The wreck of HM Schooner, Mermaid, used to chart large parts of the Australian coastline, including a portion of what became the Northern Territory, has been found off Cairns by an Australian National Maritime Museum expedition. After striking Flora Reef,13km east of Frankland Islands, the vessel sank 180 years ago. The cartographer and mariner Phillip Parker King circumnavigated Australia twice in the Mermaid . He mapped large sections of the coastline from Arnhem Land to Cape Leeuwin and King George Sound to the Great Barrier Reef between 1817 and l822.
Under command of another mariner, Samuel Nolbrow, the Mermaid left Sydney for Port Raffles (Cobourg Peninsula ) on May 10, l829 . Disregarding advice, he took the dangerous route through the Barrier Reef and ran aground. A detailed account of the discovery can be found in the lively Magnetic Island online newspaper at http://www.magnetictimes.com.
NOTE-King dined with Charles Darwin in Sydney before he set sail for home to later write his controversial book about the origin of species.
