1788 Read online

  It had taken years of equivocation and procrastination, but now that the decision was made the British Civil Service and the Royal Navy began the intensive organisation required to carry it out. The biggest migration fleet up to that time left Portsmouth less than a year later.

  3

  ARTHUR PHILLIP

  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.

  The man chosen to lead the expedition to Botany Bay and become Britain’s first governor to New South Wales was Captain Arthur Phillip. When he was plucked from semi-retirement at his Hampshire farm at nearly 50 years of age, there was nothing particularly outstanding in his career to recommend him, but he would prove to be a good choice.

  Arthur Phillip, like James Cook before him and Philip Gidley King afterwards, was an example of how men from modest backgrounds could still progress through the ranks in the British navy in a way that was far less likely at the time in the army, where class and connections were totally dominant.

  Phillip was born on 11 October 1738 in Bread Street in the parish of All Hallows, London. His father, Jakob, had come to England from Frankfurt to work as a language teacher, and Phillip was said to have spoken a number of languages, including German, passable Spanish, Portuguese and English, which he is said to have pronounced with a guttural German accent.1 His mother was Elizabeth Breach, who had been widowed before Phillip was born, having been married to Captain Herbert of the Royal Navy before she married Jakob.

  When Jakob died, Phillip was admitted to the boys’ naval school at Greenwich on 24 June 1751, at 12¾ years of age. The school had been established in the early eighteenth century for the sons of navy men who had died or been killed at sea, but it seems that Phillip’s family connections helped to secure his placement. Not only had Captain Herbert been a Royal Navy man, but he had also been related to Lord Pembroke, who shared the family name of Herbert. Lord Pembroke was a prominent member of society and was to become a member of parliament and privy councillor, a major-general in the army and a Knight of the Garter. It is unlikely that Phillip would have been enrolled at Greenwich but for this patronage.2

  After two and a half years, and having turned 15, young Phillip left the school to take the standard seven-year indenture, to Captain William Redhead on the merchant ship Fortune, which regularly sailed to Greenland and Europe. In 1755, however, after only two years, he was released from his apprenticeship (which, according to Phillip’s biographer George Mackaness, was quite common)3 and entered the navy shortly before the start of the Seven Years War to work as captain’s servant on the Buckingham. Senior officers were permitted to take a number of servants with them on their ships, and being a captain’s servant was the acceptable way for a young man like Phillip ‘to learn the rudiments of his profession’.4

  Later that same year he became an able seaman and a few months later, in early 1756, a yeoman-corporal before sailing from the West Indies to the Mediterranean, where he was involved in a battle with French ships off the island of Majorca on 20 May. Three of his colleagues were killed and another eight wounded in this battle. The commander of the British fleet, Vice-Admiral the Honourable John Byng, was accused of mismanaging the British effort, court-martialled, found guilty and shot.

  Over the next few years young Phillip served on a number of different British warships, including the Princess Louisa and the Ramillies, before being transferred to the Neptune, where he was promoted to midshipman and was on his way to a career on the quarterdeck.

  In 1759 he saw more action, this time on the Aurora in the battle of Quiberon Bay off the French coast near St Nazaire in the Bay of Biscay. More than twenty ships from each side were engaged, and the British won a famous naval victory.

  In 1760 Phillip was promoted to master’s mate and at 22 years old was steadily climbing the naval ladder and becoming involved in more battles. Later the same year he was on the Stirling Castle off Barbados during the bombardment of Port Royal, in which hundreds of people in the French port were killed or wounded.

  In August 1762 the Stirling Castle was part of a British fleet of more than two hundred ships that successfully took Havana and ‘completely destroyed the communication between Spain and her western Empire’5 in what was to be a significant event in Spain’s decline as a dominant European power. Before sailing back to England, Phillip transferred to one of the twelve captured Spanish ships in Havana harbour, the Infante, which was renamed Infanta and converted to a British navy vessel. Phillip must have impressed his superiors during the taking of Havana because he was promoted to the ship’s fourth-lieutenant. On his return to London he was also given a handsome share of the prize money of more than £234 that had been taken from the Spanish.

  By then the Seven Years War was drawing to a close, and Phillip’s career was to enter more than a decade of comparative silence between April 1763 and January 1775.6 A short time after being pensioned out of the navy on half-pay at 25, Phillip became a farmer near Lyndhurst in the New Forest, Hampshire, and married the widow of John Denison, who had been a successful merchant from King Street, Cheapside, in London. Margaret Charlotte Tybott had come from County Montgomery in North Wales, where her family had been fairly well-established farmers. She had also been well cared for in her late husband’s will.

  Not much is known about the marriage, but thirty years later the London Observer had the following to say:

  While on half pay [Phillip] married a widow lady, young and handsome, with a portion of £16,000. He became possessed of all of her fortune … [then] some circumstances occurred which induced Mr. Phillip to wish for a separation; he left his wife, restoring to her however, such part of her fortune as remained in his hands.7

  The circumstances of Phillip’s separation are not known, but over the next forty years there was an almost total absence of any reference in his reports and correspondence to his marriage or his wife. After he left the marriage, the only reference to Phillip in the navy records during this silent period states that he served on a fairly routine patrol on the Egmont for eight months between November 1770 and July 1771. Otherwise there is no known official reference to him until 1774, when he joined the Portuguese navy.

  In 1773 hostilities had again broken out between Portugal and Spain, in what was to become known as the Third Colonia War (1773–77). Colonial rivalry between the two countries had been, according to the author McIntyre, ‘simmering over three centuries, at times subsiding in treaties or royal marriages, at times whipping into flames of war’.8 In the east the contest between the two countries centred on the Spice Islands, in what is current-day Indonesia, and in the west on the border between Spanish-controlled Argentina and Portuguese-controlled Brazil. By 1774 the Portuguese were moving to strengthen their tiny navy and looked to their long-time ally Britain for some experienced naval officers. Phillip sought and obtained permission from the British Admiralty to offer his services to the Portuguese, who immediately agreed to sign him up.

  Phillip had as his referee Rear-Admiral Augustus John Healey, who said of Phillip, ‘though only a lieutenant in the British service, he is thoroughly worthy of command’.9 The deal was attractive to Phillip as the Portuguese agreed to appoint him captain and provide twice the rate of pay that they paid to local commanders.

  The Portuguese minister to London, Senhor Luiz de Souza, advised Phillip of his appointment in January 1775, when he went to Portugal and boarded the Nossa Senhora de Belem as second captain. Shortly after he was transferred to the Nossa Senhora de Pillar and at last became commander of his own ship – twenty years after he had first put to sea and fourteen years after becoming a fourth-lieutenant. Over the next three and a half years Phillip would establish his reputation fighting with the Portuguese around the contested territories that separated Portuguese and Spanish colonies in South America.

  While he was with the Portuguese navy, a story emerged about Phillip that helps explain his later deft ha
ndling of large numbers of convicts aboard the First Fleet. While transporting four hundred criminals from Lisbon to South America, an epidemic on board disabled so many of the crew that the ship could not be sailed. Phillip appealed to those convicts with sailing experience, saying that he would make representations on their behalf if they helped complete the journey. After safely reaching his destination, Phillip kept his side of the bargain, and the prisoners were subsequently given their freedom as well as land grants.10

  Phillip was to serve as commander in the Portuguese navy for three and a half years before leaving in 1778 with high praise. He was particularly remembered for protecting the Portuguese port of Colonia on the River Plate, with only his ship, the Pillar, restraining a Spanish assault. For this the Portuguese viceroy, Marquis de Lavradio, commended him: ‘This officer is most honourable and meritorious. When at Colonia, he, with only his own Frigate, made the Spaniards respect that fortress as they ought to.’11

  Back in England in 1778 he managed to secure his first independent command of a British navy ship when he commanded the Basilisk, which was part of the English Channel fleet. However, his time on the Basilisk was brief, and within a year he was again paid off and again unemployed.

  Back on his farm and largely idle Phillip wrote to Lord Sandwich appealing for work, saying he was prepared to serve ‘in any part of the world whatsoever’. The approach was successful, and in 1780 he was appointed relief captain of a number of ships, including the St Albans and Magnanime, before being promoted to post-captain and transferred to the twenty-four-gun warship Ariadne, where he spent much of his time on routine patrols in the Baltic Sea.

  It was on the Ariadne where Phillip met Philip Gidley King, who would become a loyal member of his court and a key player in the expedition to New South Wales. King was born in Launceston, Cornwall, where his father was a draper, although his grandfather had been a local attorney at law. At 13 years of age he had joined the navy as a captain’s servant and served for five years on the East India run. For the next three years he served in American waters as a midshipman on the Liverpool, where he was eventually commissioned as lieutenant. In 1780, now 22 years old, he served under Phillip on the Ariadne before going across to the sixty-four-gun Europe when Phillip was given command of the larger ship in 1782. Under Phillip’s command the Europe sailed to India via the Cape of Good Hope and to South America. The Europe would be the last posting for Phillip, and he again retired on half-pay in 1784 before being appointed to head the expedition to New South Wales in 1786.

  Lieutenant Edward Spain, who also sailed on the Europe, said that Phillip allowed four women to be brought aboard at Port Praya in the Cape Verde Islands, but only because ‘one [of them] he had a sneaky kindness for and had he given permission to her alone the reason would have been obvious to the officers and the ships company’.12

  Phillip arrived back at Spithead on 22 April 1784 and was yet again laid off from further service. After this date we know little about what he did until he was appointed governor of New South Wales two years later, except that he took leave for about a year to visit the south of France.

  The circumstances of his appointment to head the convict expedition to New South Wales are somewhat mysterious. While he certainly was not appointed from a position of obscurity, there was nothing in his career that suggested he stood out as the most suitable candidate for the post.

  The announcement did not please the first lord of the Admiralty, Lord Howe. He made it clear in a letter to Lord Sydney that even though Phillip was a navy man, he was not the choice of the Admiralty:

  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 … I conclude he will be taken under your direction.13

  Lord Sydney responded by saying ‘presumably he was appointed on his merits as he appears to have no private influence with his superiors’.14

  But could this really have been the case? There is some indication that Sir George Rose, the undersecretary of the Treasury, was the minister responsible for making the decision. Rose’s estates were at Cuffnels near Lyndhurst, so he was a near neighbour of Phillip, who was then a gentleman farmer in the same district. Later, in New South Wales, Phillip would name the rich farming land he found twenty-five kilometres west of Sydney ‘Rose Hill’ in honour of Sir George. Evan Nepean, Lord Sydney’s deputy, may also have had some say in the appointment. Nepean knew Phillip well from his earlier career, when Phillip had been attached to the Portuguese navy and Nepean responsible for spies and intelligence. Perhaps Phillip did have a certain amount of influence with the right people after all.

  We are fortunate that Phillip’s personal vision for the colony of New South Wales survives. A short time after his appointment, while he was working in London in a little office in the Admiralty on the preparation of the fleet before its departure from Portsmouth, Phillip outlined his thoughts for the voyage and the settlement. They were recorded in his own handwriting on small sheets of paper and, although undated, are thought to have been written in January or February 1787.15 Many of the things he wrote about were later included in the detailed instructions he received from the government on 2 April 1787, which suggests that Phillip helped shape the design of his role of governor.

  Phillip wrote that he wanted to arrive in New South Wales some months ahead of the convicts to prepare the settlement:

  By arriving at the settlement two or three months before the transports many and very great advantages would be gained. Huts would be ready to receive the convicts who are sick … Huts would be ready for the women; the stores would be properly lodg’d and defended from the convicts … The cattle and stock would be likewise properly secured …16

  Phillip planned to pick up the last of his supplies at the Cape of Good Hope but did not want any food or grog loaded onto the ships carrying convicts, where it might be stolen. He also said that, during the voyage, he wanted to regularly inspect the convict transport ships, ‘to see they are kept clean and receive the allowance ordered by the government’.17

  Phillip was well aware that the confinement of large numbers of convicts below decks and in overcrowded conditions would create a health hazard and required special care. He also saw the need for the protection of female convicts:

  The women in general I should suppose possess neither virtue nor honesty … But there may be some … who still retain some degree of virtue, and these should be permitted to keep together, and strict orders to the Master of the transport should be given that they are not abused and insulted by the ship’s company, which is said to have been the case too often when they were sent to America.18

  Phillip planned to create good relations with the local Aboriginal people and to civilise them, but he also wanted to prevent any involvement of the convicts with them: ‘The convicts must have none, for if they have, the arms of the natives will be very formidable in their hands, the women abused, and the natives disgusted’.19

  In compliance with the British Government’s plan for the new settlement Phillip proposed to send ships to the Pacific islands to bring women to New South Wales to address the gender imbalance.20

  Curiously, Phillip did not believe the convicts should be allowed to be part of the new colony, even at the end of their sentences:

  As I would not wish convicts to lay the foundations of an empire, I think they should ever remain separated from the garrison, and other settlers that may come from Europe, and not be allowed to mix with them even after the seven or fourteen years for which they may be transported may be expired.21

  However, what he did not know then – and would only be told after being in the new colony for more than two years – was that the British Government very much saw the convicts’ passage as one way and was counting on them remaining in the new colony for good.

  Phillip was also awake to the risks of the convicts escaping from the colony and wrote about how security was to
be maintained by limiting boats coming ashore:

  Ships may arrive at Botany Bay in future. On account of the convicts, the order of the port for no boats landing but in particular places, coming on shore and returning to the ships at stated hours, must be strictly enforced.

  With regard to punishing the convicts Phillip’s vision was surprisingly tolerant, or naive, when he suggested that he thought it possible to avoid imposing the death penalty: ‘[D]eath, I should think, will never be necessary – in fact I doubt if the fear of death ever prevented a man of no principle from committing a bad action’.22

  Phillip felt there were only two crimes that warranted the death penalty – murder and sodomy – even though he must have been aware of the widespread homosexuality among seamen, who were often away at sea for years at a time with few or no encounters with women.

  For either of these crimes I would wish to confine the criminal till an opportunity offered of delivering him as a prisoner to the natives of New Zealand, and let them eat him. The dread of this will operate much stronger than the threat of death.

  Phillip may not have had the high profile that would have made him an attractive choice for governor of the new colony, but he was an experienced farmer, and very few others who made up the First Fleet settlers had any background in working on the land. Wisely Phillip set as a high priority the building up of farm-animal numbers in Botany Bay. He knew he would only be able to carry a limited number of animals on the little ships to the new settlement and it would therefore be important to maximise the breeding not only of the government-owned stock but also of the privately owned animals brought with officers:

  As the getting a large quantity of stock together will be my first great object, till that is obtained the garrison should, as in Gibraltar, not be allowed to kill any animal without first reporting his stock, and receiving permission.