Regency Personalities Series-Anna Josepha King

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Anna Josepha King
1765–1844

Anna Josepha King

Anna Josepha King was born Anna Josepha Coombe in 1765 at Hatherleigh in Devonshire. At the age of 26 she married her first cousin Philip Gidley King who was a 33-year-old officer in the Royal Navy. He had recently returned from Norfolk Island where he had been in charge of establishing a penal settlement for two years under the direction of Captain Arthur Phillip.

The marriage took place on 11 March 1791 at St Martin in the Fields, London. Only four days later the couple sailed on the frigate Gorgon for Norfolk Island where King was to resume his duties as Lieutenant-Governor of the penal colony. Anna King and the captain’s wife, Mary Ann Parker, were the only women on the outward journey. Parker wrote an account of the voyage which described Mrs. King as her “amiable companion”.

The Kings arrived at Norfolk Island in November 1791 and six weeks later Anna gave birth to her first child Philip Parker King. Life was not easy on the island. Their home which at that time was Government House has been described as a “dilapidated little building twenty four feet by twelve, falling to pieces and unsafe to live in”. Not only did Anna have her own baby to attend to, she was also required to care for two illegitimate children of her husband. These two children named Norfolk and Sydney were born to Anne Innet a female convict who was King’s mistress during his previous term as Governor on Norfolk Island before he married Anna.

Life on the island was very isolated. In 1792, there was no communication for nine months with Sydney, which was their only link with the outside world. News from England, when it did arrive, was often almost 12 months old. Two daughters were born on the island – Anna Maria in 1793 and Utricia in 1795. Utricia died when she was a small child.

Illness plagued both Anna King and her husband during their stay on Norfolk Island. King suffered frequently from gout and other illnesses and in 1795 almost died. The following year he applied for leave to return to England for proper medical advice. In April 1796 the King family sailed aboard the Britannia and then the Contractor for England. During the voyage another daughter, Elizabeth, was born. Over a year after leaving Norfolk Island, the family arrived in England in May 1797.

During the next two years in England King sought to improve his health. He also wanted to find further employment as the Kings were not financially secure. In 1798, it was decided that King would go to New South Wales to succeed John Hunter as Governor in the event of his death or absence from the colony. In the following year, in August 1799, Anna and her husband with their youngest daughter, Elizabeth, sailed in the ship Speedy for Sydney. Their other two children Philip and Anna Maria remained in England with friends to further their education.

During the voyage Mrs King kept a diary a page of which is pictured. In the diary she describes the hardships they endured and the frequent storms and gales they encountered. On 30 March she said:

“It is out of my power to describe half of the melancholy situation we have been in, occasioned by a dreadful gale of wind which began at 12 oclock yesterday – gradually encreasing more and more – at ½ past one this morning it blew so heavy that the Captain took in all sail, but such as was necessary to keep the ship steady – and brought her too – the sea was dreadful which with the wind kept encreasing – at half past four oclock a sea struck and made a breach over the larboard side of the ship carrying away all before it stripped the larboard side of the railings and the boat cranes and all three water casks that was only put there the day before of course all went – every body’s cabin suffered by this dreadful sea. It burst down upon me, and poor Elizabeth, and completely wetted us through bed and all – and the bottom part of the cabin was shoe deep with water – for my part I thought the decks was falling in upon us – and that we was in great danger.” She concludes her diary as follows. “We however arrived safe – to Port Jackson on the 13th of April- and was very happy – to put my foot once more on dry land – and I hope never to take another voyage after arriving again in England – for I am quite sick of the seas.”

The journey took five months. The Kings arrived at Port Jackson in April 1800. Hunter still occupied Government House so at first they stayed with friends. King did not become Governor until five months later when Hunter left for England. He saw his new role as a reformist and his first task was to break the control of monopolist traders in the colony and the traffickers in liquor.

The Kings moved into Government House at Parramatta when Hunter departed. Mrs King was the first Governor’s wife in New South Wales as Governor Phillip had left his wife in England and Governor Hunter was unmarried.

One of first tasks undertaken by Governor King was to establish an institution for orphan children. Anna King took a particular interest in this and was one of the six members of the Committee appointed to set up the building. It was opened in 1801 and although it was officially called The Female Orphan Institution informally it was known as Mrs King’s Orphanage. It is shown in the picture (left). It is the central red brick building.

From 1800 until 1806 Anna played the part of Governors wife being the hostess and friend to those who were influential. In 1805 she gave birth to another daughter Mary so that now she had two daughters living with her in Sydney (Elizabeth and Mary) and one daughter Anna Maria and one son Philip Parker King who were still at school in England. However, by 1806 King’s health deteriorated and at his request he was replaced by William Bligh who was an officer in the British Navy. Soon after his arrival Bligh made a grant of 790 acres (3.2 km2) of land to Anna. The land was situated at the junction of Rope’s Creek and South Creek near the now suburb of Rooty Hill, NSW.

In February 1807 the King family left New South Wales to return to England. They arrived in November 1807 and soon after King became ill once more mainly with gout. Although he was only 49 he realised he could no longer work and applied for a pension. Unfortunately King died in September 1808 before the pension was granted and Anna was left in difficult financial circumstances. She sought financial assistance from the Secretary of State and eventually was granted a small life annuity. Her land in NSW was an additional source of income. Since her departure from Sydney, it had become quite productive as in 1810 Governor Macquarie made the following comment in a report.

“to Mrs. King’s Farm on the Right Bank of the South Creek; where we halted for a short while to look at her fine numerous Herds of Horned Cattle, of which she has upwards of 700 Head of all descriptions. — Her agent Mr. Hassall was here for the purpose of shewing them to us, and we found them in very high condition.”

During the time that Anna was in England between 1807 and 1832 all of her children married. In 1812, Anna Maria married Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur who had already settled in NSW but was staying in London for a short visit. The couple returned to NSW after their marriage and resided at Hannibal’s recently purchased farm near Parramatta called “The Vineyard”. In 1817 Philip married Harriet Lethbridge and went to live in Sydney for some years but returned in 1822. In 1826 Mary married the brother of Harriet, Robert Copeland Lethbridge and they too decided to emigrate to NSW. Harriet decided to accompany them with her children alone as Philip had been ordered to command a ship for several years. Elizabeth married Charles Runciman a well known London artist soon after this and was the only one of Anna’s children to remain in England.

In 1832 her son Philip decided to retire from the Royal Navy and return to NSW to reunite with his wife Harriet. Anna decided to accompany him and was met at the dock in Sydney by her son in law Hannibal Macarthur and taken to their home “The Vineyard” to live. She remained here for the rest of her life.

One of her interests was the building of a local church and in 1837 her son Philip acquired 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land and donated it so that St Mary Magdalene Anglican Church could be built. It was designed by Francis Crick and was completed in 1840. When Anna died in 1844 she was buried here. In 1988 the descendents of the Kings arranged for the tombstone of her husband Philip Gidley King to be brought to Australia where it was placed in an enclosure next to Anna’s grave

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Regency Personalities Series-Henry Kable

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Henry Kable
1763 – 16 March 1846

Henry Kable was born in Laxfield, Suffolk, England. Kable was known for being a businessman, but was convicted of burglary at Thetford, Norfolk, England, on 1 February 1783 and sentenced to death. This was commuted to transportation for fourteen years to America, but the American Revolution meant that transportation to America was no longer possible. Henry was returned to the Norwich Castle gaol until he embarked in the transport Friendship, in which he sailed in the First Fleet to New South Wales.

Kable met Susannah Holmes who had been sentenced to death after being found guilty of theft from the home of Jabez Taylor. The judge who passed sentence then recommended that she be given a reprieve, which was granted by the king. She was then sentenced for transportation to the American colonies for a term of 14 years. Susannah and Henry commenced a relationship whilst prisoners in Norwich Castle gaol where she gave birth to a son, whom she called Henry. Susannah was then one of the women chosen to be sent to Botany Bay.

On 10 February 1788 Kable married Susannah in Sydney in a group wedding, the first European wedding ceremony in the new colony.

Before the young couple left England, they attracted the attention of Lady Cadogan who organised a public subscription which yielded the substantial sum of £20 to buy them a parcel of goods which Rev. Richard Johnson was to give them on their arrival in the penal colony. The gift was plundered on the voyage, but Kable won damages of £15 against the captain (Duncan Sinclair) of the Alexander, in the first civil suit heard in New South Wales. Convicts in Britain who had been sentenced to death were regarded as dead in law, and thus had no right to sue, and Sinclair had boasted that he could not be sued by them. Probably from advice the place where a writ would usually describe the plaintiffs’ occupation, the words, “New Settlers of this place” had been crossed out and nothing had been substituted. To have described them as convicts would have been fatal to their case. The fact that Henry and Susannah were convicts and the legal consequences of that fact would have been obvious to all of those concerned; maybe the description “New Settlers” was too close to a fabrication, and hence this part of the writ was altered in order to maintain a discreet silence. The court found in favour of the Kables and ordered Sinclair to make restitution for the loss of their possessions.
Henry and Susannah had 11 children. They were:

• Henry (17 February 1786, Norwich Castle gaol, England, – 13 May 1852, Picton). Henry is buried at St. Matthews, The Oaks.
• Dianna (5 December 1788, Sydney – 11 March 1854, Macquarie St, Windsor)
• Enoch (24 April 1791, Sydney – 27 February 1793, Sydney)
• James (19 August 1793, Sydney – 30 September 1809, At Sea, off the straits, Malacca)
• Susannah (23 October 1796, Sydney – 20 June 1885, `Vanderville’, The Oaks)
• George Esto (28 September 1797, Sydney – 1853, Bathurst)
• Eunice (30 May 1799, Sydney – 21 December 1867, Windsor)
• William Nathaniel (22 March 1801, Sydney – 16 November 1837, Bathurst)
• John (12 November 1802, Sydney – 30 May 1859, Bairaba Hotel, Windsor)
• Charles Dickenson (5 October 1804, Sydney – date and place of death unknown)
• Edgar James (14 August 1806, Sydney – 28 April 1849, Windsor)

and five died before birth

The oddity of the first civil suit won by a convict, may have brought Kable to the governor’s notice, although Kable later claimed to have had influential letters of recommendation, for soon afterwards Governor Phillip appointed him an overseer.

In 1798 Kable opened a hotel called the Ramping Horse, from which he ran the first stage coach in Australia, and he also owned a retail store.

Henry became a constable of police, and later chief constable in the new colony and was involved on the prosecution side in criminal cases. Kable was dismissed 25 May 1802 for misbehaviour, after being convicted for breaches of the port regulations and illegally buying and importing pigs from a visiting ship. After this, he became merchant and ship owner. Like others in the colony, and perhaps because of his early success, Henry used the courts to argue cases against his opponents. He seems to have prospered; in 1808 shipping records show Kable and two partners, boat builder James Underwood and the other Simeon Lord, as principal ship owners in the expanding commerce of acquiring and exporting sealskins to the colony. Kable was one of 70 signatories to a petition to Governor Hunter from creditors who were anxious to prevent debtors from frustrating their demands by legal delays. The partnership dissolved in some bitterness shortly afterwards but not before Henry had managed to divest himself of a good deal of his property to his son, in order to avoid the consequences of any court order. Kable did much to pioneer sealing and shipbuilding in New South Wales, working with Simeon Lord who marketed the skins and James Underwood who built the ships.

Like Lord and other early Sydney entrepreneurs, Kable always had a substantial landholding as a kind of ‘sheet anchor’. He had been granted farms at Petersham Hill in 1794 and 1795, and in the latter year bought out four near-by grantees within a week of their grants being signed. In 1807 he owned at least four farms of about 170 acres (69 ha); in 1809 in addition he held five farms at the Hawkesbury and 300 acres (121 ha) at the Cowpastures, with a variety of real estate in Sydney itself including his comfortable house and extensive stores. He also had 40 horned cattle, 9 horses and 40 pigs. His business reputation seems to have been dubious, for he was regarded with distrust by Governor King and with active hostility by Governor Bligh who thought him and his partners fraudulent and had them imprisoned for a month and fined each £100 for sending him a letter couched in improper terms. It is certain that Kable played no part in public life comparable with Simeon Lord’s multifarious activities. His commercial career in Sydney seems to have ended soon after Lord & Co. broke up, for as early as February 1810 he announced that his son Henry Junior had taken over the entire management of his Sydney affairs. In 1811 Kable moved to Windsor where he operated a store and brewery, the latter in association with a partner, Richard Woodbury and his Sydney warehouse was let to Michael Hayes.

Henry died on 16 April 1846, at Pitt Town near Windsor, New South Wales and was buried on 18 April 1846, at St. Matthew’s Church of England, Windsor.

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Regency Personalities Series-John Stockdale

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

John Stockdale
25 March 1750 – 21 June 1814

John Stockdale

John Stockdale was born in Caldbeck, Cumberland, the son of Priscilla Stockdale (1726–1789) and, Joseph Stockdale. He is believed to have been raised as a blacksmith, like his father, and then to have become valet to John Astley of Dukinfield, Cheshire. He married Mary Ridgway, a native of Roe Cross, Mottram-in-Longdendale, Cheshire, and sister to James Ridgway, a well-known publisher of Piccadilly, London. He had met Mary in the Dukinfield Moravian chapel.

Stockdale moved to London about 1780 and worked as a porter to publisher John Almon, near to the premises of his brother in law. When Almon retired from business in favour of John Debrett, Stockdale opened a book shop in competition and, “being a man of natural parts, he soon became conspicuous in business in spite of much eccentricity of conduct and great coarseness of manners”. Both Stockdale’s and Debrett’s premises became meeting places for the political classes, Debrett’s being frequented by the Whigs and Stockdale’s by the supporters of William Pitt. John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States (the 2nd President of the United States) lodged with Stockdale for two months during 1783.

He was an industrious publisher and among the many works that he published were:

• Adam Ferguson’s History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783);
• An edition of William Shakespeare’s Dramatic Works (1784);
• Bryan Edwards’s History of the West Indies;
• George Chalmers’ edition of Daniel Defoe’s History of the Union;
• Arthur Phillip’s Voyage to Botany Bay;
• Samuel Johnson’s Works (1787) (volumes 12 and 13 of which Stockdale edited);
• John Whitaker various works.
• Hester Thrale’s Retrospection: or, a review of the most striking and important events, characters, situations and their consequences, which the last eighteen hundred years have presented to the view of mankind (1801).

He also issued the London Courant newspaper, Debates in Parliament (1784–90), an edition of Robinson Crusoe and John Aikin’s A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester (1795), originally intended to be merely an account of the neighbourhood of Mottram-in-Longdendale, with which Stockdale had personal acquaintance.

In 1788 he published John Logan’s Review of the Charges against Warren Hastings. The work was conceived by the government to embody a libellous charge of corruption and injustice against the House of Commons. Stockdale was accordingly prosecuted. The case came before Lord Kenyon in December 1789 and Stockdale was eloquently defended by Thomas Erskine. Erskine contended that the defendant was not to be judged by isolated passages, selected and put together in the accusation, but by the entire context of the publication and its general character and objects. Stockdale was acquitted, and such a conspicuous defence of the liberty of the press led to the passing of the Libel Act 1792, which established that nobody was to be punished for a few unguarded expressions, and left the construction of an alleged libeller’s general purpose and animus in writing to a jury.

Stockdale again figured as defendant in an action for libel brought by Joseph Nightingale in 1809, when he had to pay £200 damages. Towards the end of his career he dealt largely in remaindered books from other publishers, and caused some resentment among the regular traders by a series of sales of books by auction which he established in various parts of the country. Early in his enterprise he had acquired considerable property, but afterwards he was less successful and the circumstance of having to make an arrangement with his creditors is said to have caused him some anxiety and accelerated his death.

Stockdale and his wife had several children including:

• Mary Stockdale, writer and publisher;
• John Joseph Stockdale, publisher who was also the subject of a libel case involving parliament in Stockdale v. Hansard; and
• William Stockdale, bookseller.

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Regency Personalities Series-Arthur Phillip

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Arthur Phillip
11 October 1738 – 31 August 1814

Arthur Phillip

Arthur Phillip was born in London England, the son of Jacob Phillip, a Frankfurt-born language teacher, and his English wife, Elizabeth Breach. His father died a year after he was born. His mother Elizabeth was originally married to a sailor named Herbert who died at sea of yellow fever. Phillip’s mother claimed him as the father of her son so he could be enrolled in the Greenwich Hospital School, part of Greenwich Hospital,a free school for the orphans of men lost at sea supported by Queen Mary.

The treatment of the students was spartan but educational. Phillip learned how to navigate, draw (a skill necessary for making navigation charts) .At the age of 13 was apprenticed to the merchant navy. He spoke a number of languages in addition to English, including French, German and Portuguese.

Phillip joined the Royal Navy at about fifteen, and saw action at the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in the Mediterranean at the Battle of Minorca. In 1762 he was promoted to Lieutenant, but was placed on half pay when the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763. During this period he married, and farmed in Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

In 1774 Phillip joined the Portuguese Navy as a captain, serving in the War against Spain. While with the Portuguese Navy, Phillip commanded a frigate, the Nossa Senhora do Pilar. On this ship he took a detachment of troops from Rio de Janeiro to Colonia do Sacramento on the Rio de la Plata (opposite Buenos Aires) to relieve the garrison there. This voyage also conveyed a consignment of convicts assigned to carry out work at Colonia. During a storm encountered in the course of the voyage, the convicts assisted in working the ship and, on arrival at Colonia, Phillip recommended that they be rewarded for saving the ship by remission of their sentences.

A garbled version of this eventually found its way into the English press when Phillip was appointed in 1786 to lead the expedition to Sydney. Phillip played a leading part in the capture of the Spanish ship San Agustín, on 19 April 1777, off Santa Catarina. The San Agustin was commissioned into the Portuguese Navy as the Santo Agostinho, and command of her was given to Phillip. The action was reported in the English press:
Madrid, Aug. 28. Letters from Lisbon bring the following Account from Rio Janeiro: That the St. Augustine, of 70 Guns, having being separated from the Squadron of M. Casa Tilly, was attacked by two Portugueze Ships, against which they defended themselves for a Day and a Night, but being next Day surrounded by the Portugueze Fleet, was obliged to surrender.

In 1778 Britain was again at war, and Phillip was recalled to active service, and in 1779 obtained his first command, HMS Basilisk. He was promoted to captain in 1781, and was given command of HMS Europa.

In July 1782, in a change of government, Thomas Townshend became Secretary of State for Home and American Affairs, and assumed responsibility for organising an expedition against Spanish America. Like his predecessor, Lord Germain, he turned for advice to Arthur Phillip. A letter from Phillip to Sandwich of 17 January 1781 records Phillip’s loan to Sandwich of his charts of the Plata and Brazilian coasts for use in organising the expedition. Phillip’s plan was for a squadron of three ships of the line and a frigate to mount a raid on Buenos Aires and Monte Video, then to proceed to the coasts of Chile, Peru and Mexico to maraud, and ultimately to cross the Pacific to join the British Navy’s East India squadron for an attack on Manila. The expedition, consisting of the Grafton, 70 guns, Elizabeth, 74 guns, Europa, 64 guns, and the Iphigenia frigate, sailed on 16 January 1783, under the command of Commodore Robert Kingsmill.

Phillip was given command of the 64-gun HMS Europa. Shortly after sailing, an armistice was concluded between Great Britain and Spain. Phillip learnt of this in April when he put in for storm repairs at Rio de Janeiro. Phillip wrote to Townshend from Rio de Janeiro on 25 April 1783, expressing his disappointment that the ending of the American War had robbed him of the opportunity for naval glory in South America.

After his return to England from India in April 1784, Phillip remained in close contact with Townshend, now Lord Sydney, and the Home Office Under Secretary, Evan Nepean. From October 1784 to September 1786 he was employed by Nepean, who was in charge of the Secret Service relating to the Bourbon Powers, France and Spain, to spy on the French naval arsenals at Toulon and other ports. There was fear that Britain would soon be at war with these powers as a consequence of the Batavian Revolution in the Netherlands.

At this time, Lord Sandwich, together with the President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, was advocating establishment of a British colony in New South Wales. A colony there would be of great assistance to the British Navy in facilitating attacks on the Spanish possessions in Chile and Peru, as Banks’s collaborators, James Matra, Captain Sir George Young and Sir John Call pointed out in written proposals on the subject. The British Government took the decision to found the Botany Bay colony in mid-1786. Lord Sydney, as Secretary of State for the Home Office, was the minister in charge of this undertaking, and in September 1786 he appointed Phillip commodore of the fleet which was to transport the convicts and soldiers who were to be the new settlers to Botany Bay. Upon arrival there, Phillip was to assume the powers of Captain General and Governor in Chief of the new colony. A subsidiary colony was to be founded on Norfolk Island, as recommended by Sir John Call, to take advantage for naval purposes of that island’s native flax and timber. Phillip’s fleet sailed from Portsmouth in May 1787.

In October 1786, Phillip was appointed captain of HMS Sirius and named Governor-designate of New South Wales, the proposed British colony on the east coast of Australia, by Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary.

Phillip had a very difficult time assembling the fleet which was to make the eight-month sea voyage to Australia. Everything a new colony might need had to be taken, since Phillip had no real idea of what he might find when he got there. There were few funds available for equipping the expedition. His suggestion that people with experience in farming, building and crafts be included was rejected. Most of the 772 convicts (of whom 732 survived the voyage) were petty thieves from the London slums. Phillip was accompanied by a contingent of marines and a handful of other officers who were to administer the colony.

The 11 ships of the First Fleet set sail on 13 May 1787. The leading ship, HMS Supply reached Botany Bay setting up camp on the Kurnell Peninsula, on 18 January 1788. Phillip soon decided that this site, chosen on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks, who had accompanied James Cook in 1770, was not suitable, since it had poor soil, no secure anchorage and no reliable water source. After some exploration Phillip decided to go on to Port Jackson, and on 26 January the marines and convicts were landed at Sydney Cove, which Phillip named after Lord Sydney.

Shortly after establishing the settlement at Port Jackson, on 15 February 1788, Phillip sent Lieutenant Philip Gidley King with 8 free men and a number of convicts to establish the second British colony in the Pacific at Norfolk Island. This was partly in response to a perceived threat of losing Norfolk Island to the French and partly to establish an alternative food source for the new colony.

The early days of the settlement were chaotic and difficult. With limited supplies, the cultivation of food was imperative, but the soils around Sydney were poor, the climate was unfamiliar, and moreover very few of the convicts had any knowledge of agriculture. Farming tools were scarce and the convicts were unwilling farm labourers. The colony was on the verge of outright starvation for an extended period. The marines, poorly disciplined themselves in many cases, were not interested in convict discipline. Almost at once, therefore, Phillip had to appoint overseers from among the ranks of the convicts to get the others working. This was the beginning of the process of convict emancipation which was to culminate in the reforms of Lachlan Macquarie after 1811.

Phillip showed in other ways that he recognised that New South Wales could not be run simply as a prison camp. Lord Sydney, often criticised as an ineffectual incompetent, had made one fundamental decision about the settlement that was to influence it from the start. Instead of just establishing it as a military prison, he provided for a civil administration, with courts of law. Two convicts, Henry and Susannah Kable, sought to sue Duncan Sinclair, the captain of Alexander, for stealing their possessions during the voyage. Convicts in Britain had no right to sue, and Sinclair had boasted that he could not be sued by them. Someone in Government obviously had a quiet word in Kable’s ear, as when the court met and Sinclair challenged the prosecution on the ground that the Kables were felons, the court required him to prove it. As all the convict records had been left behind in England, he could not do so, and the court ordered the captain to make restitution. Further, soon after Lord Sydney appointed him governor of New South Wales Arthur Phillip drew up a detailed memorandum of his plans for the proposed new colony. In one paragraph he wrote: “The laws of this country [England] will of course, be introduced in [New] South Wales, and there is one that I would wish to take place from the moment his Majesty’s forces take possession of the country: That there can be no slavery in a free land, and consequently no slaves”, and he meant what he said. Nevertheless, Phillip believed in discipline, and floggings and hangings were commonplace, although Philip commuted many death sentences.

Phillip also had to adopt a policy towards the Eora Aboriginal people, who lived around the waters of Sydney Harbour. Phillip ordered that they must be well-treated, and that anyone killing Aboriginal people would be hanged. Phillip befriended an Eora man called Bennelong, and later took him to England. On the beach at Manly, a misunderstanding arose and Phillip was speared in the shoulder: but he ordered his men not to retaliate. Phillip went some way towards winning the trust of the Eora, although the settlers were at all times treated extremely warily. Soon, a virulent disease, smallpox that was believed to be on account of the white settlers, and other European-introduced epidemics, ravaged the Eora population.

The Governor’s main problem was with his own military officers, who wanted large grants of land, which Phillip had not been authorised to grant. The officers were expected to grow food, but they considered this beneath them. As a result scurvy broke out, and in October 1788 Phillip had to send Sirius to Cape Town for supplies, and strict rationing was introduced, with thefts of food punished by hanging. Arthur Phillip quoted “The living conditions need to improve or my men won’t work as hard, so I have come to a conclusion that I must hire surgeons to fix the convicts.”

Despite Phillip’s earlier order that Aboriginal Australians must never be slain, and his insistence that no retaliation be taken to avenge his own non-fatal spearing, Phillip’s stance toward Aboriginals changed markedly after the death of his gamekeeper, John MacIntyre. After being fatally wounded by an Aboriginal man, on his deathbed, MacIntyre confessed to a priest that he had exhibited cruelty to Aboriginals. MacIntyre, suspected of hunting more than just game, was dreaded by Bennelong and other Aboriginals, and is believed to have been wounded in retribution for the Aboriginals he had killed. Nevertheless, Phillip, alarmed and outraged, made a surprising move, ordering that the Natives be made severe examples of. He ordered a party to capture six Natives the very next day, 14 December 1790, and put them to death.

Lieutenant William Dawes and colleague Watkin Tench, who were ordered to lead the revenge party, expressed disgust at the idea. Dawes and Tench had befriended the Aboriginals, and Dawes was even reported to have engaged in a relationship with an Aboriginal woman. Tench revealed in his journal that he had been given provisions for three days, ropes to bind the Aboriginal victims, and bags to collect their severed heads. However, the fleet was uncooperative. Phillip, growing frustrated with the burdens of upholding a colony and his health suffering, resigned soon after this episode.

By 1790 the situation had stabilised. The population of about 2,000 was adequately housed and fresh food was being grown. Phillip assigned a convict, James Ruse, land at Rose Hill (now Parramatta) to establish proper farming, and when Ruse succeeded he received the first land grant in the colony. Other convicts followed his example. Sirius was wrecked in March 1790 at the satellite settlement of Norfolk Island, depriving Phillip of vital supplies. In June 1790 the Second Fleet arrived with hundreds more convicts, most of them too sick to work.

By December 1790 Phillip was ready to return to England, but the colony had largely been forgotten in London and no instructions reached him, so he carried on. In 1791 he was advised that the government would send out two convoys of convicts annually, plus adequate supplies. But July, when the vessels of the Third Fleet began to arrive, with 2,000 more convicts, food again ran short, and he had to send a ship to Calcutta for supplies.

By 1792 the colony was well established, though Sydney remained an unplanned huddle of wooden huts and tents. The whaling industry was established, ships were visiting Sydney to trade, and convicts whose sentences had expired were taking up farming. John Macarthur and other officers were importing sheep and beginning to grow wool. The colony was still very short of skilled farmers, craftsmen and tradesmen, and the convicts continued to work as little as possible, even though they were working mainly to grow their own food.

In late 1792 Phillip, whose health was suffering from the poor diet, at last received permission to leave, and on 11 December 1792 he sailed in the ship Atlantic, taking with him many specimens of plants and animals. He also took Bennelong and his friend Yemmerrawanyea, another young Indigenous Australian who, unlike Bennelong, would succumb to English weather and disease and not live to make the journey home. The European population of New South Wales at his departure was 4,221, of whom 3,099 were convicts. The early years of the colony had been years of struggle and hardship, but the worst was over, and there were no further famines in New South Wales. Phillip arrived in London in May 1793. He tendered his formal resignation and was granted a pension of £500 a year.

Phillip’s wife, Margaret, had died in 1792. Margaret Charlotte Phillip is buried with her companion Mrs Cane at St Beuno’s Churchyard, Llanycil, Bala, Merionethshire. In 1794 he married Isabella Whitehead, and lived for a time at Bath. His health gradually recovered and in 1796 he went back to sea, holding a series of commands and responsible posts in the wars against the French. In January 1799 he became a Rear-Admiral. In 1805, aged 67, he retired from the Navy with the rank of Admiral of the Blue, and spent most of the rest of his life at Bath. He continued to correspond with friends in New South Wales and to promote the colony’s interests with government officials. He died in Bath in 1814.

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