ABSTRACT
Although Australia is the world's largest island, her economic development has been based on the exploitation of the land rather than the sea. Australia lacks a strong tradition of maritime enterprise despite the fact that she is 'the offspring of a mighty sea-power'. 1 One consequence of this has been that historians have neglected Australia's maritime history. In the late 1960s the state of the literature led one writer to observe that 'Australia is a maritime nation and scarcely knows it'. 2 However, the publication of John Bach's A Maritime History of Australia in 1976 and the formation of the Australian Association for Maritime History in 1978 is evidence of a growing interest in maritime history.
