She Named A Famous
p. 85 · Read in the full issue
Ng Peninsula
The German corvette SMS “Gazelle”, during its voyages, 1874-76, under Captain Freiherr von Schleinitz, left at least two names on the map of the New Guinea Islands which are in use today: the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, and the Kaiserin-Augusta harbour on Bougainville. The ship was not a new one, having been launched in 1859; she had already made long voyages to East Asia and the West Indies before she was commissioned to go, via the Cape, to Kerguelen Island to observe the transit of Venus, and thereafter to the Central Pacific, returning to Kiel by way of the Strait of
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From Kerguelen she passed via Mauritius, Koepang, Timor, Amboina and Dutch New Guinea to New Hanover and New Ireland, as far down as Carteret Harbour, before crossing to Blanche Bay.
When she was there New Ireland and New Britain bore the names they bear again today, and the Bismarck Archipelago was known as Britannia Archipelago. The German names—Neu Mecklenburg, Neu Pommem, Neu Lauenburg (the Duke of Yorks) were only put on the map years after her return, when Germany decided to seize what became German New Guinea. In the account of the Gazelle’s voyage, published in Berlin in many handsome volumes in 1889, all the German names were put in that were not in use in New Guinea. There are separate volumes on zoology, geology, botany, meteorology, besides the account of the voyage. As well as charts and sketches of the coasts visited there are pictures of native weapons, masks, ornaments, and so on, all very scientific and thorough.
She called at Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, besides New Guinea.
The ship was in Blanche Bay in the middle of August, 1857, when the Gazelle Peninsula was named. The boiling water along the shore of Crater Peninsula was noted, as was the lack of drinking water, in fact the natives were seen digging holes for water on the beaches.
They came on board, showed empty pipes, and asked for tobacco in exchange for anything they had to barter. Evidently whalers and traders from Australia had already given them the smoking habit. — Lew Friday.
The German corvette SMS "Gazelle”, which in the late 1870's visited New Guinea and other parts of the Pacific.