1815 Lieut. JEFFRIES.

HMs Kangaroo left Port Jackson (Sydney) on 19 April 1815 for Ceylon with soldiers and their families from the 73rd. Regiment. As he headed north for the Torres Strait the weather worsened and Lieut. JEFFRIES decided to follow Captain COOK's track through the channel inside the Great Barrier Reef. At noon on 28 April he reached Hervey's Bay and anchored at Port Bowen to replace his putrid water. He was delayed here for several days when the wind drove the launch 15 miles along the coast. After passing Northumberland and Cumberland Is. he had the pleasant coincidence of passing through the strait inside Whitsunday Is. on Whit Sunday as Captain COOK had done 35 years before.

On 28 May he reached the point where Capt. COOK had decided that the inshore passage ended, intending to run a little way along the coast before going outside the reef. He found a clear passage which took him up past a group of islands he named the Flinder's Group, to a an extensive bay, at least 30 miles in depth, which he called Princess Charlotte Bay.

On 1 June KANGAROO had a narrow escape from being wrecked on a mushroom-shaped coral rock about 4 feet under water. (Lieut. JEFFRIES gave the position of the rock as 13 deg. 32 min. 5 sec. South. and, by lunar observation, 143 deg. 47 min. East.) The red discolouration in the water was noticed by the Lieutenant who was fortunately at the masthead with the lookouts and ordered the helm hard a-port.They missed it by about 10 yards while doing 5  to 6 knots.

On the 2 June KANGAROO entered the part of the coast charted by Capt. BLIGH in BOUNTY's launch and in the afternoon she grounded on a sand bank covered by only two fathoms of water with more than ten fathoms only a ship's length away. Lieut. JEFFRIES lightened ship and put out an anchor and the efforts of the sailors and soldiers had her off in two hours.

On the 7th. they passed through the Endeavour Strait into the Arafura Sea and anchored for the night off Booby Is.before sailing for Timor which they reached on the 19th. They sailed for Ceylon on the 26th. arriving in Colombo Roads on 24 July where the troops and their families were landed, all in good health. On 2 August Lieut. JEFFRIES was sent up to the Gulf of Mannar, between Ceylon and India, to assist in extricating an Arab ship with English troops on board from the shoals of that dangerous passage.   Source: Ships of the Old Navy