A lost Indiaman

[Cablava]

Letter from Major Russell to Matthew Flinders (FLI01) Page 1

Annotation: 9 June 1801


Dear Sir


� � � I cannot sufficiently thank you for
your very obliging & friendly Letter of the 23d
ulto brought me by Mr Browne. Being
out of the way since, I did not know of
your arrival at Portsmouth until Saturday
too late for Post. At the same time, I
also learnt your unlucky Discovery of
a Sand Bank in Hythe Bay, where I
have often been at Anchor without any
Suspicion of Danger. ? (But one of our East
Indiamen was lost by knocking a hole in
her bottom on a sharp Rock at [illegible]
of False Bay, an strait which every body
had before pa?sed in, without suspicion)
I conceive, however, that no Survey has
ever been made of that part, & you may
find by what I have said in Herodotus

False bay is on the south side of Cape Peninsula, south-east of Cape Town, South Africa. So-called because sailors often mistook it for Table Bay. I wonder if anyone has looked for it.