King Island was first discovered by Captain William Campbell, master of the brig ‘Deptford” (often misspelled as “Debtford’) in 1797. However the discovery is usually credited to Captain Reed, master of the sailing vessel ‘Martha’ in 1799. The schooner ‘Martha’ was 30 and a half tons and built in Bennelong in New South Wales.

It was named King Island in 1800 by Captain John Black. He was sailing in the brig Harbinger, after which the dangerous Harbinger Rocks, off the island's north-west coast, are named. It was found to abound in both fur seals and elephant seals which were soon being exploited to the edge of extinction.

Interestingly, when the first post office opened on the island in 1903 it was called King’s Island but was changed back to King Island in 1917.

Sealers continued to harvest the island intermittently until the mid-1820s, after which the only inhabitants were some old sealers and their Australian aboriginal wives who mostly hunted wallaby for skins. The last of these left the island in 1854 and, for many years, it was only occasionally visited by hunters and more often castaways from shipwrecks.

King Island these days is famous for its great cheese.

The first submarine communications cable across Bass Strait in 1859 went via King Island, starting at Cape Otway, Victoria.

It made contact with the Tasmanian mainland at Stanley Head, and then continued on to George Town. However it started failing within a few weeks of completion, and by 1861 it failed completely.

A later telephone and telegraph cable across Bass Strait operated via King Island from 1936 until 1963.

King Island is noted for the large number of ships that met their doom along its coastline.
It is the site of Australia’s worst maritime disaster when, on 4th August 1845, the ‘Cataraqui’, travelling from Liverpool to Melbourne, ran aground and over 400 died. Only nine of the ships passengers who became stranded on the island got to Melbourne to tell their grisly tale.

In all over 700 have lost their lives in various shipwrecks which include:
1801 - large unidentified three masted ship, no survivors known.
1835 - Neva, convict ship 327 tons, 225 lives lost.
1840 - Isabella, full-rigged ship 287 tons, no lives lost.
1845 - Cataraqui, full-rigged ship 802 tons, 400 lives lost.
1854 - Brahmin, full-rigged ship 616 tons, 17 lives lost.
1854 - Waterwitch, schooner 134 tons, no lives lost.
1855 - Whistler, American clipper ship, 942 tons, two lives lost.
1855 - Maypo, brig 174 tons, no lives lost.
1865 - Arrow, schooner 166 tons, one life lost.
1866 - Netherby, full-rigged ship 944 tons, no lives lost.
1871 - Loch Leven, iron clipper ship 1868 tons, one life lost.
1874 - British Admiral, iron clipper ship, 79 lives lost.
1875 - Blencathra, iron barque, 933 tons, no lives lost.
1910 - Carnarvon Bay, steel full-rigged ship 1932 tons, no loss of life
The Cape Wickham lighthouse is the largest in Australia.

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