Australia

Seafarers had known of the existence of the great south land hundreds of years before Captain James Cook stepped ashore at Botany Bay on 29 April 1770.

Several ships of the Dutch east India Company had washed ashore, blown off course by the winds of the 'roaring forties', and they had given the name 'New Holland' to continental Australia. However, it was not until Britain had lost the colonies of North America to the armies of the Republic that any attempt was made to examine the land in the southern seas.

Britain needed an outpost to counter the influence of the Dutch - 'Terra Australis' seemed just the right place to start.v They Came By Sea traces the Europeans' discovery of Australia, from the first sightings of the west coast by the Dutch and Portuguese traders in the seventeenth century to the planting of the Union Jack at Botany bay by Captain Arthur Phillip on 26 January, 1788.