Abraham Bristow

[3] When he was about 16 years of age Abraham was bound as an apprentice seaman in the Southern Whale Fishery to Messers Enderby of London.

He first enters the public record as the chief officer (first mate) aboard the Enderby owned vessel Speedy (Captain Thomas Melville) which left London in December 1793 for Australia, under charter as a government store ship, arriving at Sydney in June 1794 with much needed provisions for the colonists at Port Jackson.

Supplies were obtained at Chile before Speedy cruised for whales off the Galapagos Islands in company with the whaler Emilia.

November produced heavy rain, and in fact till I left the island on 19th December scarce a day passed without wet and the most tempestuous weather for a continuance I ever experienced in any port.

Charles Enderby, whose father owned the ship on which Bristow discovered the islands, established a whaling settlement that lasted from 1849 to 1852.

Captain Bristow seems to have formed a friendship with the commandant of the penal colony on the island, Joseph Foveaux.

Bristow refined and corrected observations made by earlier navigators in these waters, later publishing his findings, which were described by Purdy as, "certainly more accurate than those before obtained.

Purdy published a new chart in 1810 that showed routes from Sydney to China, including Captain Bristow's new track from Port Jackson through Dampier Strait to the Moluccas.

His next command was the 377-ton vessel Thames, a South Sea whaler owned by William Mellish & Co. of London.

From there they headed toward New Ireland, Bristow frequently recording navigational observations he used to correct the charts of Dampier, Bougainville and Labillardiere.

North along the coast of New Guinea they sailed and past Durville Point where on 21 September they anchored in a harbour Bristow named Thames Roads.

A boats sent to sound between Mellish Island and Jobi was chased by seven canoes, which fired arrows, but caused no casualties.

In October the ship was embayed during rough weather and spent four days "in danger of shipwreck on a coast where if we escaped with our lives, we had to expect only to become a prey to the savage inhabitants.

[24] The vessel called at St Helena on the return journey, arriving London in May 1818 with 560 casks of whale oil.

[10] Jones says Bristow made one more South Sea voyage in this vessel and was at the Galapagos Islands by April 1820.

And a Captain Bristow was in command the whaler Duke of Argyll when it was spoken off the Cape of Good Hope in October 1834.