Captain Cook's claim questioned by coin find

London Daily Telegraph ^ | august 31st, 2007 | DancesWithCats

[DancesWithCats]

An archeologist claims to have found a 16th century European coin in a swamp on Australia’s east coast, raising new questions about whether Captain James Cook was beaten to the continent by the Spanish or Portuguese.

The silver coin, which is inscribed with the date 1597, was discovered by a group led by amateur archeologist Greg Jefferys.

A colleague was digging in the sand with a machete when he found the badly corroded coin on Sunday.It was buried a few inches below the ground in the middle of snake-infested Eighteen Mile Swamp on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland.

If proved to be authentic it will lend weight to the theory that Spanish or Portuguese navigators ‘discovered’ Australia’s eastern seaboard centuries before Capt Cook claimed it for Britain when he landed at Botany Bay in 1770.

Spanish ships based in the Americas explored the Pacific extensively from the early 1500s in search of gold, spices and the fabled Great South Land. They ‘discovered’ the Solomon Islands in 1568 and islands comprising present-day Vanuatu in 1606.

[DancesWithCats]

ohhhh boy! (well I don't know how much 'discovering' was going on if they crashed and burned and their vessel sank to the bottom of the sea! LOL but ... maybe they were there first!)

[martin_fierro]

Ping

[PeteB570]

I got a problem with coins.

They can show a no earlier time - because of when they were minted.

But that later date? If I drop a 1958 dime in my back yard it doesn't mean the house was built then.

[Tijeras_Slim]

It was buried a few inches below the ground in the middle of snake-infested Eighteen Mile Swamp on North Stradbroke Island, Queensland.

Digging deeper, he found the compass of Ameila Aerhart's Lockheed.

[ClearCase_guy]

I was thinking of slipping an old Roman coin into that snake-infested swamp -- that would shake 'em up, wouldn't it?

Seriously, it's long been known that Europeans saw Australia long before Cook sailed into Botany Bay. Not much new here. There were no settlements. The fact is that the Spanish and the Portuguese knew about Australia and didn't do anything with it. The British turned it into a wonderful country (though the beginning was a bit rocky, as is often the case).

[nkycincinnatikid]

Surely no one believes Cook was the first to Australia. When Cook returned to England making that claim, Commander Dalrymple of the British Admiralty protested vigorously, as the Admiralty had excellent maps of Australia that were already 250 years old!

[editor-surveyor]

Said coin could have been dropped by anyone, from the date it was minted, to recent times. You need far more than a coin to establish the landing of a vessel.

Traditionally a party landing on new or unknown beaches would attempt to erect something more substantial than dropping a coin in the sand.

[DancesWithCats]

In his book Beyond Capricorn, Peter Trickett argued that a fresh analysis of 16th century charts showed that Portuguese adventurers had secretly discovered and mapped Australia and New Zealand.

So ... why would they keep this a big, fat secret?! Fear of retribution from aborigines who lost out on the souvenir trade?

[blam]

Ahem.

'First Americans Were Australian'

[Al Gator]

Somehow, when I think of floating around the south pacific in a 16th century galleon, I just can’t get my mind around the fact that dudes did that.

I was on the south pacific in a modern warship, and it still scared the living sh!t out of me.

I just can’t imagine what it was like.

[nkycincinnatikid]

By following your sources it seems the earliest American was “the Arlington Spings woman” and it is well known that “the little old lady from Pasadena” drove a super sport Dodge. Ahem indeed.

[nkycincinnatikid]

Yeah but once you’ve signed on, that boat is something under your feet, right? I’ll bet you don’t regret a minute of it.

[blam]

"By following your sources it seems the earliest American was “the Arlington Spings woman”..."

Yup. I expect that to change. I think we have so big suprises coming in the years ahead from South America.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks martin.

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[norton]

"If I drop a 1958 dime in my back yard it doesn't mean the house was built then."

No, but it might make for a successful Masters' Thesis sometime later in the century.

[Fred Nerks]

If proved to be authentic it will lend weight to the theory that Spanish or Portuguese navigators ‘discovered’ Australia’s eastern seaboard centuries before Capt Cook...

no it won't, it will only prove someone dropped a coin...

Here's my favourite prior claim to Australia:

Facsimile of chart from Nicholas Vallard's manuscript sea atlas (1547), now held in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The facsimile was given the title "The first Map of Australia from Nicholas Vallard's Atlas, 1547" by the publisher, in 1856. The original chart was produced in Dieppe, France in the 16th century, and was thought to represent Portuguese charting of the northeastern coast of Australia.

Don't ask me about the camels, the horses and the large feline...not to mention the very Balinese-looking buildings and the elaborate clothing of the 'inhabitants' - Australian aboriginals went naked and the umbrella would have terrified them!

[Fred Nerks]

Another nail in Cook’s coffin as map suggests he was pipped by Portugal

A set of maps unearthed in Australia appear to show that Captain Cook was predated by a little known Portuguese explorer, Cristovao Mendonca, who charted parts of the coastline 250 years earlier. Drawn in the early 16th century, the charts bear a close resemblance to Australia's coastline, and this coastline is marked with locations given names in Portuguese...

[blam]

"Many Portuguese maps were lost for posterity when the repository, the Casa da India, in Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755."

Looks like this map survived because of a catastrophe.

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1755lisbonquake.html

“That was the year when Lisbon town /Saw the earth open and gulp her down.”

[aruanan]

If proved to be authentic it will lend weight to the theory that Spanish or Portuguese navigators ‘discovered’ Australia’s eastern seaboard centuries before Capt Cook claimed it for Britain when he landed at Botany Bay in 1770.

Or that someone subsequent to 1770 dropped an old coin there. More likely that given the increasing number of Europeans around in latter years and the unlikeliness of a Spanish or Portuguese sailor carrying a pocketful of change into a swamp in what was to him a God-forsaken part of the world, devoid of grog bars and whore houses (or at least the kind that would take European tender).