Bass had a large stock of commodities to sell, and could hardly have been ignorant that a considerable portion of them were re-shipped on the Venus for this voyage. In a later despatch he alluded to vessels which carried goods "from hence to the coasts of the Spanish possessions on the west side of America," and he observed "that this must be a forced trade, similar to that carried on among the settlements of that nation and Portugal on the east side of America, and that much risk will attend it to the adventurers."
Bass sailed from Sydney on February 5th, 1803. He never returned, and no satisfactory account of what became of him is forthcoming.[1] Later in 1803 the brig Harrington, herself concerned in the contraband trade, reported that the Venus had been captured and confiscated by the Spaniards in Peru, and that Bass and the mate, Scott, had been sent as prisoners to the silver mines. In December, 1804, Governor King remarked
- ↑ The writer of the article on Bass in the Dictionary of National Biography says that "except that he left Australia in 1799 to return to England nothing certain is known of Bass's subsequent history." But we know fairly fully what he was doing up till February, 1803, as related above. The Bass mystery commences after that date. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edition) finds no space for a separate article on this very remarkable man.
