Still stronger testimony is that of Flinders, when summing up his account of the discovery: "The south-westerly swell which rolled in upon the shores of Westernport and its neighbourhood sufficiently indicated to the penetrating Bass that he was exposed to the southern Indian Ocean.

This opinion, which he constantly asserted, was the principal cause of my services being offered to the Governor to ascertain the principal cause of it." Further, although Colonel David Collins was not in Sydney at the time of the discovery, what he wrote in his account of the English Colony in New South Wales (2nd edition, London, 1804), was based on first-hand information; and he was no less direct in his statement: "There was every appearance of an extensive strait, or rather an open sea"; and he adds that Bass "regretted that he had not been possessed of a better vessel, which would have enabled him to circumnavigate Van Diemen's Land" (pages 443 and 444).
These passages, when compared with Bass's own careful language, leave no doubt that Bass was fully conscious of the great discovery he had made, though a complete demonstration was as yet lacking.* (* The reasons given above appear also to justify me in saying that there is insufficient warrant for the statement of Sir J.K.Laughton (Dictionary of National Biography XLX 326) that "Bass's observations were so imperfect that it was not until they were plotted after his return that the importance of what he had done was at once apparent.") An interesting light is thrown on the admiration felt for Bass among the colonists at Sydney, by Francois Peron, the historian of Baudin's voyage of exploration.

When the French were at Port Jackson in 1802, the whaleboat was lying beached on the foreshore, and was preserved, says Peron, with a kind of "religious respect." Small souvenirs were made of its timbers; and a piece of the keel enclosed in a silver frame, was presented by the Governor to Captain Baudin, as a memorial of the "audacieuse navigation." Baudin's artist, in making a drawing of Sydney, was careful to show Bass's boat stayed up on the sand; and Peron, in his Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes, respectfully described the discovery of "the celebrated Mr.Bass" as "precious from a marine point of view.".