The East India Company's Settlement in New Guinea, 179395
LONDON, BENGAL, THE CHINA TRADE AND THE UNFREQ^UENTED EXTREMITIES OF ASIA: THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S SETTLEMENT IN NEW GUINEA, 179395 ANDREW GRIFFIN ON 25 October 1793 an Englishman, Captain John Hayes (fig. i), hoisted the British flag at Dore Bay on the north-west coast of New Guinea, near present-day Manokwari in Irian Jaya. With appropriate ceremony a twenty-one gun salute was fired and Hayes, on behalf of the King and nation of Great Britain, took possession of the newly named and thus far unexplored country of 'New Albion'. A formal proclamation describing the annexed territory's bounds was signed by Hayes, his three senior officers and twenty-two crewmen of the Duke of Clarence and Duchess under his command. So began the first European presence on the great island of New Guinea.^ Captain John Hayes, an officer of the English East India Company's naval force, the Bombay Marine,^ had taken furlough in 1793 to lead a privately funded expedition to the South-West Pacific. His principal backers were two merchants in the Company's territory of Bengal, James Frushard and Stephen Laprimaudaye^ who, at their own expense, had purchased and fitted out the Duke of Clarence and the Duchess to undertake the expedition. The voyage took Hayes round the southern coast of Australia (twenty- four years after Cook first surveyed the eastern side) and he made significant discoveries in Tasmania and New Caledonia before navigating an unknown route through the Louisiades and Bismarck Archipelago to the northern coast of New Guinea.* But, the object ofhis expedition was commercial: he was in search ofthe prized spice nutmeg and at Dore Bay, situated outside the area of Dutch control, he beheved he had found it, as well as other valuable commodities.^ The Natives unasked soon convinced me I was in the exact spot I had wished to discover by bringing Nutmegs, Clove Bark, Massoy Bark,*^ Birds of Paradise, Bees Wax, Tortoise Shell .
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