Point Cloates

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Point Cloates,^[1] Western Australia, is situated off North West Cape.

Ida Lee writes^[2] that:

There is a curious silence among historians regarding Cloates Island, or Cloates Doubtful Island, off Western Australia, yet to sailors in olden days it was an island of mystery; and for English sea captains who made it their duty to fall in with New Holland it possessed a peculiar attraction. They looked for it and wrote about it in their log-books more than any other part of the continent, because for years people were wont to disbelieve in its existence too. Owing to the hidden trendings in the coast and the elbow that is formed in its outline where they first sighted land a difficult problem was presented to one sailor after another which none could solve.

...Early explorers had passed along this portion of the coast, though none had named the point until in 1719 it was suddenly christened Cloates Island, and Cloates Island it remained until a hundred years later, when King proved it to be a peninsula. This supposed island was discovered by Captain Nash (possibly an Englishman), in command of a Flemish ship, the "House of Austria," bound from Ostend to China. On seeing it he wrote in his journal: 'Being clear weather brought to, sounded, and had no ground with 100 fms. though not above four miles off shore. The day before and several days after observed an incredible quantity of seaweed like that from the Gulf of Florida and small birds like lapwings both in size and flight. This island cannot be seen far even in clear weather and lies N.E. by E. and S.W. by S. about 32 leagues in length with terrible breakers from each end running about three miles into the sea.' He gave the lat. as 22° S. and from it made 7°26' westing to Java Head. As he could find no account of this land in any of his books or charts Captain Nash named it Cloates or Cloot's Island in honour of a Flemish Baron, one of the owners of the ship."

From 1912 the Western Australian Government granted a license to a Norwegian company to operate whaling stations at Frenchman's Bay near Albany and Point Cloates (then known as Norwegian Bay). (Refer to the article on Whaling in Western Australia.)

In 2005 the ruins of Point Cloates lighthouse, built in 1910, were listed in the Western Australian register of heritage places.

[edit] Notes

Cloates island remained on marine charts and world maps until late in the 18th Century. The Guthrie world map published in 1785 maps out the voyages of Captain Cook. "Cloats" Island is shown in longitude 97 degrees East, due south of Keeling island, some 16 degrees west of its true position. Tryall rocks is shown further east in Latitude 20 degrees south. These anomalies are largely due to the account of captain Brooke of the Tryall who sailed along this coast of Western Australia in 1622 on the way to the East Indies. The Tryall was then wrecked on the 22nd May, on the rocks that now bear the name of the ship, to the north of the Montebellos Islands. Brookes claimed he sailed his skiff from the wreck site in a north-easterly direction reaching the coast of Java. Cartographers extrapolated the position of Cloates Island and the Tryall rocks from Brooke's account.