George Bass (; 30 January 1771 – after 5 February 1803) was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia.
Early years
Bass was born on 30 January 1771 at Aswarby, a hamlet near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the son of a tenant farmer, George Bass, and a local beauty named Sarah (née Newman). His father died in 1777 when Bass was 6. He had attended Boston Grammar School and later trained in medicine at the hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire. 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.
He arrived in Sydney in New South Wales on HMS Reliance on 7 September 1795.
Also on the voyage were Matthew Flinders, John Hunter, Bennelong, and his surgeon's assistant William Martin.
The voyages of the Tom Thumb and Tom Thumb II
Bass had brought with him on the Reliance a small boat with an keel and beam, which he called the Tom Thumb on account of its size. In October 1795 Bass and Flinders, accompanied by William Martin sailed the Tom Thumb out of Port Jackson to Botany Bay and explored the Georges River further upstream than had been done previously by the colonists. Their reports on their return led to the settlement of Banks' Town.
In March 1796 the same party embarked on a second voyage in a larger boat, which they called the Tom Thumb II. During this trip they travelled as far down the coast as Lake Illawarra, which they called Tom Thumb Lagoon. They explored Port Hacking.
Later that year Bass discovered good land near Prospect Hill, found lost cattle brought out with the First Fleet, and failed in an attempt to cross the Blue Mountains.
Whaleboat voyage to Western Port
In 1797, without Flinders, in an open whaleboat with a crew of six, Bass sailed to Cape Howe, the farthest point of south-eastern Australia. From here he went westwards along what is now the coast of the Gippsland region of Victoria, to Western Port, almost as far as the entrance to Port Phillip, on the north shore of which is the site of present-day Melbourne. His belief that a strait separated the mainland from Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) was backed up by his astute observation of the rapid tide and the long south-western swell at Wilson's Promontory.
Bass visited the Kiama area and made many notes on its botanical complexity and the amazing natural phenomenon, the Kiama Blowhole, noting the volcanic geology around the Blowhole and contributed much to its understanding.
Circumnavigation of Tasmania in the Norfolk
In 1798, this theory was confirmed when Bass and Flinders, in the sloop Norfolk, circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land. In the course of this voyage Bass visited the estuary of the Derwent River, found and named by Captain John Hayes in 1793, where the city of Hobart would be founded on the strength of his report in 1803. When the two returned to Sydney, Flinders recommended to Governor John Hunter that the passage between Van Diemen's Land and the mainland be called Bass Strait.
"This was no more than a just tribute to my worthy friend and companion," Flinders wrote, "for the extreme dangers and fatigues he had undergone, in first entering it in a whaleboat, and to the correct judgement he had formed, from various indications, of the existence of a wide opening between Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales."
Bass was an enthusiastic naturalist and botanist, and he forwarded some of his botanical discoveries to Sir Joseph Banks in London. "In this voyage of fourteen weeks I collected those few plants upon Van Diemen's Land which had not been familiar to me in New South Wales," he wrote to Banks, "and have done myself the honour of submitting them to your inspection." He was made an honorary member of the Society for Promoting Natural History, which later became the Linnean Society. Some of his observations were published in the second volume of David Collins's An Account of the English colony in New South Wales. He was one of the first to describe the Australian marsupial, the wombat.
Marriage and trading
On 8 October 1800, George married Elizabeth Waterhouse at St James's Church, Westminster. She was the sister of Henry Waterhouse, Bass's former shipmate, and captain of the Reliance. In January 1801 Bass set sail again for Port Jackson, leaving Elizabeth behind, and though the couple wrote to each other, they did not meet again, as Bass never returned from this journey.