page_title: Lord Howe Island
section_title: 1842–1860: Trading provisions
hierarchical_section_title: Lord Howe Island / History / 1842–1860: Trading provisions
caption_attribution_description: English: HMS Herald expedition to the southwest Pacific (with steamship Torch)
context_page_description: Lord Howe Island is an irregularly crescent-shaped volcanic remnant in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, 600 km directly east of mainland Port Macquarie, 780 km northeast of Sydney, and about 900 km southwest of Norfolk Island. It is about 10 km long and between 0.3 and 2.0 km wide with an area of 14.55 km², though just 3.98 km² of that comprise the low-lying developed part of the island.
  Along the west coast is a sandy semi-enclosed sheltered coral reef lagoon. Most of the population lives in the north, while the south is dominated by forested hills rising to the highest point on the island, Mount Gower. The Lord Howe Island Group comprises 28 islands, islets, and rocks. Apart from Lord Howe Island itself, the most notable of these is the volcanic and uninhabited Ball's Pyramid about 23 km to the southeast of Howe. To the North lies a cluster of seven small uninhabited islands called the Admiralty Group.
  The first reported sighting of Lord Howe Island took place on 17 February 1788, when Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball, commander of the Armed Tender HMS Supply, was en route from Botany Bay to found a penal settlement on Norfolk Island.
context_section_description: The new business was advertised and ships trading between Sydney and the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) would also put into the island. Rover's Bride, a small cutter, became the first regular trading vessel. Between 1839 and 1859,  five to 12 ships made landfall each year, occasionally closer to 20, with seven or eight at a time laying off the reef. In 1842 and 1844, the first children were born on the island. Then in 1847, Poole, Dawson, and Foulis, bitter at failing to obtain a land lease from the New South Wales government, abandoned the settlement although three of their employees remained. One family, the Andrews, after finding some onions on the beach in 1848, cultivated them as the "Lord Howe red onion", which was popular in the Southern Hemisphere for about 30 years until the crop was attacked by smut disease.
  In 1849, just 11 people were living on the island, but soon the island farms expanded. In the 1850s, gold was discovered on mainland Australia, where crews would abandon their ships, preferring to dig for gold than to risk their lives at sea. As a consequence, many vessels avoided the mainland and Lord Howe Island experienced an increasing trade, which peaked between 1855 and 1857. In 1851, about 16 people were living on the island. Vegetable crops now included potatoes, carrots, maize, pumpkin, taro, watermelon, and even grapes, passionfruit, and coffee. Between 1851 and 1853, several aborted proposals were made by the NSW government to establish a penal settlement on the island.
  From 1851 to 1854, Henry Denham captain of HMS Herald, which was on a scientific expedition to the southwest Pacific (1852–1856), completed the island's first hydrographic survey. On board were three Scottish biologists, William Milne (a gardener-botanist from the Edinburgh Botanic Garden), John MacGillivray (naturalist) who collected fish and plant specimens, and assistant surgeon and zoologist Denis Macdonald. Together, these men established much basic information on the geology, flora, and fauna of the island.
  Around 1853, a further three settlers arrived on the American whaling barque Belle, captained by Ichabod Handy.  George Campbell (who died in 1856) and Jack Brian (who left the island in 1854) arrived, and the third, Nathan Thompson, brought three women (called Botanga, Bogoroo, and a girl named Bogue) from the Gilbert Islands. When his first wife Botanga died, he then married Bogue. Thompson was the first resident to build a substantial house in the 1860s from mainland cedar washed up on the beach. Most of the residents with island ancestors have blood relations or are connected by marriage to Thompson and his second wife Bogue.
  In 1855, the island was officially designated as part of New South Wales by the Constitution Act.
caption: "Expedition to the South Seas: HMS Herald and steamship tender Torch" The Illustrated London News, 15 May 1852
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