Ram Head

Grade 5: Ram Head is the first real land feature or landmark that Cook named on the Australian coast and is currently named Little Rame Head. Like Point Hicks its location has been the subject of some confusion with many still believing that Rame Head, some 20km to the west is Cook’s Ram Head. Ram Head is also the first place in Australia to be named after a place in Britain. It is located in a wilderness area of Croajingolong National Park and requires a 14km round walk to reach it from Shipwreck Creek campground. A significant, remote, and very rewarding Landmark to visit. While today’s Rame Head, south of Cann River, is not the feature that Cook named it is worth a visit. There are fine views along this wild coast from the Head. It is easier to access than today’s Little Rame Head, the real Cook’s Ram Head.

Situation: Today’s Little Rame Head (Cook’s Ram Head) is situated approximately 22 km south west of Mallacoota, East Gippsland. A road leads south for 15km from the town to Shipwreck Creek campground. The last part of this road is gravel and usually rough in places. Little Rame Head, about 7km south of the campground, is reached on a clear path along the coast. It can also be viewed from the headland behind the campground at Shipwreck Creek. This is a beautiful area and well worth a visit.

Coordinates:

Little Rame Head, Cook’s Ram Head: 37.68 S 149.68 E

Today’s Rame Head, believed by Bass and Flinders to be Cook’s Ram Head: 37.78 S 149.48 E

Aboriginal name of today’s Rame Head: Konowee or Kovowee

Endeavour Journal 19 April 1770:

At Noon… a remarkable Point bore N 20 degrees East distant 4 leagues. This point rises to a round hillick very much like Ram head going into Plymouth Sound on which account I called it by the same name. Latd 37 degrees 39’, Longitude 210 degrees 22’W 

Since Cook’s Point Hicks does not exist as a land feature Ram Head assumes a new importance as the first Landmark that Cook named on the coast of Australia. By an amazing topographical coincidence, Cook’s place of departure from England is neatly linked with his place of arrival in Australia. England’s Rame Head is on the western shore of Plymouth Sound and Cook would have seen it on his starboard side as he left Plymouth on 25 August 1768 at the beginning of his First Voyage. Ram Head, Australia is the first place in Australia to be named after a place in Britain.

Ram Head, Cornwall, was well known to British sailors and gets a mention in the traditional British naval song, Spanish Ladies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Ladies. This names the landmarks that homeward bound sailors would tick off as they returned from Spain to London, their home port:

 ‘So the first land we made, it is called the Deadman,
Next, Ram Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland, and the Wight;
We sailèd by Beachy, by Fairly and Dungeness,
And then bore away for the South Foreland light.’

Confusion still surrounds both the exact site and correct spelling of Cook’s Ram Head. Today’s Rame Head near Wingan Inlet, East Gippsland, is not the Ram Head that Cook named. On his whaleboat voyage from Sydney to Western Port in 1797 George Bass and his crew, hindered by bad weather, camped just to the east of today’s Rame Head. Bass assumed, not unsurprisingly from its distinctive shape, that it was Cook’s Ram Head. But the feature that Cook named, by a remarkable coincidence a similarly shaped but smaller version of today’s Rame Head, lies further to the east at Little Rame Head. Bass’s error was perpetuated on Flinders’ chart, and Rame Head is still generally believed to be Cook’s Ram Head.

John Lort Stokes was the first to recognise that Cook had named today’s Little Rame Head as Ram Head. Following his 1851 survey of the area he showed it on his chart in this location. However later Admiralty charts show it where Flinders had placed it at today’s Rame Head.

In ‘A Voyage to Terra Australis’ Flinders says ‘The furthest land seen by captain Cook, is marked at fifteen leagues [45nm] from the Ram Head, and called Point Hicks’ and this accords with the distance shown on Cook’s original chart (reproduced in W J L Wharton’s edition of the Endeavour Journal). But Flinders’ statement is not consistent with his placement of Ram Head on his chart at today’s Rame Head. Little Rame Head is 42nm from Cook’s Point Hicks whereas Rame Head is only 32nm, further evidence that Little Rame Head is Cook’s Ram Head.

Little Ram Head itself first appears on maps in 1853 following a land survey by George Smythe in 1852. Smythe, on his original plan, writes against Little Ram Head ‘(Query? Ram Head of Stokes)’, so it appears that he was familiar with the latest Admiralty Chart published in 1852, and it was perhaps the reason he gave it that name. Since the publication of Stokes’ chart, a number of surveyors/hydrographers, using Cook’s data, have concluded that today’s Little Rame Head was what Cook saw and named (Fowler (1907 and 1910), Barker (1933), Hilder (1970), FitzGerald (1971)). However there is no evidence to suggest that any of these men were aware of Stokes’ survey or the resulting Admiralty chart, or indeed the work of each other. While Little Rame Head is smaller than Rame Head it is a more distinctive feature when viewed from Cook’s direction of approach. It would have been at the end point of the visible coast, which trends northward beyond Little Rame Head. A photograph in FitzGerald’s article demonstrates this well. In Endeavour’s Log, Cook describes it as a ‘remarkable point’, that is, one that was distinctive and worthy of mention, a true Landmark for mariners.

Ram or Rame?

Cook, in his journal and on his chart, spelled it ‘Ram’, but today the English Rame Head is spelled ‘Rame’ and pronounced to rhyme with ‘same’.

It seems most likely that the name Ram or Rame Head derives from its shape, the point of land rising to a round hillock resembling a ram’s head. The word ‘head’ is ambiguous, meaning both headland and head of a ram. Chris Richards (Ram/e Head – from Cook to Cornwall to Konowee in Placenames Australia, June 2002) cites the Oxford English Dictionary which gives ‘rame’ and ‘ramme’ as alternative earlier spellings for ‘ram’. John Wallis, in ‘The Cornish Register’ of 1838, writes that the coat of arms of a Lord of the Manor of Rame contained ‘a scalp of a ram’s head’, ‘in allusion to the name’.

Near England’s Rame Head lies the parish and village of Rame, and the area has borne this name (and spelling) since before the Domesday Book. While the spelling of Rame for the village is consistent over time, the headland has been referred to as Ram Head (or Ramshead) and later as Rame Head. J Triphook’s 1795 ‘Journal of a Tour round the Southern Coasts of England’, written a few years after Cook, refers to it as Ramhead. Fortesque Hitchins’ ‘History of Cornwall: Vol 2’ of 1824 refers to Rame parish and village, but ‘Rame-head or Ram-head’.

It seems that the ‘Ram’ spelling was particularly favoured by sailors in Cook’s time. Cook had used Ram, and Bass and Flinders, navy men who would have been familiar with Cook’s journal and the English feature, maintained the same spelling. ‘Spanish Ladies’, a popular sea shanty of that time, refers to Ram Head or Ramshead. Since the headland was a very well known landmark to sailors, it seems likely that they associated it with its ovine shape rather than the local village, hence Ram.

There seems little doubt that the correct name for Victoria’s Rame Head is Ram Head. This was the name Cook gave it in his journal and on his chart, and it was the name in general use by sailors of Cook’s time when referring to its Australian English counterpart. Cook did not mis-spell it.

The English Ram Head appears on maps from the 1700s as Ram, but by the 1800s the spelling had changed to Rame. Arrowsmith’s series of regularly updated maps of Australia, published in London from 1838 to 1850, show the spelling as Ram. His 1853 map shows Rame, reflecting the change of the spelling of the English feature. Admiralty charts, also published in London, changed the spelling of the Australian feature from Ram to Rame in 1852, and that spelling remains today. John Lort Stokes’ 1851 survey resulted in two charts published in 1852, one showing Ram and the other Rame. In Australia, locally produced maps, especially those published in Victoria, continued to show the spelling as Ram well into the 1980s. The Government of Victoria, compounding its error in renaming Cape Everard as Point Hicks, changed the spelling from Ram to Rame in the Victoria Government Gazette of 10 May 1972. The change was instigated by the Hydrographer, Royal Australian Navy, who, in a letter to the Place Names Committee, claimed:

Rame Head and Little Rame Head. Since 1814 Admiralty Charts have used this form, which is correct. It well be noted that Cook named Rame Head after the prominent headland on the western side of Plymouth Sound, which was always, and still is, called Rame Head… This office proposes to continue to use this correct form on its charts, and it is requested that the proper spelling be also adopted by your Committee.

The Hydrographer‘s reference to 1814 Admiralty Charts seems to relate to the English Rame Head. It may have been the spelling in use in 1814, but it was not that in use when Cook sailed out of Plymouth Sound in 1768.

References:

For more detailed information and sources see:

Trevor Lipscombe, Rame Head – misnamed and misplaced, Placenames Australia, September 2013.

Trevor Lipscombe, Lt James Cook on the coast of Victoria 1770, Victorian Historical Journal, vol.89, no.1, June 2018.

Trevor Lipscombe, Ram Head: The First Place Cook Named in Australia, Cook’s Log, Journal of the Captain Cook Society, Vol.42, No.4, 2019