The Life of George Bass

A biography of this surgeon, navigator, adventurer and entrepreneur, and exploration of his last Pacific voyage.

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On 5 February 1802, the 142-ton brig Venus cleared Sydney Heads to begin a trading voyage through the islands of the pacific. On board as captain was surgeon, navigator, adventurer and entrepreneur, George Bass. Neither Bass nor Venus completed the voyage. They simply vanished into the Pacific. The brilliant and charismatic George Bass embodied the Age of Enlightenment. He was a man of intense intellectual curiosity, of wide-ranging talents and contradictions. He had friends among Sydney's political 'radicals' but was also of the establishment. He was a skilled surgeon who preferred navigation to medicine, a naval officer who put his career on hold in an attempt to make a fortune and a man deeply in love but who abandoned his 'beloved Bess Bass' for the rewards of an adventurous voyage into commerce. In "The Life of George Bass" lie all the elements of a personality and circumstance that shaped this short but remarkable life. Miriam Estensen brings to bear exhaustive research in archives and libraries around the world, and her characteristic subtlety and insight to present a richly detailed account of the life and mysterious disappearance of this gifted and complicated man.
This is the first major biography of George Bass in 50 years. It is exhaustively researched and documented, and handsomely produced. Miriam Estensen is a highly regarded expert on the history of Australian maritime exploration.