IN offering this little tract to the public it is equally the writer’s wish to conduce to their amusement and information.
The expedition on which he is engaged has excited much curiosity and given birth to many speculations respecting the consequences to arise from it. While men continue to think freely, they will judge variously. Some have been sanguine enough to foresee the most beneficial effects to the parent state from the colony we are endeavouring to establish, and some have not been wanting to pronounce the scheme big with folly, impolicy and ruin. Which of these predictions will be completed I leave to the decision of the public. I cannot, however, dismiss the subject without expressing a hope that the candid and liberal of each opinion, induced by the humane and benevolent intention in which it originated, will unite in waiting the result of a fair trial to an experiment no less new in its design than difficult in its execution.
As this publication enters the world with the name of the author, candour will, he trusts, induce its readers to believe that no consideration could weigh with him in an endeavour to mislead them. Facts are related simply as they happened and when opinions are hazarded they are such as, he hopes, patient inquiry and deliberate decision will be found to have authorised. For the most part he has spoken from actual observation, and in those places where the relations of others have been unavoidably adopted, he has been careful to search for the truth and repress that spirit of exaggeration which is almost ever the effect of novelty on ignorance.
The nautical part of the work is comprised in as few pages as possible. By the professional part of my readers this will be deemed judicious; and the rest will not, I believe, be dissatisfied at its brevity. I beg leave, however, to say of the astronomical calculations that they may be depended on with the greatest degree of security, as they were communicated by an officer who was furnished with instruments and commissioned by the Board of Longitude to make observations during the voyage and in the southern hemisphere.
An unpractised writer is generally anxious to bespeak public attention and to solicit public indulgence. Except on professional subjects, military men are, perhaps, too fearful of critical censure. For the present narrative no other apology is attempted than the intentions of its author, who has endeavoured not only to satisfy present curiosity but to point out to future adventurers the favourable as well as adverse circumstances which will attend their settling here. The candid, it is hoped, will overlook the inaccuracies of this imperfect sketch, drawn amidst the complicated duties of the service in which the author is engaged, and make due allowance for the want of opportunity of gaining more extensive information.
Watkin Tench, Captain of the Marines
Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, New South Wales, 10 July 1788