English navigator Captain James Cook became the first European to visit the Gold Coast when he sailed past on 16 May 1770. As an explorer under the commission of the Royal Navy he had the foresight to name Mount Warning (a volcanic outcrop inland) as a natural beacon for a hazardous reef off the mouth of the Tweed River near a rocky outcrop he named Point Danger. Captain Matthew Flinders, an explorer charting the continent north from the colony of New South Wales, sailed past again in 1802 but the region remained uninhabited by Europeans until 1823 when explorer John Oxley landed at Mermaid Beach, (named after his boat, a cutter called Mermaid). Despite the area's relatively early appearance on colonial maps, it wasn't until New South Wales government surveyors charted the region in 1840 that the area was really brought to the attention of European settlers.