The _Lady Nelson_ was a little brig of 60 tons burden, one of the first
built with a centre-board, or sliding keels, as the idea was then termed.
She was designed by Captain Schanck, one of the naval transport
commissioners, and when she sailed from Portsmouth to begin her survey
service in Australia, she was so deeply laden for her size that she had
less than three feet of freeboard.
Lieutenant James Grant was, through the influence of [Sidenote: 1800]
Banks, appointed to command this little vessel. He has much to say on the
subject of sliding keels, for which see his _Narrative of a Voyage of
Discovery_. The _Lady Nelson_ was well built, and Grant showed his respect
for her designer by his naming of Cape Schanck in Victoria and Mount
Schanck in South Australia. In one of his letters to Banks, Grant says
that, with all his stores of every description on board, he could take his
vessel into seven feet of water, and could haul off a lee shore, by the
use of sliding keels, "equal to any ship in the navy." On the night of
January 23rd, 1800, it blew such a gale in the Channel that six vessels
went on shore, and several others were reported missing. This gale lasted
for nine days, and during that time the _Lady Nelson_ rode comfortably at
her anchor in the Downs.
Grant's instructions when he left England were to proceed through the
newly discovered Bass' Straits on his way, report himself at Sydney, and
then set to work and survey the coast, beginning with the southern and
south-western parts of it.
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