With the blacks the governor soon made friends, and such moments as Phillip allowed himself for leisure from the care of his own people he chiefly devoted in an endeavour to improve the state of the native race.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE SETTLEMENT OF SYDNEY COVE, PORT JACKSON, 20th AUGUST, 1788. Drawn by E. Dayes from a sketch by J. Hunter. From “An Historical Journal of Transactions at Port Jackson,” by Captain John Hunter. _To face p_.84.]
As soon as the exiles were landed he married up as many of his male prisoners as could be induced to take wives from the female convicts, offered them inducements to work, and swiftly punished the lazy and incorrigible–severely, say the modern democratic writers, but all the same mildly as punishments went in those days.
When famine was upon the land he shared equally the short commons of the public stores; and when “Government House” gave a dinnerparty, officers took their own bread in their pockets that they might have something to eat.
As time went on he established farms, planned a town of wide, imposing streets (a plan afterwards departed from by his successors, to the everlasting regret of their successors), and introduced a system of land grants which has ever since formed the basis of the colony’s land laws, although politicians and lawyers have too long had their say in legislation for Phillip’s plans to be any longer recognizable or the existing laws intelligible.[B]
[Footnote B: A leader of the Bar in New South Wales, an eminent Q.C. of the highest talent, has publicly declared (and every honest man agrees with him) that the existing land laws are unintelligible to anyone, lawyer or layman.]
The peculiar fitness of Phillip for the task imposed on him was, there is little doubt, due largely to his naval training, and no naval officer has better justified Lord Palmerston’s happily worded and well-deserved compliment to the profession, “Whenever I want a thing well done in a distant part of the world; when I want a man with a good head, a good heart, lots of pluck, and plenty of common-sense, I always send for a captain of the navy.”
A captain of a man-of-war then, as now, began at the bottom of the ladder, learning how to do little things, picking up such knowledge of detail as qualified him to teach others, to know what could be done and how it ought to be done. In all professions this rule holds good, but on shipboard men acquire something more. On land a man learns his particular business in the world; at sea his ship is a man’s world, and on the completeness of the captain’s knowledge of how to feed, to clothe, to govern, his people depended then, and in a great measure now depends, the comfort, the lives even, of seamen. So that, being trained in this self-dependence–in the problem of supplying food to men, and in the art of governing them, as well as in the trade of sailorizing–the sea-captain ought to make the best kind of governor for a new and desolate country. If your sea-captain has brains, has a mind, in fact, as well as a training, then he ought to make the ideal king.
Phillip’s despatches contain passages that strikingly show his peculiar qualifications in both these respects. His capacity for detail and readiness of resource were continually demonstrated, these qualifications doubtless due to his sea-training; his sound judgment of men and things, his wonderful foresight, which enabled him to predict the great future of the colony and to so govern it as to hold this future ever in view, were qualifications belonging to the _man_, and were such that no professional training could have given.
Barton, in his _History of New South Wales from the Records_, incomparably the best work on the subject, says: “The policy of the Government in his day consisted mainly of finding something to eat.” This is true so far as it goes, but Barton himself shows what finding something to eat meant in those days, and Phillip’s despatches prove that, although the food question was the practical every-day problem to be grappled with, he, in the midst of the most harassing famine-time, was able to look beyond when he wrote these words: “This country will yet be the most valuable acquisition Great Britain has ever made.”
In future chapters we shall go more particularly into the early life of the colony and see how the problems that harassed Phillip’s administration continued long after he had returned to England; we shall then see how immeasurably the first governor was superior to the men who followed him. And it is only by such comparison that a just estimate of Phillip can be made, for he was a modest, self-contained man, making no complaints in his letters of the difficulties to be encountered, making no boasts of his success in overcoming them. The three sea-captains who in turn followed him did their best to govern well, taking care in their despatches that the causes of their non-success should be duly set forth, but these documents also show that much of their trouble was of their own making. In the case of Phillip, his letters to the Home Office show, and every contemporary writer and modern Australian [Sidenote: 1801-14] historian proves, that in no single instance did a lack of any quality of administrative ability in him create a difficulty, and that every problem of the many that during his term of office required solution was solved by his sound common-sense method of grappling with it.
He was wounded by the spear of a black, thrown at him in a misunderstanding, as he himself declared, and he would not allow the native on that account to be punished. This wound, the hard work and never-ending anxiety, seriously injured the governor’s health. He applied for leave of absence, and when he left the colony had every intention of returning to continue his work, but his health did not improve enough for this. The Government accepted his resignation with regret, and appointed him to the command of the _Swiftsure_, with a special pension for his services in New South Wales of L500 a year; in 1801 he was promoted Rear-Admiral of the Blue, in 1804 Rear-Admiral of the White, in 1805 Rear-Admiral of the Red, in 1809 Vice-Admiral of the White, and on July 31st, 1810, Vice-Admiral of the Red.
He died at Bath on August 31st, 1814, and was buried in Bathampton Church. For many years those interested in the subject, especially the New South Wales Government, spent much time in searching for his burial-place, which was only discovered by the Vicar of Bathampton, the Rev. Lancelot J. Fish, in December, 1897, after long and persistent research.
Those by whom the services of the silent, hard-working, and self-contained Arthur Phillip are least appreciated are, curiously enough, the Australian colonists; and it was not until early in 1897 that a statue to him was unveiled in Sydney. At this very time, it is sad to reflect, his last resting-place was unknown. Phillip, like Cook, did his work well and truly, and his true memorial is the country of which he was practically the founder.
CHAPTER V.
GOVERNOR HUNTER.
Admiral Phillip’s work was, as we have said, the founding of Australia; that of Hunter is mainly important for the service he did under Phillip. From the time he assumed the government of the colony until his return to England, his career showed that, though he had “the heart of a true British sailor,” as the old song says, he somewhat lacked the head of a governor.
John Hunter was born at Leith in 1737, his father being a well-known shipmaster sailing out of that port, while his mother was of a good Edinburgh family, one of her brothers having served as provost of that city. Young Hunter made two or three voyages with his father at an age so young that when shipwrecked on the Norwegian coast a peasant woman took him home in her arms, and seeing what a child he was, put him to bed between two of her daughters.
He had an elder brother, William, who gives a most interesting account of himself in vol. xii. of the _Naval Chronicle_ (1805). William saw some very remarkable service in his forty-five years at sea in the royal and merchant navies. Both brothers knew and were friendly with Falconer, the sea-poet, and John was shipmate in the _Royal George_ with Falconer, who was a townsman of theirs. The brothers supplied many of the particulars of the poet’s life, written by Clarke, and the name Falconer in connection with both Hunters often occurs in the _Naval Chronicle_.
After Hunter, senior, was shipwrecked, John was sent to his uncle, a merchant of Lynn, who sent the boy to school, where he became acquainted with Charles Burney, the musician. Dr. Burney wanted to make a musician of him, and Hunter was nothing loth, but the uncle intended the boy for the Church, and sent him to the Aberdeen University. There his thoughts once more turned to the sea, and he was duly entered in the _Grampus_ as captain’s servant in 1754, which of course means that he was so rated on the books in the fashion of the time. After obtaining his rating as A.B., and then as midshipman, he passed his examination as lieutenant in February, 1760; but it was not until twenty [Sidenote: 1760] years later, when he was forty-three, that he received his lieutenant’s commission, having in the interval served in pretty well every quarter of the globe as midshipman and master’s mate. In 1757 he was under Sir Charles Knowles in the expedition against Rochefort; in 1759 he served under Sir Charles Saunders at Quebec; in 1756 he was master of the _Eagle_, Lord Howe’s flagship, so skilfully navigating the vessel up the Delaware and Chesapeake and in the defence of Sandy Hook that Lord Howe recommended him for promotion in these words:–
“Mr. John Hunter, from his knowledge and experience in all the branches of his profession, is justly entitled to the character of a distinguished officer.”
It was some years, however, before Hunter was given a chance, which came to him when serving in the West Indies, under Sir George Rodney, who appointed him a lieutenant, and the appointment was confirmed by the Admiralty.
In 1782 he was again under Lord Howe as first lieutenant of the _Victory_, and soon after was given the command of the _Marquis de Seignelay_. Then came the Peace of Paris, and Hunter’s next appointment was to the _Sirius_. There is very little doubt from a study of the _Naval Chronicle’s_ biographies and from the letters of Lord Howe that, if that nobleman had had his way, Hunter would have been the first governor of New South Wales, and it is equally likely that, if Hunter had been appointed to the chief command, the history of the expedition would have had to be written very differently, for brave and gallant as he was, he was a man without method.
When Phillip was appointed to govern the colonizing expedition and to command the _Sirius_, Hunter was posted as second captain of the frigate, in order that the ship, when Phillip assumed his shore duties, should be commanded by a post-captain. A few days after the arrival of the fleet Hunter set to work, and in the ship’s boats thoroughly surveyed Port Jackson. He was a keen explorer, and besides being one of the party who made the important discovery of the Hawkesbury river, he charted Botany and Broken Bays; and his charts as well as land maps, published in a capital book he wrote giving an account of the settlement, show how well he did the work.[C]
[Footnote C: _An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson, etc., etc.,_ by John Hunter, Esq., Post-Captain R.N. (London, 1793.)]
In September, 1788, Hunter sailed from Port Jackson [Sidenote: 1788] for the Cape of Good Hope, to obtain supplies for the half-starving colony. On the voyage he formed the opinion that New Holland was separated from Van Diemen’s Land by a strait, an opinion to be afterwards confirmed in its accuracy by Bass.
The poor old _Sirius_ came in for some bad weather on the trip, and a glimpse of Hunter’s character is given to us in a letter written home by one of the youngsters (Southwell) under him, who tells us that Hunter, knowing the importance of delivering stores to the half-famished settlers, drove the frigate’s crazy old hull along so that–
“we had a very narrow escape from shipwreck, being driven on that part of the coast called Tasman’s Head in thick weather and hard gales of wind, and embay’d, being twelve hours before we got clear, the ship forced to be overpressed with sail, and the hands kept continually at the pumps, and all this time in the most destressing anxiety, being uncertain of our exact situation and doubtful of our tackling holding, which has a very long time been bad, for had a mast gone, or topsail given way, there was nothing to be expected in such boistrous weather but certain death on a coast so inhospitable and unknown. And now to reflect, if we had not reached the port with that seasonable supply, what could have become of this colony? ‘Twould have been a most insupportable blow, and thus to observe our manifold misfortunes so attemper’d with the Divine mercy of these occasions seems, methinks, to suggest a comfortable lesson of resignation and trust that there are still good things in store, and ’tis a duty to wait in a moderated spirit of patient expectation for them. ‘Tis worthy of remark, the following day (for we cleared this dreaded land about 2 in the morning, being April the 22nd, 1789), on examining the state of the rigging, &c., some articles were so fearfully chafed that a backstay or two actually went away or broke.”
Soon after came the end of the old ship. She had been sent to Norfolk Island, with a large proportion of the settlers at Port Jackson, to relieve the strain on the food supply. The contingent embarked with a marine guard under Major Ross in the _Sirius_ and the Government brig _Supply_, and sailed on the 6th of March, 1790. Young Southwell, the signal midshipman stationed at the solitary look-out on the south head of Port Jackson, shall tell the rest of the story:–
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN HUNTER. From an engraving in the “Naval Chronicle” for 1801.] _To face p. 96._
“Nothing more of these [the two ships] were seen ’till April the 5th, when the man who takes his station there at daybreak soon came down to inform me a sail was in sight. On going up I saw her coming up with the land, and judged it to be the _Supply_, but was not a little surprised at her returning so soon, and likewise, being alone, my mind fell to foreboding an accident; and on going down to get ready to wait on the gov’r [Sidenote: 1790] I desired the gunner to notice if the people mustered thick on her decks as she came in under the headland, thinking in my own mind, what I afterwards found, that the _Sirius_ was lost. The _Supply_ bro’t an account that on the 19th of March about noon the _Sirius_ had, in course of loading the boats, drifted rather in with the land. On seeing this they of course endeavoured to stand off, but the wind being dead on the shore, and the ship being out of trim and working unusually bad, she in staying–for she would not go about just as she was coming to the wind–tailed the ground with the after-part of her keel, and, with two sends of the vast surf that runs there, was completely thrown on the reef of dangerous rocks called Pt. Ross. They luckily in their last extremity let go both anchors and stopper’d the cables securely, and this, ‘tho it failed of the intention of riding her clear, yet caused her to go right stern foremost on the rocks, by which means she lay with her bow opposed to the sea, a most happy circumstance, for had she laid broadside to, which otherwise she would have had a natural tendency to have done, ’tis more than probable she must have overset, gone to pieces, and every soul have perish’d.
“Her bottom bilged immediately, and the masts were as soon cut away, and the gallant ship, upon which hung the hopes of the colony, was now a complete wreck. They [the _Supply_] brought a few of the officers and men hither; the remainder of the ships company, together with Captain Hunter, &c., are left there on acc’t of constituting a number adequate to the provision, and partly to save what they possibly can from the wreck. I understand that there are some faint hopes, if favor’d with extraordinary fine weather, to recover most of the provision, for she carried a great quantity there on the part of the reinforcement. The whole of the crew were saved, every exertion being used, and all assistance received from the _Supply_ and colonists on shore. The passengers fortunately landed before the accident, and I will just mention to you the method by which the crew were saved. When they found that the ship was ruined and giving way upon the beam right athwart, they made a rope fast to a drift-buoy, which by the surf was driven on shore. By this a stout hawser was convey’d, and those on shore made it fast a good way up a pine-tree. The other end, being on board, was hove taut. On this hawser was placed the heart of a stay (a piece of wood with a hole through it), and to this a grating was slung after the manner of a pair of scales. Two lines were made fast on either side of the heart, one to haul it on shore, the other to haul it on board. On this the shipwreck’d seated themselves, two or more at a time, and thus were dragged on shore thro’ a dashing surf, which broke frequently over their heads, keeping them a considerable time under water, some of them coming out of the water half drowned and a good deal bruised. Captn. Hunter was a good deal hurt, and with repeated seas knock’d off the grating, in so much that all the lookers-on feared greatly for his letting go; but he got on shore safe, and his hurts are by no means dangerous. Many private effects were saved, the sea driving them on shore when thrown overboard, but ’twas not always so courteous. Much is lost, and many escaped with nothing more than they stood in.”
Hunter and his crew were left at Norfolk Island [Sidenote: 1792] for many weary months before a vessel could be obtained in which to send them to England, and it was not until the end of the following March–a year after the loss of their ship–that they sailed from Sydney in the _Waaksamheyd_, a small Dutch _snow_.[D]
[Footnote D: A favourite rig of that period. A snow was similar to a brig, except that she carried upon a small spar, just abaft the mainmast, a kind of trysail, then called the spanker.]
In this miserable little vessel Hunter made a remarkable voyage home, of which he gives an account in his book. His official letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty, dated Portsmouth, April 23rd, 1792, tells in a few words what sort of a passage could be made to England in those days. He writes:–
“You will be pleased to inform their lordships that upon my arrival from Norfolk Island at Port Jackson (26th February, 1791) I found that Governor Phillip had contracted with the master of a Dutch _snow_, which had arrived at that port from Batavia with a cargo of provisions purchased there for the use of the settlement, for a passage to England for the remaining officers and company of His Majestie’s late ship the _Sirius_, under my command, in consequence of which agreement I was directed to embark, and we sail’d from Port Jackson on the 27th of March, victuall’d for sixteen weeks, and with fifty tons of water on board. We were in all on board 123 people, including those belonging to the vessel…. We steer’d to the northward, and made New Caledonia 23 April, and passed to the westward of it. As the master did not feel himself qualified to navigate a ship in these unknown seas, he had, upon our leaving Port Jackson, requested my assistance, which he had. In sailing to the northward we fell in with several islands and shoals, the situations of which we determined…. No ship that I have heard of having sail’d between New Britain and New Ireland since that passage was discovered by Captain Carteret in H.M. sloop _Swallow_, I was the more desirous to take that rout from his having found two very accessable harbours in New Ireland, where we hoped to get a supply of water….
“We passed thro’ the Strait of Macassar, and arrived at Batavia on the 27th of September, after a most tedious and destressing passage of twenty-six weeks, during a great part of which time we had been upon a very small ration of provision. We buried on the passage Lieutenant George William Maxwell and one seaman of the _Sirius_, with one belonging to the _snow_. My transactions at Batavia will be fully seen in the narrative. I left that place on the 20th October, and arrived at the Cape on the 17th December, but being unable to reach the proper anchorage, I was on the 20th driven to sea again, with the loss of two anchors and cables. On the 22nd we again reached the bay, with a signal of distress flying, and thro’ the exertions of Captain Bligh, who was there in the _Providence_, we were got into safety, and receiv’d anchors and cables from the shore. My people being very sickly, the effects of that destructive place Batavia, their slow progress in recovery detained me at the Cape longer than I intended to have staid. I sailed from Table Bay 18th January, but left five sick behind me; anchored at St. Helena 4th February, to complete our water, left that island the 13th, and arrived here late last night.”
On the way home the _Waaksamheyd_ got into trouble with the natives of Mindanao, one of the Dutch Archipelago. The rajah of the place would not supply refreshment to the vessel, and her master threatened to fire upon the native canoes, notwithstanding the remonstrances of Hunter. In the course of the dispute the rajah lost his temper and attacked the shipmaster, whose life was saved by Hunter, but the quarrel resulted in a regular engagement between the natives and people on the ship, in which the crew of the _Sirius_, for their own safety, were compelled to take part. The canoes were ultimately driven off, with great loss of life to the people in them, and the Europeans escaped unhurt.
Hunter’s experience on this voyage taught him that the proper route home from Australia was not north about, nor _via_ the Cape of Good Hope, but round the Horn, and he wrote to the Admiralty to that effect, but it was years later before sailors woke up to the fact. At the Cape of Good Hope a number of English shipwrecked sailors were prisoners of the Dutch, and Hunter’s spirited remonstrance brought about their release, and for this he was thanked by the Admiralty. A court-martial was duly held, and Hunter and the ship’s company honourably acquitted of all blame for the loss of the _Sirius_.
When it became apparent that Phillip’s health would not permit him to return to New South Wales, Hunter (in October, 1793), who was serving as a volunteer captain in Lord Howe’s flagship, the _Queen Charlotte_, applied for the position of governor of the colony, and four months later he was given the appointment. Lord Howe, who had been his constant patron, thus satisfying his desire to give Hunter an important command, and thereby depriving the sea service of a very able naval officer, neither to the advantage of Hunter nor the colony he was sent to govern.
[Illustration: ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE CREW OF THE WAAKSAMHEYD TRANSPORT AND THE NATIVES OF AN ISLAND NEAR MINDANAO. CAPTAIN HUNTER, R.N. From the “Naval Chronicle” for 1801. _To face p_. 102.]
In the interval between Phillip’s departure for England (December, 1792) and Hunter’s arrival in the colony on September 7th, 1795, the settlement was governed successively by two lieutenant-governors. These two officers were Major Grose, the commandant of the New South Wales Corps, who ruled until December, 1794, and Captain Paterson, of the same regiment, who had charge until the arrival of Hunter. The New South Wales Corps had such an influence on the lives of these naval governors of Australia that in the next chapter it will be necessary to give a sketch of this remarkable regiment; meanwhile it may be merely mentioned that the commanding officer of the military, during the period of the four New South Wales naval governors, held a commission as lieutenant-governor, and so took command in the absence of the governor.
Upon Hunter’s arrival he did not at all like the state of affairs. Major Grose had permitted to grow up a system of trade in which his officers had secured monopolies, and, as a leading article of this commerce was rum, it can easily be understood in what a state of disorder Hunter found the colony. Instead of the prisoners being kept at work cultivating the ground, the officers of the New South Wales Regiment employed more than a proper proportion of them in their private affairs; and the consequence was, the settlement had made little or no progress on the road to independence–that is, of course, independence in the matter of growing its food supply, not its politics. Further than this, Grose’s methods of governing a colony and administering its laws were the same as those he employed in commanding his regiment. He was not able to rise above this; and under him martial law was practically, if not nominally, the form of the colony’s government. Paterson, his successor, passively carried on until the arrival of Hunter the same lines as his predecessor; and the consequence was, the colony existed for the benefit of the officers of the regiment, who, by huckstering in stores, were rapidly acquiring fortunes. A few free settlers had already arrived in the colony, and by degrees emancipated prisoners and emigrants from Great Britain were forming a small free population, and were beginning to have “interests.” Thus there were slowly growing the elements of a pretty quarrel, a triangular duel, in which officials, free emigrants, and emancipated convicts had all interests to serve, and which for many long years after was the constant bugbear of the governor of the colony.
By the time Hunter arrived there were a number of time-expired prisoners in the settlement, and these became an increasing and constant danger. Retreating into the back country, and herding with the blacks, or thieving from the farmers, they merged into what were known later on as bushrangers. From these men and the ill-disciplined and gaol-bird soldiers of the New South Wales Corps the peaceably disposed inhabitants were in much greater danger than they ever were from the aborigines.
But although Hunter’s despatches are full of complaints of the soldiers, of the want of stores, and the need of honest, free men to cultivate the soil by way of a leaven to the hundreds of convicts who were arriving every year, he, like Phillip, believed that New South Wales would ultimately become a prosperous colony. More than this, it was under Hunter that Bass and Flinders did most of their surveying; that Shortland discovered Newcastle; and to no governor more than to Hunter is credit due for the interest he took in exploration.
Here is a picture of the colony in the time of Hunter’s governorship, painted by certain missionaries who had been driven by the natives of Tahiti from their island, and who had taken refuge in New South Wales:–
“His Majesty’s ship the _Buffalo_, Captain Kent, being on the eve of sailing from the colony for the Cape of Good Hope, we embrace the opportunity of confirming our letter to you of the 1st September, 1798, by the _Barwell_. Here we have to contend with the depravity and corruptions of the human heart heightened and confirmed in all its vicious habits by long and repeated indulgences of inbred corruption, each one following the bent of his own corrupt mind, and countenancing his neighbour in the pursuit of sensual gratifications. Here iniquity abounds, and those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person contemptible in the public eye, and obnoxious to the civil law, are become fashionable and familiar–adultery, fornication, theft, drunkenness, extortion, violence, and uncleanness of every kind, the natural concomitants of deism and infidelity, which have boldly thrown off the mask, and stalk through the colony in the open face of the sun, so that it is no uncommon thing to hear a person say, ‘When I was a Christian, I thought so and so.'”
This is strong, but it is true.
This letter was addressed to the directors of the London Missionary Society, and many of similar purport written by Johnson and Marsden, the chaplains of the settlement, are to be found in the records. All these writers agree on one point: the colony had fallen from grace under the military administration. Phillip had left it in good order, and Hunter at the time, these witnesses testified, was doing his best to improve matters.
Lang (not a reliable authority in many things, but to be believed when not expressing opinions), in his _History of New South Wales_, tells an anecdote of Hunter which is worth retelling. Captain Hunter was on one occasion the subject of an anonymous letter addressed by some disreputable colonist to the Duke of Portland, then Home Secretary. (There was no Colonial Secretary in those days.) The Duke sent back the letter without comment to Hunter, who one day handed it to an officer who was dining with him. “You will surely notice this?” said the officer. “No,” replied Hunter. “The man has a family, and I don’t want to ruin them.”
It was this good-nature, this disinclination to fight his enemies to the bitter end, that ultimately had much to do with Hunter’s recall. A certain Captain John MacArthur, of the New South Wales Corps, of whom we shall presently hear very much, was, when Hunter arrived, filling the civil post of Inspector of Public Works. He was also a settler in the full meaning of the word, owning many acres and requiring many assigned servants to work them and to look after his flocks and herds, and from some cause connected with these civil occupations he came into collision with the governor. This presently led to much correspondence between the Home Office, the governor, and MacArthur. In these letters Hunter and his subordinate say very unkind things of each other, which nowadays may well be forgotten. The settlement was so small, the life was such an uneventful one, that it would be wonderful indeed if men did not quarrel, and these two men were naturally antagonistic to each other.
Hunter was an old-fashioned naval officer, sixty years of age, and fifty of those years had been spent in disinterested service to his country, “a pleasant, sensible old man,” says a young ship’s officer, writing home to his father; and in another letter, published in a newspaper of 1798, we are told that “much may be expected from Captain Hunter, whose virtue and integrity is as conspicuous as his merit.”
MacArthur was a comparatively young man, who had come to the colony less with the intention of soldiering than of making himself a home. He was an excellent colonist and a perfectly honourable man, but he was the very worst kind of a subordinate that a man with Hunter’s lack of strong personality could have under him. MacArthur wanted to develop the resources of the colony and improve his farm at the same time, and that he had it in him to do these things is proved by after-events. The name of MacArthur, the father of the merino wool industry, is the best-remembered name in Australia to-day; but poor old Hunter could not recognise the soldier man’s merits, and so he added to his legitimate quarrel with the meaner hucksters of his officials the quarrel with the enterprising MacArthur; and, although there is no written evidence to prove it, there is little doubt that MacArthur’s letters to England had due effect upon the minds of the home authorities.
The Duke of Portland wrote to Hunter early in 1799 requesting him to afford the fullest refutation of a number of charges that had been made against the administration of the colony. Wrote the Duke:–
“I proceed to let you know that it is asserted that the price of necessary articles is of late doubled; that the same wheat is received into the Government stores at ten shillings per bushel which the settler is under the necessity of selling to the huckster at three shillings; that spirits or other articles are purchased by the officers of His Majesty’s forces in New South Wales, and retailed by them at the most exorbitant prices to the lowest order of the settlers and convicts; that the profit on such articles is often at the rate of one hundred shillings for one; that this sort of traffic is not confined to the officers, but is carried on in the Government House, although it is not affirmed that you have any participation in such proceedings; that the officers and favoured individuals are allowed to send large quantities of grain into the Government stores, whilst those who have only the ability to raise small crops are refused, and consequently are obliged to sell their produce to hucksters at the low rate above mentioned.”
Now many of these allegations were true, for Hunter himself had written repeatedly complaining of the existence of such abuses, and had been answered, “Well, put a stop to them.” Then he would publish a “Public Order” or some similar document telling the hucksters they were not to do these things; the offenders would go on offending, and Hunter would go on publishing more “Public Orders.”
Hunter received the above letter from Portland in November, 1799. Before he could write a reply to it, the Duke wrote him another letter. There were several pages relating to details of administration; but it might have been written by a woman, for the last paragraph contained the all-important part in these words:–
“Having now made all the observations which appear to me to be necessary on the points contained in your several despatches which are now before me, it is with my very sincere concern that I find myself obliged to add that I feel myself called upon by the sense of the duty which I owe to the situation in [Sidenote: 1800] which I have the honour to be placed to express my disapprobation of the manner in which the government of the settlement has been administered by you in so many respects; that I am commanded to signify you the King’s pleasure to return to this kingdom by the first safe conveyance which offers itself after the arrival of Lieutenant-Governor King, who is authorized by His Majesty to take upon him the government of that settlement immediately on your departure from it.”
The poor old governor was very indignant. He denounced in strong language the “anonymous assassin” who he thinks accused him to His Grace of conniving at the trading he was endeavouring to suppress.
“Can it be suppos’d, my lord, that a man at my time of life, holding the rank I have the honour to be arriv’d at in the profession I have been bred in, and to which I have risen by virtue of a character never yet stain’d by one mean, base, or dishonourable action–can it be conceived that after having by a life truly and sincerely devoted to the service of my sovereign, after having spent forty-six years of that life in constant and active employment in all the quarters of the world, during which I have risen thro’ all the ranks and gradations of my profession and at last arriv’d at the highly flattering and exalted office of being appointed the representative of His Majesty in this remote part of his dominions–can it be believ’d, my lord, that a man possessing a single spark of virtuous principles could be prevailed on thro’ any latent object, any avaricious view, by any act so mean, so low, so contemptible, as that of which this anonymous villain has dared to suppose me capable, to bring disgrace upon that elevated situation? No, my lord, I thank God I possess a share of pride sufficient to keep me far above any mean or degrading action. I am satisfied with what the Crown allows me, altho’ that, in my situation in this expensive country, is small enough, yet, my lord, I am satisfied, nor do I conceive it consistent with the dignity of my office to endeavour in any way whatever to gain more, were it even in a less censurable manner than that which has been mention’d. Let me live upon bread and water with a pure and unpolluted conscience, a fair and respectable character, in preference to rolling in wealth obtained by such infamous, such shameful, such ignominious means as this letter-writer alludes to.”
It is a long while ago since this letter was written by a rough old sailor, and its quaint wording may raise a smile, but Hunter was very much in earnest; and if his failure to govern convicts and “officers and gentlemen” who traded in rum is to count against him, leaving but a contemptuous pity for a weak old man as an impression on the mind, go back to his sea-days, when he fought the crazy old _Sirius_ through a hurricane to bring food to these shore-people, and remember him for this closing anecdote of his life:–
In 1801, soon after his arrival in England, Hunter [Sidenote: 1801-1821] commanded the _Venerable_ (74). He was cruising off Torbay, when a man fell overboard. Hunter attempted to put the ship about to pick him up; she missed stays, ran ashore, and became a wreck. At the court-martial (at which Hunter was honourably acquitted) he was asked whether he thought he was justified in putting the ship about in such circumstances, to which question he replied, “I consider the life of a British seaman of more value than any ship in His Majesty’s navy.”
When he returned to England, he was granted a pension, for his services as governor, of L300 per annum; was promoted rear-admiral in October, 1807, and became vice-admiral of the Red in July, 1810. He died in Judd Street, London, in March, 1821, aged eighty-three, and was buried in Hackney churchyard, where a tombstone with a long inscription records his services.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MARINES AND THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS.
The service of the Marines in the colonization of Australia was, as it always has been, _per mare, per terram_, such as reflected the highest credit upon the corps. They were not “Royal” in those days, nor were they light infantry; the first title came to them in 1802, when their facings were changed from white to royal blue, and it was not until 1855 that they were designated light infantry.
The Marine force in the first fleet under Captain Phillip numbered, including women and children, 253 persons, made up of a major commanding, 1 judge-advocate, 2 captains, 2 captain-lieutenants, 9 first lieutenants, 3 second lieutenants, 1 adjutant, 1 quarter-master, 12 sergeants, 12 corporals, 8 drummers, 160 privates, 30 women, and 12 children. The detachment was drawn from the Portsmouth and Plymouth divisions in equal numbers. This expedition to Botany Bay was a service more remote from home than any the corps had before been engaged in, and the men so looked upon it, as may be seen from the following tedious memorial, which one company addressed to the officer commanding:–
“We, the marines embarked on board the _Scarborough_, who have voluntarily entered on a dangerous expedition, replete with numberless difficulties, which in the faithful discharge of our duty we must necessarily be exposed to, and supposing ourselves to be on the same footing as if embarked on any of His Maj’s ships of war, or as the seamen and marines on the same expedition with us–we hope to receive the same indulgence, now conceive ourselves sorely aggrieved by finding the intentions of Government to make no allowance of spirituous liquor or wine after our arrival at the intended colony in New South Wales. A moderate distribution of the above-mentioned article being indispensibly requisite for the preservation of our lives, which change of climate and the extreme fatigue we shall be necessarily exposed to may probably endanger, we therefore humbly entreat you will be pleased to convey these our sentiments to Major Ross. Presuming, sir, that you will not only be satisfied that our demand is reasonable, but will also perceive the urgent necessity there is for a compliance with our request, we flatter ourselves you will also use your influence to cause a removal of the uneasiness we experience under the idea of being restricted in the supply of one of the principal necessarys of life, without which, for the reasons above stated, we cannot expect to survive the hardships incident to our situation. You may depend on a chearful and ready discharge of the public duties that may be enjoyned on us. The design of Government is, we hope, to have a feeling for the calamities we must encounter. So, as to induce them to provide in a moderate and reasonable degree for our maintenance and preservation, we beg leave to tender our most dutiful assurances of executing to the utmost of our power our several abilities in the duty assign’d, so that we remain in every respect loyal subjects to our king and worthy members of society.”
The request was granted, and a three years’ supply of spirits was put on board the transports.
Several officers of this force are entitled to be remembered in connection with the founding of New South Wales. Major Ross, the commandant and lieutenant-governor of the colony, was a captain in the Plymouth division when appointed to New South Wales, and was then given the rank of brevet-major. From the day of his arrival in the colony until his return to England he was a constant thorn in the side of the governor. A man more unsuitable for the particular service could not have been chosen. He was a most excellent pipe-clay and stock type of soldier, and his men appear to have been kept well in hand, in spite of [Sidenote: 1788-1792] a service peculiarly calculated to subvert discipline, but there his qualifications ended.
He conceived that the sole duty of himself and his command was to defend the settlement from foreign invasion and to mount guard over the prisoners. The governor wanted to form a criminal court, as empowered by his commission, and to do this it was necessary to call upon the marine officers to sit upon it. Ross would have nothing to do with it until Phillip, by superior diplomacy, conquered his objections. Ross, in fact, would have it that no civilian duty should be expected of him; and when Phillip forced him to admit that the British Government had sent him out to do more than mount guard, he quoted regulations and many other red-tape reasons why he should not be anything but a soldier. To crown this, he quarrelled with all his subordinate officers in turn, and at one time had them nearly all under arrest together. During his service in the colony he wrote many letters to the home authorities urging the abandonment of the settlement asserting that it was utterly impossible that it could be colonized. He returned to England early in 1792, and the Government showed its appreciation of his value by making a recruiting officer of him, and he died in that service at Ipswich in June, 1794.
There are three other officers whose names are familiar to most Australians: Tench, Collins, and Dawes. The last-named acted as artillery and engineer officer to the colony, and did incalculable service in surveying work. He built an observatory and a battery at the head of Sydney Cove, which, though altered out of recognition, still bears the name of Dawes’ Battery. Captain Tench wrote the most readable book giving an account of the settlement, and as about half a dozen books were written by different officers of the first fleet, this, if it is all, is something to be said about him.
Lieutenant Collins is the best-known officer. He wrote an official history, and was associated with the colony’s progress for many years after the marines went home. His book is drier reading than that of Tench, but it is the standard authority; and all the history-makers, good and bad, have largely drawn upon him for their materials.
In the memoirs of Holt, the “Irish rebel general,” who was transported to Australia, and knew Collins well, appears the following truthful account of him:–
“Colonel David Collins was the eldest son of General Arthur Tooker Collins and Harriet Frazer, of Pack, in the King’s County, Ireland, and grandson of Arthur Collins, author of _The Peerage of England_, etc. He was born on the 3rd of March, 1756, and received a liberal education under the Rev. Mr. Marshall, master of the Grammar School at Exeter, where his father resided. In 1770 he was appointed lieutenant of marines, and in 1772 was with the late Admiral McBride when the unfortunate Matilda, Queen of Denmark, was rescued by the energy of the British Government, and conveyed to a place of safety in the King’s (her brother’s) Hanoverian dominions. On that occasion he commanded the guard that received Her Majesty, and had the honour of kissing her hand. In 1775 he was at the battle of Bunker’s Hill, in which the first battalion of marines, to which he belonged, so signally distinguished itself, having its commanding officer, the gallant Major Pitcairne, and a great many officers and men, killed in storming the redoubt, besides a very large proportion wounded. In 1777 he was adjutant of the Chatham division, and in 1784 captain of marines on board the _Courageux_, of 74 guns, commanded by Lord Mulgrave, and participated in the partial action that took place with the enemy’s fleet when Lord Howe relieved Gibraltar. Reduced to half-pay at the peace of 1782, he settled at Rochester, in Kent, and was finally appointed Judge-Advocate to the intended settlement at Botany Bay, and in May, 1787, sailed with Governor Phillip, who, moreover, appointed him his secretary, which situation he filled until his return to England in 1797.
“The history of the settlement, which he soon after published, will be read and referred to as a book of authority as long as the colony exists whose name it bears. The appointment of Judge-Advocate, however, eventually proved injurious to his own interests. While absent he had been passed over when it came to his turn to be put on full pay; nor was he permitted to return to England to reclaim his rank in the corps, nor could he ever obtain any effectual redress, but was afterwards compelled to come in as a junior captain of the corps, though with his proper rank in the army. The difference this made in regard to his promotion was that he died a captain instead of a colonel-commandant, his rank in the army being merely brevet. He had the mortification of finding that, after ten years’ distinguished service in the infancy of a colony, and to the sacrifice of every real comfort, his only reward had been the loss of many years’ rank–a vital injury to an officer: a remark which his wounded feelings wrung from him at the close of the second volume of his history of the settlement, and which appears to have awakened the sympathy of those in power, as he was, almost immediately after its publication, offered the government of the projected settlement in Van Dieman’s Land, which he accepted, and sailed once more for that quarter of the globe where he founded his new colony, struggled with great difficulties, which he overcame, and after remaining there eight years, was enjoying the flourishing state his exertions had produced, when he died suddenly, after a few days’ confinement from a slight cold, on the 24th March, 1810.
“His person was remarkably handsome, and his manners extremely prepossessing, while to a cultivated understanding and an early fondness for the _belles lettres_ he joined the most social disposition.
“He had the goodwill, the good wishes, and the good word of everyone in the settlement. His conduct was exemplary, and his disposition most humane; his treatment of runaway convicts was conciliatory, and even kind. He would go into the forests, among the natives, to allow these poor creatures, the runaways, an opportunity of returning to their former condition; and, half dead with cold and hunger, they would come and drop on their knees before him, imploring pardon for their behaviour.
“‘Well,’ he would say to them, ‘now that you have lived in the bush, do you think the change you made was for the better? Are you sorry for what you have done?’
“‘Yes, sir.’
“‘And will you promise me never to go away again?’
“‘Never, sir.’
“‘Go to the storekeeper, then,’ the benevolent Collins would say, ‘and get a suit of slops and your week’s rations, and then go to the overseer and attend to your work. I give you my pardon, but remember that I expect you will keep your promise to me.’
“I never heard of any governor or commandant acting in this manner, nor did I ever witness such leniency from any governor.”
Of the marines it has already been said they behaved fairly well. Some of them were punished–six, as a matter of fact, were hanged for thieving from the public stores, a crime then of the greatest magnitude–but the crimes committed were by individuals, and offences were very severely punished in those days, even in England. Read what Colonel Cooper King says as to the life of a marine:–
“Some of the marine regimental records are interesting as showing the inner life of the sea, or even land, soldier a hundred years ago. In the tailor’s shop in 1755, for example, the idea of an eight hours’ working day was not evidently a burning question, for the men worked from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., with one hour for meals. Again, punishments were severe, as the sentences passed on three deserters in 1766 show; for, while one was shot, the other two were to receive 1000 and 500 lashes respectively. In 1755 two ‘private men absent from exercise’ were ‘to be tyed neck and heels on the Hoe half an hour’; while thirteen years later a sergeant, for taking ‘coals and two poles’ from the dockyard, was sentenced to 500 lashes, and to be ‘drummed out with a halter round his neck,’ after, of course, being reduced to the ranks.”[E]
[Footnote E: _The Story of the British Army_, by Lieutenant-Colonel C. Cooper-King, F.G.S. (Methuen & Co., 1897.)]
Before taking leave of the marines the story of what happened when the _Sirius_ was lost at Norfolk Island should be told. Lieutenant King, of the _Sirius_, had been sent to colonize the island by Governor Phillip, and was acting as governor of it, but when the _Sirius_ went ashore Major Ross thought proper to establish martial law, [Sidenote: 1789-1790] and so (the quotation is from King’s journal)–
“at 8 a.m. on March 22nd, 1790, every person in the settlement was assembled under the lower flagstaff, where the Union flag was hoisted. The troops were drawn up in two lines, having the Union at their head in the centre, with the colours of the detachment displayed, the _Sirius’s_ ship’s company on the right and the convicts on the left, the officers in the centre, when the proclamation was read declaring the law-martial to be that by which the island was in future to be governed until further orders. The lieutenant-governor addressed the convicts, after which the whole gave three cheers, and then every person, beginning with the lieutenant-governor and Captain Hunter, passed under the Union in token of a promise or oath to submit and be amenable to the law-martial then declared. The convicts and the _Sirius’s_ ship’s company were then sent round to Cascade Bay, where proportions of flour and pork were received from the _Supply_ and brought round to the settlement.”
In June, 1789, the Home Government determined to form a corps for special service in New South Wales and bring the marines home. Several suggestions had been made to this effect, and offers from more than one officer had been received to raise a regiment. Ultimately an offer by Major Grose was accepted to raise 300 rank and file. The short and ignoble story of this corps can be traced in the records of New South Wales, and Mr. Britton, in his volume of official history, devotes a chapter to an admirable summary of the annals of the regiment.
Grose was the son of Francis Grose, the antiquarian, who died in 1791. Francis the younger entered the army as ensign in the 52nd Regiment in 1775; served in the American War of Independence; fought at Bunker’s Hill; was twice wounded; went home on account of his wounds; was promoted to captain; did two years’ recruiting; was then promoted a major in the 96th; then raised the New South Wales Regiment; was promoted lieutenant-colonel while serving in the colony where he, as already has been said, acted as governor for two years between the time of Phillip’s departure and Hunter’s arrival. In 1795, owing to his wounds troubling him, he was compelled to return to England, where he was given a staff appointment, and in 1805 was promoted major-general.
Nicholas Nepean, the senior captain, entered the service in the Plymouth division of the marines, and had served under Admiral Keppel. He left New South Wales after a couple of years’ service, and joined the 91st, and was rapidly promoted, until in 1807 he was made brigadier-general and given a command at Cape Breton. He was a brother of Evan Nepean, Under-Secretary at the Home Office at the time of the foundation of the colony; and the Nepean river, the source of Sydney’s water supply, to this day reminds Australians of the family connection.
The only other officers worth noting are Captain Paterson, who had been an African traveller, and had written a book on his travels, and Lieutenant MacArthur, whose name has already been mentioned in the chapter on Hunter, and will reappear to some purpose later on. The last thing MacArthur did before leaving England for New South Wales was to fight a duel. The _Morning Post_ of December 2nd, 1789, tells how in consequence of a dispute between Mr. Gilbert, the master of the transport _Neptune_, and Lieutenant MacArthur, of the Botany Bay Rangers, the two landed at the old gun wharf near the lines, Plymouth, and, attended by seconds, exchanged shots twice. The seconds then interposed, and the business was settled by MacArthur declaring that Captain Gilbert’s conduct was in every respect that of a gentleman and a man of honour, and in the evening he repeated the same expressions on the quarterdeck of the _Neptune_ to the satisfaction of all parties. The quarrel originated in the refusal of Gilbert to admit MacArthur to his private mess-table, although he offered the soldier every other accommodation for himself and wife and family. The Government settled the affair by appointing a new master to the _Neptune_ and allowing MacArthur to exchange to another transport.
The corps was raised in the fashion of the time. Grose received a letter of service:–
“Yourself and the three captains now to be appointed by His Majesty will each be required to raise a complete company (viz., three sergeants, three corporals, two drummers, and sixty-seven private men), in aid of the expenses of which you will be allowed to name the lieutenant and ensign of your respective companies, and to receive from the public three guineas for every recruit approved at the headquarters of the corps by a general or field officer appointed for the purpose.”
Grose made what he could by the privilege of nominating and by any difference there was between the price he paid for recruits and the public money he was paid for them; this sort of business was common enough in those days. Later on he received permission to raise two hundred more men, and a second major, who paid L200 for his commission, was appointed. Such men of the old marine force as chose to accept their discharge in New South Wales were allowed that privilege, and were given a land grant to induce them to become settlers, and these men were, on the arrival of the New South Wales Corps, formed into an auxiliary company under the command of Captain-Lieutenant George Johnson, who had been a marine officer in the first fleet, and who, like MacArthur, was later on to make a chapter of history. The regiment at its maximum strength formed ten companies, numbering 886 non-coms, and privates.
It may be interesting to record on what conditions the marines were granted discharges. First they must have served three years (a superfluous condition, seeing that the corps was not relieved until long after three years’ service had expired); there was then granted to every non-com. 100 acres and every private 50 acres for ten years, after which they were to pay an annual quit rent of a shilling for every ten acres. A bounty of L3 and a double grant of land was allowed to all men who re-enlisted in the New South Wales Corps, and they were also given the further privilege of a year’s clothes, provisions, and seed grain, and one or more assigned convict servants, at the discretion of the governor. The only available return shows that about 50 of the men, a year before the force left the colony, had accepted the offer of discharge and settled at Parramatta and Norfolk Island, then the two principal farming settlements.
The Home Government made no provisions for grants to officers, and as to free emigrants, they were a class in those days so little contemplated that the early governors’ instructions merely provided that they were to be given every encouragement short of “subjecting the public to expense.” Grants of land equal to that given to non-commissioned officers could be made, and assigned servants allowed, but nothing else.
Any modern emigrant who has seen what a grant of uncleared land in Australia means knows what a poor chance of success the most industrious settler could have on these terms, and the early governors were in despair of getting people settled, since they could not provide settlers with seeds, tools, clothing, or anything else without disobeying the order not to subject the public to expense.
Emancipated convicts, on the other hand, were allowed much the same privileges as discharged marines. Phillip repeatedly wrote to England on this subject, and he, on his own responsibility, on more than one occasion, departed from his instructions, and gave privileges to _bona fide_ selectors of all classes.
The English Government was perfectly right in the plan laid down. Its object was to encourage those people to go upon the land who were prepared to remain there, and military and civil officials were not likely to become permanent occupants of their land grants. An opportunity, as a matter of fact, was given to them to supply information as to whether or not they wanted to settle. At that time things looked unpromising, and most of them answered, “No.” When it became apparent to the Government that there was a desire to settle, further instructions were issued by which officers were allowed to take up land, but the permission was given without providing proper security for permanent occupation or without limiting the area of land grants. From the omission of these provisions many abuses grew up. A scale of fees absurdly small, seeing that fees were not chargeable to military and convict settlers, but only to people who, it might well be supposed, could afford to pay, was also provided by the Government, and regulations for the employment of assigned convicts were drawn up.
In Governor Phillip’s time there was no authority to grant officers any land; in Lieutenant-Governor Grose’s time there was no limit to the land they might be granted, and as little value was attached to the Crown lands of the colony, lands probably of less value then than any other in the possession of civilized people, Grose’s officers, who had to do a great deal of extra civil work, were given land in payment for that work. Much abuse has been heaped upon Grose for his alleged favouring of officers by giving them huge grants of land, but, as a matter of fact, Grose behaved very honourably; and Mac Arthur, who owned more land than any other officer in 1794, had only 250 acres in cultivation, and the grants to other officers never exceeded in any one case 120 acres. If Grose’s land policy was bad, he was not to blame, but the trafficking which he permitted to grow up and practically encouraged was a different matter altogether.
Phillip warned the home Government before he left the colony that rum might be a necessity, but it would certainly turn out a great evil. Soon after Grose took command of the colony there arrived an American ship with a cargo of provisions and rum for sale. The American skipper would not sell the provisions without the purchaser also bought the spirits. This was the beginning of the rum traffic; and ships frequently arrived afterwards with stores, and always with quantities of spirits–rum from America and brandy from the Cape. The officers purchased all the spirits, and paid the wages of the convicts who were assigned to them with the liquor; not only this, but they hired extra convict labour, paying for it the same way, and strong drink became the medium of exchange.
All this has been an apparent digression from the history of the New South Wales Corps, but, as will be seen, the subjects are intimately connected. A later governor, who found the colony not so bad as it was at this time, said its population consisted of people who had been, and people who ought to have been, transported. Little wonder then that the New South Wales Corps, enlisted from the lowest classes of the English population, became demoralized. Most of the recruits came from that famous “clink” the Savoy Military Prison. They had little drill or discipline when they were embarked for the colony, and the character of the service they were employed in was the very worst to make good soldiers of them.
In consequence they became a dangerous element in the early life of the colony; there were frequently breaches of discipline, there were cases of downright mutiny, and their career in New South Wales ended in a rebellion. The responsibility for the last crime, however, is with the officers, and not the men. One mutiny was that of the detachment on the _Lady Shore_ in 1798.
This ship was on her way out with female prisoners and a few of the better sort of male convicts. The soldiers joined with the seamen and seized the ship, turning those who would not take side with them adrift in the boats. Among these loyal people were some of the male convicts. The boats made their way to Rio Janeiro, whence the people ultimately reached England. Among the “respectable” convicts was one Major Semple, a notorious swindler of the time, who on this occasion behaved well, risking his life for the protection of the ship’s officers–from the soldiers who had been put on board to support law and order! (He afterwards settled in the Brazils, and received his pardon from England.) The ship was carried by the mutineers into Monte Video and there given up to the Spaniards, who later, finding the true character of the people on board of her, hanged the ringleader and delivered up others of her crew to the English naval authorities. The female convicts had been carried off by the soldiers, and when the Rev. William Gregory arrived at Monte [Sidenote: 1798-1807] Video (a prisoner of war taken in the missionary ship _Duff_ on her second voyage), he found these women there. They had by their conduct given the Spaniards a curious idea of the morality of Englishwomen.[F] Among the rebellious soldiers were many foreigners, and when the mutineers seized the vessel they announced that they had taken her in the name of the French Republic. They addressed one another as “Citizen” this and “Citizen” that, and behaved generally in the approved manner of those “reformers” of the period who had been inspired by the French revolutionists.
[Footnote F: The _Duff was_ captured by the _Bonaparte_, privateer. Among her passengers were several ladies–wives of the missionaries–and at first the citizens of Monte Video classed them with the _Lady Shore’s_ female passengers.]
In the chapters on King and Bligh the mutinies of this remarkable regiment form almost the principal episodes, so we may conclude this chapter with what short regimental history the corps possessed.
As the colony grew in population the corps was increased in strength, until, in 1807, it reached a total of 11 companies, numbering 886 non-commissioned officers and men. In 1808 came the Bligh episode, yet to be described. The home Government recalled the corps, and a battalion of the 73rd, 700 strong, was sent out to relieve it. Authority was, however, given to make up the 73rd to the strength of 1000 by taking volunteers from the corps. This was done, and a veteran company was also formed, and the strength of the 73rd then reached a total of 1234 soldiers, of whom something like 500 men originally belonged to the New South Wales Corps. The remainder of the old corps went home, and was placed on the army list as the 102nd Regiment. Before this its official title was the New South Wales Corps, but the newspapers of the day often varied this by calling it the Botany Bay Rangers and similar appropriate names.
The 102nd served at various home stations until 1812, when it was sent to the Bermudas, and in 1814 took part in an expedition against Mosse Island, in America. In 1816 the 102nd became the 100th [Sidenote: 1823-1870] Regiment; and on the 24th of March, 1818, the regiment was disbanded, and the regiments which were afterwards thus numbered have no connection with it.
The veteran company lasted until 1823, being linked to each regiment of foot that came out to the Australian station. The 73rd was followed by the 46th; then came the 48th, and soon afterwards the New South Wales Veteran Company, as it was called, was abolished. Imperial troops from that time onward garrisoned the Australian colonies until 1870, when they were withdrawn, and their places taken by the permanent artillery regiment, the militia, and the volunteer forces, raised under constitutional government.
CHAPTER VII.
GOVERNOR KING.
For the reason that all the contemporary historians were officers, and their writings little more than official accounts of the colonization of Australia, the personality of the naval governors never stands out from their pages. The German blood in Phillip seems to have made him a peculiarly self-contained man; the respect due to Hunter, as a fine type of the old sea-dog, just saves him from being laughed at in his gubernatorial capacity; King, however, by pure force of character, is more sharply defined. In reading of his work we learn something of the man himself; and of all Phillip’s subordinates in the beginning of things Australian, he, and he alone, was the friend of his cold, reserved chief.
Philip Gidley King was twenty years younger than Phillip, and was thirty years of age when he, in 1786, joined the _Sirius_ as second lieutenant. In a statement of his services sent by himself to the Admiralty in 1790, he supplied the following particulars:–
“Served in the East Indies from the year 1770 to 1774 on board His Majesty’s sloop and ships _Swallow, Dolphin_, and _Prudent_; in North America in His Majesty’s ships _Liverpool, Virginia, Princess_, and _Renown_ from the year 1775 to 1779. I was made a lieutenant into the last ship by Mr. Byron November 26th, 1778. On Channel service, Gibraltar, and Lisbon, in His Majesty’s sloop and ship _Kite_ and _Ariadne_ from 1780 to 1783; in the East Indies in His Majesty’s ship _Europe_ from 1783 to 1785; in New South Wales in His Majesty’s ship the _Sirius_ from 1786 to 1790. This time includes the ship being put in commission, and my stay at Norfolk Island to this date. In His Majesty’s service twenty years; twelve years a lieutenant.”
King had entered the service when he was twelve years of age, and was previously under Phillip in the _Europe_. He was probably the best educated of the officers in the first fleet, and from his knowledge of French there happened an episode which is a matter not only of Australian, but of European, interest.
While the first fleet were lying at anchor in Botany Bay, two strange sail were seen in the offing. That official historian, Tench, of the marines, in a little touch of descriptive ability, which he sometimes displayed, described the incident:–
“The thoughts of removal” (in search of a better site for a settlement) “banished sleep, so that I rose at the first dawn of the morning. But judge of my surprise on hearing from a sergeant, who ran down almost breathlessly to the cabin where I was dressing, that a ship was seen off the harbour’s mouth. At first I only laughed, but knowing the man who spoke to me to be of great veracity, and hearing him repeat his information, I flew upon deck; and I had barely set my foot, when the cry of ‘Another sail!’ struck on my astonished ear. Confounded by a thousand ideas which arose in my mind in an instant, I sprang upon the baracado, and plainly descried two ships of considerable size standing in for the mouth of the bay. By this time the alarm had become general, and everyone appeared in conjecture. Now they were Dutchmen sent to dispossess us, and the moment after storeships from England with supplies for the settlement. The improbabilities which attended both these conclusions were sunk in the agitation of the moment. It was by Governor Phillip that this mystery was at length unravelled, and the cause of the alarm pronounced to be two French ships, which, it was recollected, were on a voyage of discovery in the Southern Hemisphere. Thus were our doubts cleared up, and our apprehensions banished.”
[Illustration: GOVERNOR KING. From a heliotype published in “The Historical Records of New South Wales” [Sydney, 1889, etc.], after a portrait in the possession of the Hon. P.G. King. _To face p_. 138.]
The two ships were the _Boussole_ and the _Astrolabe_, the French expedition under the illstarred La Perouse. Phillip was at Port Jackson selecting a site for the settlement, and the English ships, before the Frenchmen had swung to their anchors, were on their way round to the new harbour. But certain courtesies were exchanged between the representatives of the two nations, and King was the officer employed to transact business with them. La Perouse gave him despatches to send home by the returning transports. These letters and the words spoken to and recorded by King (“In short, Mr. Cook has done so much that he has left me nothing to do but admire his work”) were the last the world heard from the unfortunate officer, whose fate from that hour till forty years later remained a mystery of the sea.
Norfolk Island was discovered by Cook in October, 1774, and in his one day’s stay there he noted its pine-trees and its flax plant. The people at home thought that the flax and the timber of New Zealand might be used for naval purposes, and as Cook’s report said that Norfolk Island contained similar products, the colonization of the island as an adjunct to the New South Wales settlements no doubt suggested itself. Phillip was therefore ordered to “send a small establishment thither to secure the same to us and prevent its occupation by any other European power.”
A separate command like this had to be entrusted to a reliable man, and Phillip, though no doubt loth to lose the close-at-hand service of King, yet felt the importance of the work, and so chose him for it. King left for the island on February 15th, 1788, in the _Supply_, taking with him James Cunningham, master’s mate; Thomas Jamison, surgeon’s mate; Roger Morley, a volunteer adventurer, who had been a master weaver; 2 marines and a seaman from the _Sirius_; and 9 male and 6 female convicts. This complement was to form the little colony. The _Supply_, under Lieutenant Ball, was ordered to return as soon as she had landed the colonists. On the way down, Ball discovered and named Lord Howe Island, and on March 8th the people were landed at their solitary home.
King remained on the island until March, 1790, doing such good work there that not only were the people keeping themselves, but, as we have seen, Phillip sent to him a large proportion of his half-famished settlers from New South Wales, and when King left the population numbered 418, excluding 80 shipwrecked people of the _Sirius_.
[Illustration: JEAN FRANCOIS GALAUP, COMTE DE LA PEROUSE.]
As governor of the island, King combined in himself [Sidenote: 1788] the functions of the criminal and civil courts, and the duties of chaplain. Every Sunday morning, we are told, he caused the people to be assembled for religious service. A man beat the head of an empty cask for a church bell. His punishments for offences then punishable by death were always remarkable for their mildness, as leniency was measured in those days when floggings were reckoned by the hundred lashes.
King left Norfolk Island to go to England with despatches from Phillip. He sailed from Port Jackson in April, 1790, in the _Supply_ for Batavia. The brig returned to the colony with such food as she could obtain, and King chartered a small Dutch vessel to convey him to the Cape of Good Hope.
The voyage home was one of the most remarkable ever made. Five days after leaving Batavia the crew, including the master of the vessel and the surgeon, fell ill from the usual cause: “the putrid fever of Batavia.” Only four well men were left. King took command of them, put up a tent on deck to escape the contagion, ministered to the sick, buried the seventeen who died, was compelled to go below with his respiratory organs masked by a sponge soaked in vinegar, and through all this navigated the vessel to the Mauritius in a fortnight.
At Port Louis he was offered a passage to France in a French warship, but, fearful that war might have broken out by the time he reached the Channel, and he might thus be delayed in his mission, he refused the offer, and having cleaned and fumigated his ship, he shipped a new crew and sailed for the Cape, which he reached eighteen days later.
At the Cape he found Riou with the wreck of the _Guardian_, he who fell at Copenhagen, and whose epitaph is written in Nelson’s despatch, telling how “the good and gallant Captain Riou” fought the _Amazon_. The _Guardian_, loaded with stores for Port Jackson, had struck an iceberg, and her wreck had been navigated in heroic fashion by Riou to the Cape. To the colony her loss was a great misfortune, and King realized that there was so much the greater need for hurry, and two months later he reached England. This was on the 20th of December, eight months from Port Jackson!
At home his superiors quickly recognized that King was a good officer, and Phillip’s warm recommendations were acted upon. [Sidenote: 1792] He was given a commission as lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island, L250 a year, and the rank of commander. He spent three months in England, married, and sailed again in the _Gorgon_, which was the first warship, unless the _Sirius_ and _Supply_ and the Frenchmen are counted as such, to visit Sydney.
Phillip went home, Grose took charge at Sydney, and King returned to his island command, which during his absence had been under Major Ross, of the Marines, and martial law. Then began serious trouble. In England, curiously enough, no thought of New Zealand had been taken yet. Some of the masters of transports to New South Wales, who were already beginning to experiment in whaling (whales in plenty had been seen from Dampier’s time), had visited the coasts of New Zealand, and King himself was strongly of opinion that a settlement should be attempted there.
The expedition under Vancouver was, in 1792, in New Zealand and Australian waters. Vancouver induced a couple of Maoris to leave their home for the purpose of teaching the colonists how to use the flax plant, promising the natives that they should be returned to New Zealand. The Maoris were despatched by Vancouver in the _Daedalus_ to Port Jackson, and Grose sent them on to Norfolk Island. Little was to be learnt from them, and, as a matter of fact, the attempt to grow and use flax never came to anything.
King was very kind to the two natives, who became much attached to him, and he, anxious to carry out the promise of the white man to return them to their homes, did a very imprudent thing. The _Britannia_, a returning storeship, was detained by contrary winds at the island on her way to the East Indies. The wind served for New Zealand. King chartered her to take the two natives home, and himself accompanied them on the passage to the Bay of Islands. King’s reasons for the step were–
“the sacred duty that devolves upon Englishmen of keeping faith with native races, and the desire to see for himself what could be done towards colonizing New Zealand.”
These reasons would justify British officers in many circumstances, but they scarcely warranted King in leaving even for the short period of ten days, the time occupied over the transaction, such an awkward command as the government of a penal settlement. The senior officer under King was Lieutenant Abbott, of the New South Wales Corps; and, instead of appointing him to the command of the island in his absence, King left Captain Nepean, of the same regiment, in charge. This officer was at the time about to go to England on sick leave, and King’s reason for his selection was that he had no confidence in either Abbott or the subaltern under him. There is plenty of evidence that King was right in his want of confidence in these officers, but the action gave mortal offence to Grose, and King’s absence from the command gave Grose his opportunity. But King did worse: Grose was his superior officer, and until Abbott had “got in first” with his grievances King never offered any explanation of his acts to the senior officer, but sent his account of the trip, his reasons for undertaking it and for giving the command to Nepean, directly to the Home Office.
Grose was unjustly severe, was downright offensive over the business; but, to do him justice, he afterwards realized this, and ultimately considerably moderated his behaviour. But there was another and a greater cause of irritation to the lieutenant-governor at Port Jackson, who, be it remembered, was also the officer commanding the New South Wales Regiment: This was the way in which King suppressed a serious military mutiny at Norfolk Island.
Naturally enough, the men of the New South Wales Corps stationed on the little island fraternized with the convicts. The two classes of the population drank and gambled together, and of course quarrelled; then the soldiers and the prisoners’ wives became too intimate, and the quarrels between parties grew serious. A time-expired prisoner caught his wife and a soldier together; the aggrieved husband struck the soldier, and the latter complained. The man was fined _20s_., bound over to keep the peace for twelve months, and allowed by King time to pay the fine. This exasperated the whole military detachment. The idea of an ex-convict striking a soldier who had done him the honour to seduce his wife, and being fined a paltry sovereign, with time to pay!
Then, in January, 1794, a number of freed men and convicts were, by permission of the governor, performing a play; this had been a regular Saturday evening’s amusement for some weeks. Just before the performance began a sergeant of the corps entered the theatre and forcibly tried to take a seat that had been allotted to one of the lieutenant-governor’s servants. A discharged convict, who was one of the [Sidenote: 1794] managers of the theatre, remonstrated with the soldier, who replied with a blow. The ex-convict then turned the man out of the building, and the performance began, King entering the theatre when all was quiet, but having his suspicions aroused by the threatening aspect of the soldiers.
At the conclusion of the performance the disturbance was renewed outside, and a number of the soldiers went to the barracks, got their side-arms, and returned to the scene, threatening what they would do. King heard the noise, and rushing out from his house, seized a man who was flourishing his bayonet, and handing him over to the guard, ordered that they should take him to the guard-room.
This was the critical moment. After a second’s hesitation King was obeyed, and the soldiers, at the order of Lieutenant Abbott, their officer, retired to the barracks, where they held a meeting, and resolved to free their comrade by force, if he was not released in the morning. King, who had kept his ears open, took counsel with the military and civil officers, and a unanimous decision was arrived at to disarm the detachment.
This could only be effected by stratagem, although it was believed that but a portion of the men were disaffected. All those suspected of complicity were in the morning marched, under one of their officers, to a distant part of the island on the pretence of collecting wild fowl feathers. While they were away, King, with the remainder of the military and civil officers, went to the guard-room and took possession of all the arms. The lieutenant-governor then swore in as a militia 44 marines and seamen settlers, armed them, and all danger was over.
Just as this was completed, the Government schooner arrived from Port Jackson, and King sent ten ringleaders of the mutiny to Sydney for trial, pardoning ten others. The vessel was despatched in a hurry, and King sent a very meagre letter to Grose, leaving a lieutenant of the corps in charge of the guard sent with the mutineers to explain matters.
Grose assembled a court of inquiry, and its finding severely censured King for daring so to disgrace the soldiers as to disarm them. Grose sent an offensive letter with this finding, in which King was ordered to disband his militia, and generally to reverse everything that had been done; and King did exactly as he was ordered to do. At home the Duke of Portland approved of all King’s acts, objecting only [Sidenote: 1797-1800] to his leaving his command to take home the New Zealanders without first getting permission from Grose.
King left Norfolk Island in 1797, and on his arrival in England, tired of civil appointment, set about looking for a ship. But Sir Joseph Banks, whose disinterested regard for the colony and its affairs had given him considerable influence with the Home Office, procured him a dormant commission as governor of New South Wales, under which he was to act in the event of the death or absence of Hunter. He arrived in the colony early in 1800, bringing with him a despatch recalling Hunter, and it can easily be understood that the ex-governor did not display very good feeling towards his successor, who was sent to replace him in this rough and ready fashion.
The state of the colony at this time has already been described, and although during King’s administration many events of colonial importance happened, we have only space for those of more general interest. King displayed great firmness and ability in dealing with the abuses which had grown up owing to the liquor traffic; but the condition of affairs required stronger remedies than it was in his power to apply, so things went on much the same as before, and the details of life then in New South Wales are of little interest to general readers.
King’s determination and honesty of purpose earned for him the hatred of the rum traders, and the New South Wales Corps was in such a state that in a despatch, after praising the behaviour of the convicts, he wrote that he wished he could write in the same way of the military, “who,” says King, “after just attempting to set their commanding officer and myself at variance and failing, they have ever since been causing nothing but the most vexacious trouble both with their own commandant and myself.”
Captain MacArthur had by this time imported his Spanish sheep, and had become the greatest landowner and pastoralist in the colony. MacArthur wanted to go to England, and offered the lot to the Government for L4000. King had the good sense to see the value of the offer, and in a letter to the Home Office advised its acceptance. To this came replies from both the Duke of Portland and the War Office, expressing the strongest disapproval of the idea and stating that it was highly improper that an officer in the service should have become such a big trader. In 1801 MacArthur quarrelled with one of his brother officers, and this led to almost all the officials in the colony quarrelling with one another and to a duel between MacArthur and his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Paterson, the latter being wounded. King put MacArthur under arrest, and sent him to England for trial with the remark that if he was sent to the colony again it had better be as governor, as he already owned half of it, and it would not be long before he owned the other half.
The Advocate-General of the army, however, sent him back to the colony with a recommendation that the squabble should be dropped.
During King’s administration several political prisoners who had been concerned in the 1798 rebellion were sent out; and, by the governor’s good offices, these men were given certain indulgences, and generally placed upon a different footing to felons, a distinction that had not been provided for by the Imperial Government. King has had very little credit for this, and because he _did_ deal severely with Irish rebels has been put down by many as a cruel man, but the home Government at first sent out prisoners without any history of their crimes, and King was unable to tell the dangerous from the comparatively inoffensive until he had seen how the exiles behaved in the colony. During King’s administration there was an open revolt of the convicts. They assembled at a place called Castle Hill, about 20 miles from Sydney, to fight a “battle for liberty.” Here is the report of the officer who suppressed the rebellion:–
“_Major Johnston to Lieutenant-Colonel Paterson_. “HEADQUARTERS, SYDNEY,
“_9th March, 1804_.
“Sir,–I beg leave to acquaint you that about half-past 1 o’clock on Monday morning last I took the command of the detachment marched from headquarters accompanied by Lieutenant Davies, consisting of two officers, two sergeants, and 52 rank and file of the New South Wales Corps, and, by His Excellency Governor King’s orders, I proceeded immediately to Parramatta, where we arrived at the dawn of day. I halted at the barracks about 20 minutes to refresh my party, and then marched to Government House, and, agreeable to His Excellency’s orders, divided my detachment, giving Lieutenant Davies the command of half and taking Quartermaster Laycock and the other half, with one trooper, myself, having the Governor’s instructions to march in pursuit of the rebels, who, in number about 400, were on the summit of the hill. I immediately detached a corporal, [Sidenote: 1804] with four privates and about six inhabitants, armed with musquets, to take them in flank whilst I proceeded with the rest up the hill, when I found the rebels had marched on for the Hawkesbury, and after a pursuit of about ten miles I got sight of them. I immediately rode forward, attended by the trooper and Mr. Dixon, the Roman Catholic priest, calling to them to halt, that I wished to speak to them. They desired I would come into the middle of them, as their captains were there, which I refused, observing to them that I was within pistol-shot, and it was in their power to kill me, and that their captains must have very little spirit if they would not come forward to speak to me, upon which two persons advanced towards me as their leaders, to whom I represented the impropriety of their conduct, and advised them to surrender, and I would mention them in as favourable terms as possible to the Governor. C. replied they would have death or liberty. Quartermaster Laycock with the detachment just then appearing in sight, I clapped my pistol to J.’s head, whilst the trooper did the same to C.’s and drove them with their swords in their hands to the Quartermaster and the detachment, whom I ordered to advance and charge the main body of the rebels then formed in line. The detachment immediately commenced a well-directed fire, which was but weakly returned, for, the rebel line being soon broken, they ran in all directions. We pursued them a considerable way, and have no doubt but that many of them fell. We have found 12 killed, 6 wounded, and have taken 26 prisoners.
“Any encomiums I could pass on Quartermaster Laycock and the detachment I had the honour to command would fall far short of what their merit entitles them to, and I trust their steady perseverance, after a fatiguing march of upwards of 45 miles, to restore order and tranquillity will make their services acceptable. Return of arms taken from the rebels: 26 muskets, 4 bayonets on poles, 8 reaping-hooks, 2 swords, a fowling-piece, and a pistol.”
The revolt seems to have been the result more than anything else of the number of political prisoners which at that time had been transported to the colony and the quantity of liquor available. Certainly King’s government was not severe enough to provoke an outbreak. Sir Joseph Banks, writing to him, said:–
“There is only one part of your conduct as governor which I do not think right; that is your frequent reprieves. I would have justice in the case of those under your command who have already forfeited their lives, and been once admitted to a commutation of punishment, to be certain and inflexible, and no one case on record where mere mercy, which is a deceiving sentiment, should be permitted to move your mind from the inexorable decree of blind justice. Circumstances may often make pardon necessary–I mean those of suspected error in conviction; but mere whimpering soft-heartedness never should be heard.”
Dr. Lang published his _History of New South Wales_ in 1834; Judge Therry wrote a book of personal reminiscences dating from 1829. Both these writers describe things they knew, and relate stories told to them by men who had come out in the first fleet. Therry and Lang were as opposite as the poles: the first was an Irish barrister and a Roman Catholic; the second was a Scotchman and a Presbyterian minister. The two men are substantially in agreement in the pictures they draw of the colony’s early governors and of life as it was in New South Wales down to the twenties.
Lang and Therry both relate anecdotes of King. The stories do not present him in a light to command respect; the official records rather confirm than contradict the stories. Governing a penal colony seems to have had an unhealthy influence upon the sailor governors; Phillip only escaped it.
King, Phillip’s right hand, when a lieutenant, makes a voyage to England in fashion heroic; he commands Norfolk Island at a critical time, when no one but a _man_ could have controlled its affairs; he is appointed to the supreme command in New South Wales, and before he has been many months in office becomes a laughing-stock.
It is due to the first governor’s successors to remember that they had no force behind them. Phillip’s marines were soldiers; the New South Wales Corps were dealers in rum, officers and men were duly licensed to sell it, and every ship that came into the harbour brought it. “In 1802, when I arrived, it was lamentable to behold the drunkenness. It was no uncommon occurrence for men to sit round a bucket of spirits and drink it with quart pots until they were unable to stir from the spot.” Thus wrote a surgeon. “It was very provoking to see officers draw goods from the public store to traffic in them for their private gain, which goods were sent out for settlers, who were compelled to deal with the huckster officers, giving them from 50 to 500 per cent, profit and paying them in grain.” Thus wrote Holt, the Irish rebel general.
These men are true witnesses, and the extracts among the mildest statements made by any contemporary writer. Yet, be it remembered, the colony was a penal settlement. The prison chronicles of England at this period are not a whit less disgraceful reading; the stone walls of Newgate, in the heart of London, hid scenes no less disgraceful than the stockades of Botany Bay.
But, though the naval governors controlled New South Wales before free emigration had leavened its population, and in consequence are remembered but as gaolers, they were something better than this: their pioneering work should not be forgotten.
During King’s administration sea exploration was carried on vigorously (the work of Flinders and Bass will form the subject of the next chapter); settlements were made at Van Diemen’s Land in place of Port Phillip, where an attempt to colonize was abandoned, to be successfully carried out later on; the important town of Newcastle was founded; the whale fisheries made a fair start; and several expeditions were conducted into the interior, always to be stopped by the Blue Mountains barrier. Above all, MacArthur, in spite of every discouragement, made a success of his wool-growing, resigned his commission, and returned to the colony, the first of the great pastoralists. King, to his credit, forgot his differences with MacArthur, and lent a willing hand to the colonist. The first newspaper, the _Sydney Gazette_, was published just before King left the colony, and free settlers began to come out in numbers.
The French expedition under Baudin called at Port Jackson to refresh, and certain matters in connection with their visit are worth telling. Two unfortunate incidents occurred: one an accusation against the French officers of selling on shore certain liquor King had given them permission to purchase from a merchantman for the use of their ships’ companies; another incident was the manner of hoisting the English ensign on board one of the French ships, which was “dressed” for a holiday. Baudin explained these matters easily enough. The flag was wrongly hoisted by accident, and the accusation for selling liquor was unfounded, and certain officers of the New South Wales Corps who made the statements did not come out of the affair very creditably.
[Illustration: SIR JOSEPH BANKS. From a picture by Thomas Phillips, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery. _To face p._ 158.]
But the most noteworthy incident is explained in this extract from a letter dated Sydney, May 9th, 1803, from King to Sir Joseph Banks:–
“Whilst the French ships lay here I was on the most friendly footing with Mons’r Baudin and all his officers. _Entre nous_, he showed me and left with me his journals, in which were contained all his orders from the first idea of his voyage taking place, and also the whole of the drawings made on the voyage. His object was, by his orders, the collection of objects of natural history from this country at large and the geography of Van Diemen’s Land. The south and south-west coast, as well as the north-west and north coast, were his particular objects. It does not appear by his orders that he was at all instructed to touch here, which I do not think he intended if not obliged by distress. With all this openness on his part, I could only have general ideas on the nature of their visit to Van Diemen’s Land. I communicated it to Mons’r Baudin, who informed me that he knew of no idea that the French had of settling on any part or side of this continent. They had not been gone more than a few hours when a general report was circulated that it had been the conversation of the French officers that Mons’r Baudin had orders to fix on a place for a settlement at Van Diemen’s Land, and that the French, on receiving his accounts, were to make an establishment at ‘Baie du Nord,’ which, you will observe, in D’Entrecasteaux’s charts is what we call ‘Storm Bay Passage,’ and the French ‘Canal D’Entrecasteaux.’ It seemed one of the French officers had given Colonel Paterson a chart, and described the intended spot.”
So King sent for the colonel, and then,
“without losing an instant, a colonial vessel was immediately equipped and provided with as many scientific people as I could put into her, and despatched after Mons’r Baudin. The instruction I gave the midshipman who commanded her was to examine Storm Bay Passage and leave His Majesty’s colours flying there with a guard, and that it was my intention to send an establishment there by the _Porpoise_. This order, you will observe, was a blind, and as such was to be communicated to Mons’r Baudin, as my only object was to make him acquainted with the reports I had heard, and to assure him and his masters that the King’s claim would not be so easily given up. The midshipman in the _Cumberland_ had other private orders not to go to Storm Bay Passage, but to follow the French ships as far as King’s Island, and that he was to make the pretext of an easterly wind forcing him into the straits, and as he was enjoined to survey King’s Island and Port Phillip, that service he should perform before he went to Storm Bay Passage.
“This had the desired effect. He overtook _Geographe_ and _Naturaliste_ at King’s Island the day the _Naturaliste_ parted company with the _Geographe_ on the former returning to France, and as an officer of the colony was going passenger in her, the mid. was instructed to give him privately a packet for the Admiralty and Lord Hobart, in which, I believe, was one for you. These letters contained the particulars. The mid. was received by Mons’r Baudin with much kindness. In the latter’s answer to me he felt himself rather hurt at the idea that ‘had such an intention on his part existed, that he should conceal it.’ However, he put it on the most amicable footing, altho’ the mid. planted His Majesty’s colours close to their tents, and kept them flying during the time the French ships stayed there.”
Notwithstanding their first little differences, King and Baudin parted the best of friends, and to an orphan asylum established by King in Sydney, Baudin sent a donation of L50; but King’s action in sending the _Cumberland_ after him struck the Frenchman in a different light. He wrote to King telling him that if he had wanted to annex Van Diemen’s Land he would have made no secret of it, that Tasman anyhow had not discovered it for the benefit of Englishmen only, and that–
“I was well convinced that the arrival of the _Cumberland_ had another motive than merely to bring your letter, but I did not think it was for the purpose of hoisting the British flag precisely on the spot where our tents had been pitched a long time previous to her arrival. I frankly confess that I am displeased that such has taken place. That childish ceremony was ridiculous, and has become more so from the manner in which the flag was placed, the head being downwards, and the attitude not very majestic. Having occasion to go on shore that day, I saw for myself what I am telling you. I thought at first it might have been a flag which had served to strain water and then hung out to dry; but seeing an armed man walking about, I was informed of the ceremony which had taken place that morning. I took great care in mentioning it to your captain, but your scientists, with whom he dined, joked about it, and Mr. Petit, of whose cleverness you are aware, made a complete caricature on the event. It is true that the flag sentry was sketched. I tore up the caricature as soon as I saw it, and gave instructions that such was not to be repeated in future.”
Towards the latter end of 1803 King grew very tired of the petty annoyances of the officers of the New South Wales Corps, and he wrote home asking that either a commission should be appointed to inquire into the government of the colony, or that he should be permitted to go to England himself and report upon the state of affairs. With the letter he sent home copies of lampoons which he alleged were anonymously written and circulated by officers of the regiment. Here is a sample of one:–
EXTEMPORE ALLEGRO.
“My power to make great
O’er the laws and the state
Commander-in-Chief I’ll assume;
Local rank, I persist,
Is in my own fist:
To doubt it who dares to presume.
“On Monday keep shop,
In two hours’ time stop
To relax from such kingly fatigue, To pillage the store
And rob Government more
Than a host of good thieves–by intrigue.
“For infamous acts from my birth I’d an itch, My fate I foretold but too sure;
Tho’ a rope I deserved, which is justly my due, I shall actually die in a ditch,
And be damned.”
By way of reply, Lord Hobart, then at the Home Office, informed King, that although the Government had the fullest appreciation of the good service he had done, yet the unfortunate differences between himself and the officers would best be ended by relieving him of his [Sidenote: 1805] command as soon as a successor could be chosen. The successor, in the person of Bligh, was chosen in July, 1805, and King a few months later returned to England.
In Hobart’s letter to King informing him of the decision to recall him, the former refers not only to the unfortunate difference “between you and the military officers,” but to the fact that these disputes “have extended to the commander of H.M.S. _Glatton_.” Highly indignant, King replied to this in the following paragraph of a despatch dated August 14th, 1804:–
“In what relates to the commander of His Majesty’s ship _Glatton_, had I, on his repeated demands, committed myself, by the most flagrant abuse of the authority delegated to me, by giving him a free pardon for a female convict for life, who had never landed from the _Glatton_, to enable her to cohabit with him on his passage home, I might, in that case, have avoided much of his insults here and his calumnious invective in England; but after refusing, as my bounden duty required, to comply to his unwarrantable demands, which, if granted, must have very justly drawn on me your lordship’s censure and displeasure, with the merited reproach of those deserving objects to whom that last mark of His Majesty’s mercy is so cautiously extended, from that period, my lord, the correspondence will evidently show no artifice or means on his part were unused to insult not only myself as governor of this colony, but the military and almost every other officer of the colony.”
There is, of course, another side to this. Captain Colnett, of the _Glatton_, asked for the woman’s pardon on the ground that she had supplied him with information which enabled him to anticipate a mutiny of the convicts on the passage out. On the return of the _Glatton_ to England, the _St. James Chronicle_ informs its readers that at a dinner at Walmer Castle Colnett dined with William Pitt. Perhaps over their wine the two discussed Governor King, and hence perhaps Hobart’s letter of recall.
During King’s period of office there were, besides the Irish rebels, many prisoners whose names are famous, or infamous, in story. Pickpocket George Barrington, who came out in Governor Phillip’s time, once the Beau Brummel of his branch of rascality, had settled down into a respectable settler, and was in King’s government, superintendent of convicts, at L50 a year wages. Sir Henry Browne Hayes, at one time sheriff of Cork city, was sent out for life in King’s time for abducting a rich Quaker girl; he was pardoned, and returned to England in 1812, leaving behind him a fine residence which he had built for himself, and which [Sidenote: 1808] is still one of the beauty spots at the entrance of Sydney harbour.
Margarot, one of the “Scotch martyrs,” also fell foul of King, who sent him to Hobart for seditious practices. The governor seems to have punished Scotch and Irish pretty impartially, for Hayes and Margarot were coupled together as disturbing characters and both sent away.
The “martyrs,” it will perhaps be remembered, were Muir, Palmer, Skirving, Gerald, and Margarot, transported at Edinburgh for libelling the Government in August, 1793, and most harshly dealt with, as everyone nowadays admits.
King was a Cornishman, a native of Launceston. When he went home in 1790 he married a Miss Coombes, of Bedford. By this lady he had several children. The eldest of them, born at Norfolk Island in 1791, he named Phillip Parker, after his old chief. This youngster was sent into the navy to follow his father’s footsteps, and in a later chapter of this book he will be heard of again.
The ex-governor wrote in September, 1808, a letter from Bath.
“As this letter may probably reach you before you sail, I just write to say that I came here on Tuesday with Mr. Etheridge, on his return to London, merely to see Admiral Phillip, whom I found much better than I possibly could expect from the reports I had heard, although he is quite a cripple, having lost the entire use of his right side, though his intellects are very good, and his spirits are as they always were.”
This letter was to the boy Phillip, then a year-old sailor, on the eve of his departure on a cruise in the Channel. Seven days later the writer had slipped his moorings, and years earlier than his old comrade had “gone before to that unknown and silent shore.”
CHAPTER VIII.
BASS AND FLINDERS
The details of Australian sea exploration are beyond the scope of this work, but in a future chapter some reference will be made to the marvellous quantity and splendid quality of naval surveying in Australian waters.
The story of Flinders and Bass, of the work they performed, and the strange, sad ending to their lives is worth a book, much more the small space we can devote to it. Much has been written about these two men, but the best work on the subject, that written by Flinders himself, has now become a rare book, to be found only in a few public libraries, and too expensive for any but well-to-do book-lovers to have upon their shelves. The printing in New South Wales by the local Government of the records of the colony has led to the discovery of a quantity of interesting material never before published, and in this there is much relating to Flinders and Bass–so much, in fact, that the work of the two men could be described from contemporary letters and despatches, material, if not new to everyone, certainly known to very few.
The dry technicalities of the surveying work, interesting enough to the people of those places on the coasts of Australia which are now flourishing seaports, but where not a century ago Bass and Flinders landed for the first time, are too local in their interests to warrant more than a passing reference here. The bold explorers met with so many stirring adventures that the present writers can only “reel off the yarn,” and let lovers of topography go, if they are so inclined, to the charts, and study how much valuable map-making, as well as exciting incident, these young men crowded into their lives.
When Hunter returned to New South Wales in the _Reliance_ to take office as governor, he brought with him Matthew Flinders as second lieutenant; and to Sir Joseph Banks, whose influence secured the appointment, this is only one of the many debts of gratitude owed by New South Wales for his foresight and honesty in making such selections. Flinders was then twenty-one years of age. His father was a surgeon at Donington, a village in Lincolnshire.
[Illustration: GEORGE BASS. From a miniature. From “The Historical Records of New South Wales” [Sydney, 1889, etc.]. _To face p._ 168.]
_Robinson Crusoe_, so he himself tells us, sent him to sea, and his departure from home was soon followed by that of his brother Samuel. Matthew served first in the _Scipio_ under Pasley; then he accompanied Bligh in the _Providence_ to Tahiti, and thence to the West Indies (this was Bligh’s successful bread-fruit voyage); then he was in the _Bellerophon_, and was present at Lord Howe’s victory, “the glorious 1st of June.” Two months later he left in the _Reliance_ for Sydney.
The surgeon of the _Reliance_ was George Bass. From his boyhood Bass wanted to be a sailor, but was apprenticed, sorely against his will, to a Boston apothecary. His father was a farmer at Sleaford, in Lincolnshire; but his mother was early left a widow. The lad served his apprenticeship, duly walked the hospitals, and his mother spent most of her small substance in starting him in business as a village apothecary in his native county. Then, like so many before and since his time, unable to overcome his first infatuation, he threw all his shore affairs to the wind and obtained an appointment to the _Reliance_.
Governor Hunter, it will be remembered, took a keen interest in the exploration of Australia, and he had for some time suspected the existence of a strait between Van Diemen’s Land and the main continent. Full of desire for adventure and tired of the routine life of a penal settlement, Flinders and Bass, soon after they landed in the colony, found a new occupation in the pursuit of fresh discoveries, and Hunter willingly lent them such poor equipment as the limited resources of the colony afforded.
A month after the arrival of the _Reliance_ at Sydney the two friends set to work, and in an eight-foot boat, which they appropriately named the _Tom Thumb_, went poking in and out along the coast-line, making discoveries of the greatest local value. Then began work destined to be of world-wide importance.
Take the map of Tasmania and look at a group of islands at its north-east corner; they are in what was later on to be called Bass’ Straits. Among them are two named Preservation and Clarke Islands; these and Armstrong Channel commemorate the wreck of the _Sydney Cove_, which occurred on February 9th, 1797. The _Sydney Cove_ was an East Indiaman bound from Bengal to Sydney; she sprang a leak, was with difficulty navigated to the spot named Preservation Island, and there beached.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN MATTHEW FLINDERS, R.N. From the “Naval Chronicle” for 1814.] [Sidenote: _To face p_. 170.]
The crew, many of whom were Lascars, were saved, with a few stores. Then the long-boat, with the mate, supercargo, three European seamen, and a dozen Lascars, was despatched in an endeavour to reach Port Jackson, the only occupied part of the great continent, and bring succour to their starving shipmates. They set out on the 28th February, were driven ashore; their boat was battered to pieces on the rocks, and they escaped only with their lives. This happened on the 1st of March, the scene of this second misfortune being a little distance to the north of Cape Howe, 300 miles from Sydney. These castaways were the first white men to land in what is now the colony of Victoria. (The spot where the boat was lost is just over the border.) After resting the men then all set out to march along the coast to Sydney.
Sixty days later three exhausted creatures reached Wattamolla harbour, near what is now the National Park of New South Wales, about 18 miles south of Sydney. The remainder of the castaways had dropped and died of exhaustion on the march, or had been speared by the blacks. Those who survived had purchased their lives from the savages with shreds of cloth and buttons from their ragged clothing, and had kept themselves alive with such shell-fish as they could find upon the beaches. At Wattamolla they had halted to cook a scanty meal of shell-fish, and the smoke of their fire revealed their presence to a fishing boat from the settlement at Port Jackson. The fire by which this cooking was done was made from coal found on the beach there; so reported brave Clarke, the supercargo of the _Sydney Cove_, who found it.
As soon as Hunter heard of the discovery he determined to examine the place. In a despatch home he says:–
“So I have lately sent a boat to that part of the coast, in which went Mr. Bass, surgeon of the _Reliance_. He was fortunate in discovering the place, and informed me he found a stratum six feet deep in the face of a steep cliff, which was traced for eight miles in length; but this was not the only coal they discovered, for it was seen in various places.”
The place was named Coalcliff, and this was the first discovery of the great southern coalfields of New South Wales. Hunter, writing to the Duke of Portland under date of March 1st, 1798, shall tell the next incident of Bass’ career:–
“The tedious repairs which His Majesty’s ship [Sidenote: 1798] _Reliance_ necessarily required before she could be put in a condition for again going to sea having given an opportunity to Mr. George Bass, her surgeon, a young man of a well-informed mind and an active disposition, to offer himself to be employed in any way in which he could contribute to the benefit of the public service, I inquired of him in what way he was desirious of exerting himself, and he informed me nothing could gratify him more effectually than my allowing him the use of a good boat and permitting him to man her with volunteers from the King’s ships. I accordingly furnished him with an excellent whale-boat, well fitted, victualled, and manned to his wish, for the purpose of examining along the coast to the southward of this port, as far as he could with safety and convenience go. His perseverance against adverse winds and almost incessant bad weather led him as far south as the latitude of 40 deg.00 S., or a distance from this port, taking the bendings of the coast, of more than 600 miles.” (This, remember, was accomplished in a whale-boat.) “He coasted the greatest part of the way, and sedulously examined every inlet along the shore, which does not in these parts afford a single harbour fit to admit even a small vessel, except a bay in latitude 35 deg.06, called Jarvis’ Bay, and which was so named by one of the transport ships, bound here, who entered it, and is the same called by Captain Cook Longnose Bay. He explored every accessible place until he came as far as the sourthermost [sic: southernmost] parts of this coast seen by Captain Cook, and from thence until he reached the northernmost land seen by Captain Furneaux, beyond which he went westward about 60 miles, where the coast falls away in a west-northwest direction. Here he found an open ocean westward, and by the mountainous sea which rolled in from that quarter, and no land discoverable in that direction, we have much reason to conclude that there is an open strait through, between the latitude of 39 and 40’12 S., a circumstance which, from many observations made upon tides and currents thereabouts, I had long conjectured.
“It will appear by this discovery that the northermost [sic: northernmost] land seen by Captain Furneaux is the southernmost extremity of this coast, and lays in latitude 39.00 S. At the western extremity of Mr. Bass’ coasting voyage he found a very good harbour; but, unfortunately, the want of provision induced him to return sooner than he wished and intended, and on passing a small island laying off the coast he discovered a smoke, and supposed it to have been made by some natives, with whom he wished to have an opportunity of conversing. On approaching the shore he found the men were white, and had some clothing on, and when he came near he observed two of them take to the water and swim off. They proved to be seven of a gang of fourteen convicts who escaped from hence in a boat on the 2nd of October last, and who had been treacherously left on this desolate island by the other seven, who returned northward. The boat, it seems, was too small for their whole number, and when they arrived at Broken Bay they boarded another boat [lying] in the Hawkesbury with fifty-six bushels of wheat on board; then they went off with her to the northward, leaving their old boat on shore.
“These poor distressed wretches” (the seven convicts discovered by Bass), “who were chiefly Irish, would have endeavoured to travel