page_title: HMS Mermaid (1817)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: HMS Mermaid (1817) / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: VIEW OF THE ENCAMPMENT IN CAREENING BAY. WHERE THE MERMAID WAS REPAIRED. From a sketch by P.P. King. Published May 1825, by John Murray, London. Careening Bay, was named after events in 1820. Lieutenant Phillip Parker King, on his third trip charting the coast of Western Australia, got into trouble with His cutter The Mermaid which began taking on water calling for drastic action. Waiting for the right tidal conditions, Parker King landed her on the beach. Hence the name. Fortunately for Parker King there his crew were able to salvage metal from nearby shipwrecks, which was melted down and used to make repairs. During the ten days that it took to complete the maintenance, the ship’s carpenter visited the local Boab tree and carved ‘HMC Mermaid 1820’ into the trunk. Nearly 200-years later, the lettering has grown to 12m high and is a tourist attraction. The Boab, a distinctive tree with a fat trunk and few leaves, was evidently as much a pull to visitors in days-gone-by as there is also an old Makassan Islamic prayer alcove at the rear of the tree.
context_page_description: HMS Mermaid was a cutter built in Howrah, India, in 1816. The British Royal Navy purchased her at Port Jackson in 1817. The Navy then used her to survey the Australian coasts. In 1820 she grounded and in 1823 was condemned for survey work. The Navy sold her to the colonial government which used her to run errands until she was wrecked in 1829.
context_section_description: Mermaid was launched at Howrah in 1816 and the Royal Navy purchased her at Port Jackson in 1817. 
  Phillip Parker King used her between December 1817 and December 1820 to survey parts of the Australian coast that Matthew Flinders had not already surveyed.
  King circumnavigated the Australian mainland and conducted a survey of the Inner Route through the Great Barrier Reef. 
  In 1820 Mermaid grounded at Careening Bay, Kimberley, Western Australia; gotten off, she only reached Sydney with difficulty. A survey resulted in her condemnation for survey work and her sale in 1823 to the colonial government. 
  In September 1823 Mermaid carried John Oxley as he explored the Queensland coast south of Port Curtis, discovering the Brisbane and Tweed rivers. At Moreton Bay he rescued Thomas Pamphlett and John Finnegan, who had been ship-wrecked earlier in the year.
  In September 1825 Mermaid transported Edmund Lockyer to Moreton Bay so he could explore the upper reaches of the Brisbane River.
  In August 1826 John Richardson travelled on Mermaid from Port Essington, on Melville Island, to Timor to obtain seeds.
caption: View of the encampment in Careening Bay where Mermaid was repaired in 1820
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