George Bass

George Bass (1771 to after 1803) was an English naval surgeon and explorer of Australia. Born at Aswarby near Sleaford in Lincolnshire, the son of a tenant farmer, he trained in medicine at the hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire, became a member of the Company of Surgeons in London at eighteen and joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon in 1794. He reached Sydney aboard HMS Reliance in 1795 with Matthew Flinders, and the two explored the Georges River and the coast as far as Lake Illawarra in small boats. In 1797 he sailed a whaleboat to Western Port, and in 1798 he and Flinders circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land, which showed that a strait separated it from the mainland and led to the name Bass Strait. He also collected plants for Sir Joseph Banks and was among the first to describe the wombat. He left on a trading voyage in the brig Venus in 1801 and never returned, and his death is dated only as after 5 February 1803.