It may be presumed that, by the influence of his mother's connections through her first marriage, he was sent to Greenwich School, and thence into the navy, where he began his career under Captain Michael Everett at the outbreak of war in 1755.

At twenty-three he was serving as a lieutenant in the Stirling Castle, and later on, when peace came, after a turn of farming in the New Forest, he volunteered to serve under the Portuguese Government. Leaving the Portuguese service with distinction, he rejoined the English navy in 1778, and the Admiralty at once made him master and commander of the Basilisk, fireship, soon afterwards appointing him post captain. He commanded the Ariadne, frigate, later on the Europe, and was then selected for the command of the first fleet to New South Wales. All the remarkable story of the colonizing expedition does not belong to this chapter on Phillip, but it runs through the lives of the four naval governors.

Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary of the day, selected Phillip, and Lord Howe, then at the head of the Admiralty, expressed this opinion on the appointment:—

"I cannot say the little knowledge I have of Captain Phillip would have led me to select him for a service of this complicated nature; but as you are satisfied of his ability, and I conclude he will be taken under your direction, I presume it will not be unreasonable to move the King for having His Majesty's pleasure signified to the Admiralty for these purposes as soon as you see proper, so that no time may be lost in making the requisite preparations for the voyage."

It took a long time to prepare the expedition, and when the fleet sailed from Spithead on May 13th, 1787, the transports had been lying off the Motherbank with their human freight on board for months before; yet, through the neglect of the shore officials, they sailed without clothing for the women prisoners and without enough [Sidenote: 1787] cartridges to do much more than fill the pouches of the marine guard.

There were eleven sail altogether: the Sirius, frigate, the Supply, tender, six transports, and three storeships. The frigate was an old East Indiaman, the Berwick. She had been lying in Deptford Yard, had been burnt almost to the water's edge not long before, and was patched up for the job. The Supply was a brig, a bad sailer, yet better in that respect than the Sirius, though much overmasted; she was commanded by Lieutenant Ball.

The expedition was a big affair, and it seems curious enough nowadays that so little interest was taken in it. There were more than a thousand people on board, and one would have thought that if the departure of the convicts did not create excitement, the sailing of the bluejackets and the guard of about 200 marines bound for such an unknown part of the world would have set Portsmouth at any rate in a stir. But the Fitzherbert scandal, the attack on Warren Hastings, and such-like stirring events were then town talk, and at that period there were no special correspondents or, for the matter of that, any newspapers worth mentioning, to work up popular excitement over the event.

On the way out the fleet called at Teneriffe, at Rio, and at the Cape to refresh; and Phillip's old friends, the Portuguese, gave him a hearty welcome and much assistance at the Brazils. When the ships reached Botany Bay in January, 1788, the voyage of thirty-six weeks had ended without serious misfortune of any kind. Lieutenant Collins, of the Marines, Judge-Advocate and historian of the expedition, thus sums up the case:—

"Thus, under the blessing of God, was happily completed in eight months and one week a voyage which, before it was undertaken, the mind hardly dared to contemplate, and on which it was impossible to reflect without some apprehension as to its termination. This fortunate completion of it, however, afforded, even to ourselves, as much matter of surprise as of general satisfaction; for in the above space of time we had sailed 5021 leagues, had touched at the American and African continents, and had at last rested within a few days' sail of the antipodes of our native country without meeting with any accidents in a fleet of eleven sail, nine of which were merchantmen that had never before sailed in that distant and imperfectly explored ocean. And when it is considered that there was on board a large body of convicts, many of whom were embarked in a very sickly state, we might be deemed peculiarly fortunate that of the whole number of all descriptions of persons coming to form the new settlement only thirty-two had died since their leaving England, among whom were to be included one or two deaths by accidents, although previous to our departure it was generally conjectured that before long we should have been converted into an hospital ship. But it fortunately happened otherwise; and the spirits visible in every eye were to be ascribed to the general joy and satisfaction which immediately took place on finding ourselves arrived at that port which had been so much and so long the theme of our conversation."

. To face p. 78.]

To understand fully what Phillip's good management had effected, without going into detail, it may be said at once that no succeeding voyage, in spite of the teachings of experience, was made with such immunity from sickness or mutiny. The second voyage, generally spoken of as that of the second fleet, for example, was so conducted that Judge-Advocate Collins says of it:—

"The appearance of those prisoners who did not require medical assistance was lean and emaciated. Several of these miserable people died in the boats as they were rowing on shore or on the wharf as they were being lifted out of the boats, both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country. All this was to be attributed to confinement, and that of the worst species—confinement in a small space and in irons, not put on singly, but many of them chained together. On board the Scarborough a plan had been formed to take the ship.... This necessarily, on that ship, occasioned much future circumspection; but Captain Marshall's humanity considerably lessened the severity which the insurgents might naturally have expected. On board the other ships the masters, who had the entire direction of the prisoners, never suffered them to be at large on deck, and but a few at a time were permitted there. This consequently gave birth to many diseases. It was said that on board the Neptune several had died in irons; and what added to the horror of such a circumstance was that their deaths were concealed for the purpose of sharing their allowance of provisions until chance and the offensiveness of a corpse directed a surgeon or someone who had authority in the ship to the spot where it lay."

Phillip's commission made him governor-in-chief, and captain-general over all New South Wales, which then meant from Cape York, in the extreme north of Australia, to the "south cape of Van Diemen's Land," then, of course, supposed to be part of the main continent. He was ordered to land at Botany Bay and there form the settlement, but was given a discretionary power to change the site, if he considered it unsuitable.

.]

Recognizing the unsuitability of Botany Bay, Phillip, before all the ships of the first fleet were arrived, set out in an [Sidenote: 1788] open boat to explore the coast; and so, sailing northward, entered that bay only mentioned by Cook in the words before quoted, "abrest of an open bay," and by Hawkesworth (writing in the first person as Cook) thus:—

"At this time" (noon May 6th, 1770) "we were between two and three miles from the land and abrest of a good bay or harbour, in which there appeared to be a good anchorage, and which I called Port Jackson."

Perhaps, when Phillip's boat passed between the north and south heads of Port Jackson, he exclaimed what has so often been repeated since: "What a magnificent harbour!" And so on the 26th January, 1788, Sydney was founded upon the shores of the most beautiful bay in the world.

Phillip's "eye for ground" told him that the shores of Port Jackson were a better site for a settlement than the land near Botany Bay, but he had no sooner landed his people than the need for better soil than Sydney afforded was apparent. Then began a series of land expeditions into the interior, in which, with such poor means as these pioneers possessed, the country was penetrated right to the foot of the Blue Mountains. The first governor, despite the slight foothold he had established at Sydney—little better such a home than the deck of a ship—persistently searched for good land, and before his five years of office had expired agricultural settlement was fairly under way.

On the seaboard, although he was almost without vessels (scarcely a decent open boat could be mustered among the possessions of the colonists), with the boats of the Sirius the coast was searched by Phillip in person as well as by his junior officers.

Major Ross, who commanded the Marines, and who was also lieutenant-governor, described the settlement thus:—

"In the whole world there is not a worse country than what we have yet seen of this. All that is contiguous to us is so very barren and forbidding, that it may with truth be said, 'Here nature is reversed, and if not so, she is nearly worn out'; for almost all the seed we have put in the ground has rotted, and I have no doubt it will, like the wood of this vile country, when burned or rotten turn to sand;"

Captain Tench, one of Ross' officers, wrote:—

"The country is very wretched and totally incapable of yielding to Great Britain a return for colonising it.... The dread of perishing by famine stares us in the face. [Sidenote: 1792] The country contains less resources than any in the known world;"

and the principal surgeon, White, described the colony in these words:—

"I cannot, without neglect of my duty to my country, refrain from declaring that if a 'favourable picture' has been drawn, it is a 'gross falsehood and a base deception.'"

Yet shortly before Phillip left it, in 1792, Collins says:—

"In May the settlers were found in general to be doing very well, their farms promising to place them shortly in a state of independence of the public stores in the articles of provisions and grain. Several of the settlers who had farms at or near Parramatta, notwithstanding the extreme drought of the season preceding the sowing of their corn, had such crops that they found themselves enabled to take off from the public store some one, and others two convicts, to assist in preparing their grounds for the next season."

In June, according to the same authority, the ground sown with wheat and prepared for maize was of sufficient area, even if the yield per acre did not exceed that for the previous season, to produce enough grain for a year's consumption.

The last returns relating to agriculture, prepared before Phillip left, show that the total area under cultivation was 1540 acres, and the previous year's returns show that the area had doubled as a result of the year's work. Besides this, considerable progress had been made with public buildings; and the convict population, which by the arrival of more transports had now reached nearly 4000 souls, were slowly but surely settling down as colonists.

With a thousand people to govern, in the fullest meaning of the word, and a desolate country, absolutely unknown to the exiles, to begin life in, Phillip's work was cut out. But, more than this, the population was chiefly composed of the lowest and worst criminals of England; famine constantly stared the governor in the face, and his command was increased by a second and third fleet of prisoners; storeships, when they were sent, were wrecked; many of Phillip's subordinates did their duty indifferently, often hindered his work, and persistently recommended the home Government to abandon the attempt to colonize. Sum up these difficulties, remember that they were bravely and uncomplainingly overcome, and the character of Phillip's administration can then in some measure be understood.

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.



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:—

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.



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."

, 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.



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:—