The Naval Pioneers of Australia Part 4

"The two clerks of the two ships, Mr. W. Dewar and Mr. Greg Santham, have, I believe, been very honest servants in their stations, and having by Captain Cook's (and very soon by my death) lost those to whom they looked up to for protection, are, I fear, dest.i.tute of friends. If it should be in your power to render them any services, I flatter myself they will be worthy of such attention.

"If I should recollect anything more to say to you, I will trouble my friend Mr. King with it, who is so kind as to be my amanuensis on this occasion. He is my very dear and particular friend, and I will make no apology in recommending him to a share in your friends ship [sic: friendship], as I am perfectly a.s.sured of his being deserving of it, as in that also of the worthy doctors.

"Now, my dear and honoured friend, I must bid you a final adieu.

May you enjoy many happy years in this world, and in the end attain that fame your indefatigable industry so richly deserves.

These are most sincerely the warmest and sincerest wishes of your devoted, affectionate, and departing servant,

"CHARLES CLERKE."

It will take nothing from the fame of Cook to call his connection with the discovery of Australia an accident. He himself says that, having circ.u.mnavigated New Zealand, "we intended to return home by the Cape of Good Hope or by Cape Horn to determine the question of a southern continent," but the season of the year was against this course, and "we ultimately resolved to return by the East Indies. With this in view, we resolved to steer west till we should fall in with the coast of New Holland, and then follow that coast to the north till we should arrive at its northern extremity."

Having adopted this course and having reached the coast, Cook made the very best use of his time, and surveyed it as probably no other man then living would have done, but that he did so is unquestionably due to the fact that the season did not admit of the old regulation pursuit of explorers--the search for the solution of the southern continent problem.

CHAPTER IV. [Sidenote: 1779]

ARTHUR PHILLIP, FOUNDER AND FIRST GOVERNOR OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

Captain Cook's "discovery" of New Holland was turned to no account until a generation later, and to Sir Joseph Banks more than to any other man belongs the credit of the suggestion. In 1779 a commission of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the question of transportation, then, in consequence of the loss of the American colonies, an important problem needing a speedy solution. At this period, indeed up to a much later time, the English prison administration was notoriously bad. The gaols were crowded and filthy, and there was no discipline; no system governed them other than the system of rascality practised by many of the gaolers.

Mr. Banks (as he then was) gave evidence before the House of Commons, and strongly urged the establishment of a penal colony at Botany Bay, giving his opinion, of course, as the botanist who had accompanied Cook and had seen what prospect there was of establishing a settlement at New Holland.

Banks from this time till his death took a keen interest in the New South Wales colonizing scheme, and had much influence for good in the future of the colony. He was a man of independent means, and there is not the slightest reason nor the least evidence to the contrary, to doubt his perfect disinterestedness in all that he did. But when President of the Royal Society the caricaturists and the satirists had little mercy on him, believing him more courtier than scientist. Peter Pindar's _Sir Joseph Banks and the Emperor of Morocco_ is only one of the many satires of which Banks was the princ.i.p.al victim.

The proposals of one Jean Maria Matra and of Admiral Sir George Young for forming new colonies to take the places of those lost to us in America, with the evidence and subsequent advocacy of Banks, ultimately led to the Government's decision to colonize New South Wales. But it was not until 1786 that that decision was reached, and a year later still when Captain Arthur Phillip was given a commission as captain of the expedition and governor of the new colony.

All that is known of Phillip prior to his appointment is contained in a semi--official account of the expedition called _Phillip's Voyage,_ published about a hundred years ago. We are here told that his father was a German teacher of languages who settled in London, his mother the widow of Captain Herbert, of the royal navy, and that young Phillip was born in Bread Street, in the parish of All Hallows, London.

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 sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.sistance 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 G.o.d, 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 s.p.a.ce 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPTAIN ARTHUR PHILLIP. From an engraving after a portrait by F. Wheatly, prefixed to "The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay"

[London, 1789]. _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 a.s.sistance was lean and emaciated. Several of these miserable people died in the boats as they were rowing on sh.o.r.e 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mspection; 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 circ.u.mstance 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VIEW OF BOTANY BAY. From an engraving from a drawing by R. Cleveley, in "The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay" [London, 1789].]

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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es of the most beautiful bay in the world.

Phillip's "eye for ground" told him that the sh.o.r.es 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sist 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF THE SETTLEMENT OF SYDNEY COVE, PORT JACKSON, 20th AUGUST, 1788. Drawn by E. Dayes from a sketch by J. Hunter. From "An Historical Journal of Transactions at Port Jackson," by Captain John Hunter. _To face p_.84.]