History of New South Wales
From the Records
VOLUME 1 - GOVERNOR PHILLIP 1783-1789
G. B. Barton - 1889
PART I
Phillip And His Work
THERE are few materials of much interest in the present day - if we except his letters and despatches from Sydney Cove - for a biography of Arthur Phillip. The scanty details of his career prior to the expedition of 1787 that have come down to us represent him as a naval officer of merit, but without many opportunities for distinction (1). He held the rank of post-captain in the navy when appointed Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the new colony. But although Lord Howe was unable to see any special qualifications in Captain Phillip for such a command (1), the event proved that the great admiral's judgment was as much at fault in that instance as it was when he expressed his doubts about the prospects of a settlement in New South Wales. Phillip's career in the colony showed that he possessed in full measure the qualifications required for the position in which he was placed. Had it been otherwise, he could not have shown the readiness of resource he did under the unexampled difficulties by which he was surrounded from first to last. But for his unwearied attention to every detail connected with the despatch of the First Fleet, it is not probable that the voyage would have met with the remarkable success which attended it. We have only to contrast it with that of the Second Fleet in 1790 in order to see how easily the whole expedition might have been wrecked - not by storm and tempest, but by mere neglect of duty. Making every allowance for favourable winds and weather while at sea, it must still be admitted that nothing but the anxious precautions taken by Phillip in England and on his way out could have enabled him to bring his ships into harbour, after an eight-months' voyage through unknown seas, without having met with disaster in any shape, either to the ships or the people on board them. Surgeon White, the medical officer in charge of the settlement, recorded his feelings as he saw the ships at anchor in Botany Bay:-
To see all the ships safe in their destined port, without ever having by any accident been one hour separated, and all the people in as good health as could be expected or hoped for, after so long a voyage, was a sight truly pleasing, and at which every heart must rejoice (2).
Another authority was equally emphatic:-
Thus, after a passage of exactly thirty-six weeks from Portsmouth, we happily effected our arduous undertaking, with such a train of unexampled blessings as hardly ever attended a fleet in a like predictament. Of two hundred and twelve marines we lost only one, and of seven hundred and seventy-five convicts put on board in England but twenty-four perished in our route (3).
ABOVE: Governor Arthur Phillip
Judge-Advocate Collins, too, with judicial precision and solemnity of statement, summed up the case in these terms:-
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 venture 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 5,021 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 accident in a fleet of eleven sail, nine of which are merchantmen that had never 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 we should have been a month at sea, one of the transports would have been converted into a 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 conversations.
There was every reason, indeed, for rejoicing, when the history of the Second Fleet is borne in mind. But the Judge-Advocate did not show much acumen when he ascribed this singular good fortune entirely to the refreshments at Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope, and "the excellent quality of the provisions" with which the ships were supplied by the contractor in England. Provisions alone would not have brought the fleet into Port Jackson with so much cause for congratulation (4). It was owing to the provident care and foresight of its chief that the expedition met with unexpected good fortune at every stage; just as the success achieved by Captain Cook in his voyages was due rather to his own skill and good management than to the mere equipment of his vessels (5).
We have only to trace the history of Phillip's administration in order to see the same characteristics attended generally by similar results. From his landing at Botany Bay to his departure from the colony, he displayed all the energy, decision, and good sense which the manifold difficulties of his position seemed to require. The sound judgment shown in his selection of a site for the new settlement relieved it at once from the imminent risk of failure which would have hung over it, had he blindly followed his instructions and pitched his tents on the shores of Botany Bay. No spot on the coast of New South Wales was better adapted for the purpose than Sydney Cove (6) when Phillip first saw it; it remains to this day, and will always remain, the central point of Australian settlement. How much the fate of other colonies have been affected by well or ill-chosen sites for their capital cities, there is evidence enough in their history to show (7). The selection of Sydney Cove seemed natural and easy enough, no doubt, after it had once been made; but the judgment shown in picking it out at a first glance might be compared with that of a victorious general in time of war, who takes up his position on the field and wins his battle. It is in acts of this description that the leaders of men show their capability for command; and undoubtedly Phillip gave good proof of his capacity in this instance.
But no sooner had Phillip overcome the preliminary obstacles in his way than he was called upon to encounter the still greater difficulties which beset his path from day to day. He stood in a wilderness, of which he knew nothing, but which he was called upon to subdue with the aid of the most unpromising materials that could have been placed in his hands. He had to lay the foundation of a colony which, as he felt, would in the future prove to be the foundation of an empire (8); to establish the machinery of a civil government; to provide for the administration of justice; to explore the territory inland and along the coast; to secure friendly relations with the aboriginals by whom he was surrounded; and to govern a community largely composed of the worst elements of society. Such were his functions as Governor of the territory; but he had a stll harder task to perform. He had to face the results of the cruel negligence which left the settlement without any regular supply of provisions for long intervals of time, during which the people under his charge were threatened with a lingering death. That was by far the most trying as well as the most important of his many duties; but it was done, and neither in that nor in any other instance did he seek any credit for his work.
It would be absurd to claim anything like genius for Phillip, for there is nothing to indicate that he possessed any of the higher forms of intellectual power. His letters and despatches show him to have been a man of ordinary education, and without any pretension to scientific or literary attainments. But every line he has written is full of interest for us at the present day; although the reader must be prepared to make large allowances in the matter of grammar and spelling, while there is not even a suspicion of style about his compositions. Perhaps they are all the more interesting on that account, because there is evidently nothing artificial or theatrical about them. There is no diplomacy in his language; he says exactly what he thinks, and says it in the very words he might have used in conversation. The result is that his despatches have all the force of an original narrative, and the story he tells is as well told as we need wish it to be. If we compare his writings with the polished editions of them published in such works as Phillip's Voyage and other compilations of the same kind, we feel at once how much they have lost in point of liveliness and truth to nature. The story, for instance, told by himself of his interviews with the natives at Broken Bay, is quite a different piece of work from the same story re-written with editorial point and precision of language (9).
A naval officer who had been at sea from the age of sixteen could hardly be expected to distinguish himself outside the ordinary work of his profession. Although it is correct to say that Phillip "raised himself by his merit and his services to distinction and command," he cannot be well classed with Drake, Dampier, or Cook, seeing that he never had the opportunity for acquiring such distinction as fell to their lot. They were men who achieved renown by exploits which have made their names historical, but Phillip's performances were of a much less ambitious type. Yet, placed in the position in which he found himself, it is difficult to see how he could have done more than he did. He accomplished his task successfully, so far as success was attainable with the limited means at his command. Although he was not embarrassed with the bitter local questions which so often disturbed his successors' peace of mind, he had problems to solve which tried his temper and taxed his resources; and the fact that he succeeded in solving them one after another must be placed to his credit in estimating his character as a ruler. "The policy of the Government," in his day, consisted mainly in finding something to eat. At the distance of a hundred years, it is not easy to realise the situation in which he was so often placed when, by the non-arrival of expected supplies from England, the little settlement at Sydney Cove was absolutely in danger of starvation. Infant colonies had been left to perish from want of food in other parts of the world (10), and on more than one occasion it seemed probable enough that Phillip's efforts to found a colony would have met with the same fate. Had he been improvident or neglectful in his administration, disastrous consequences might have happened; but by the prudent handling of his resources from day to day, he contrived to avert each impending calamity, and the colony prospered.
There is some satisfaction in relieving his memory from a charge which has been unjustly laid to it. He has been held responsible for the extreme severity with which criminal offences of all kinds were punished during his term of office, as it rested with him to prescribe the sentence in every case as well as to sanction its execution. It has been freely insinuated, too, that he must be held responsible for the severity which continued to mark the administration of the criminal law in this colony long after he had disappeared from the scene; as if his successors had merely continued a system which he had established. One writer says of him:- "His punishments were not frequent, but prompt and terribe (11)." The punishments inflicted on criminals during his time were certainly prompt and terrible, but they were not his; they were inflicted by the Criminal Court, composed of six officers and the Judge-Advocate. That court was practically a Court-martial; and although it was supposed to administer justice "according to the laws of England," it did so after a strictly military fashion. When we read, for instance, that "Joseph Hunt, a soldier in the detachment, having been found absent from his post when stationed as a centinel, was tried by a Court-martial and sentenced to receive seven hundred lashes (12)," we have a key to the whole system which prevailed in Phillip's time. But personally he had nothing more to do with it, so far as the infliction of punishment was concerned, then Governor of the present day has to do with the sentences passed on prisoners in the Criminal Courts. The frequent occurrence of such "prompt and terrible punishments" in the first years of the settlement has naturally, perhaps, created an impression that they were the work of a cruel temper inflamed by the consciousness of arbitrary power. So far, however, from that being the case, there is no difficulty in showing that Phillip's disposition was not by any means a cruel one (13). Many instances might be given of his leniency. When, for instance, he was attacked and wounded by a native with a spear he made no attempt to retaliate; but as soon as he had recovered from the wound, he visited the natives in order to show them that "no animosity was retained on account of the late incident, nor resentment harboured against any but the actual perpetrator of the act (14)." His power to pardon, reprieve, and remit sentences was freely exercised. Of six convicts sentenced to death at the second sitting of the Criminal Court one was pardoned and four reprieved, the latter being "afterwards exiled to a small island within the bay, where they were kept on bread and water." A King's birthday was always accompanied with a release of prisoners (15).
His own opinion was that hanging is not the most effective punishment, simply because it does not deter men of criminal tendencies from committing crime. In the "memo." in which he jotted down his ideas about the government of the projected colony, he anticipated the question of capital punishment as applied to the convicts, expressing himself strongly against it: "Death, I think, will never be necessary." There were only two crimes which would merit death, in his opinion; and for either of them he would substitute exile to some "cruel island in the far-off sea," as a far more potent deterrent than the hangman's rope. Whether he was altogether serious in his proposal to confine the criminal in such cases "till an opportunity offered of delivering him as a prisoner to the natives of New Zealand and let them eat him," may be doubted; at any rate he did not ask for legislative powers to that effect (16). Perhaps it was intended as a jocular suggestion from the quarter-deck, as the best-known method of instilling fear into the minds of hardened offenders. Among sailors of the old school, no punishment was more dreaded than that of being left ashore in an unknown country, with the prospect of being either eaten by savages or condemned to lead a savage life among them (17). Had the matter rested entirely in Phillip's discretion, he would have substituted exile for death in extreme cases, not for the purpose of condemning the criminal to be devoured by cannibals, but in order that he might endure the prolonged suffering inseparable from isolation, and at the same time do some service to the State by forming connections among the natives, with the view of reconciling them to the presence of Europeans in their country. The five men whom he reprieved in the first month of his administration he had determined to exile to that part of the territory then known as the South Cape (18), but that intention was never carried out, probably because, having no means of sending them there, he sent them to Norfolk Island; or perhaps to the "small rocky island near the entrance of the cove," officially called Rock Island, but known among the convicts as Pinchgut - from the bread and water which formed their rations when sent there. Speaking in his memo. of the relations which might arise between the convicts and the native women, he said:-
I should think it necessary to punish with severity the man who used the women ill; and I know of no punishment likely to answer the purpose of deterring others so well as exiling them to a distant spot, or to an island.
That was clearly his idea of a really effective punishment. But it was no part of his functions as a Governor to prescribe pains and penalties for offences within the jurisdiction of the Criminal Court. That was a matter in which he could not interfere, otherwise than by exercising the prerogative of mercy. Nor is there much reason to believe that Phillip had any more faith in the lash as a means of correction than he had in the gallows. His experience in the navy must have made him only too familiar with the custom of flogging, seamen in his days being ruthlessly flogged for petty breaches of naval discipline. The same practice prevailed in the army. Under any circumstances it was, perhaps, inevitable that a Court composed of military and naval men should use the lash as a convenient means of punishment. Any other form of correction for minor offences was hardly known to men of that time. There was no gaol or place of detention for prisoners in the colony; imprisonment, moreover, meant loss of labour; and even if the letter of the law had left the members of the Court to the exercise of their own discretion in the choice of penalties the lash would necessarily, under such circumstances, have taken the place of imprisonment (19).
Nor the least noticeable feature in Phillip's character is the spirit of self-denial manifested by him throughout the trying times in which he ruled. Most, if not all, of those around him were loud in their complaints against the country; but he appears to have been so confident in its future that the privations he had to undergo made little impression on him. Chief in the ranks of the discontented stood Major Ross, commanding officer of the marines and Lieutenant-Governor of the colony. It was apparently his ambition from the first to find every possible occasion for embarrassing Phillip in the discharge of his duties. Perhap's the Major's outbreaks may be accounted for in some measure by his personal grievances, which were set out at length in a letter to Nepean, written from Sydney Cove in July, 1788 (20). It presents a curious contrast, in tone and temper, with the letters written by Phillip; for while the Major's abounds in petty complaints, the Governor's are absolutely silent with respect to everything in the shape of personal inconvenience. Yet it is certain that he had to bear his full share of the cruel privations which were endured by everyone in the settlement at that time; and whether he bore them patiently or not, there is nothing to show that he ever uttered a murmur on his own account. Whatever complaint he had to make was directed to the remedy of some public grievance - certainly not to any grievance of his own. If he was silent on the subject of his own troubles, he was equally reserved with respect to the sacrifices he felt called upon to make in the public interest. Had it not been recorded by Collins, nothing would have been known in the present day of the self-denial he displayed when, at a time of scarcity fast approaching to famine, he surrendered his own small supplies to the public stock:-
The Governor, from a motive that did him immortal honour, gave up three hundred-weight of flour, which was his Excellency's private property, declaring that he wished not to see anything more at his table than the ration which was received in common from the public store, without any distinction of persons; and to this resolution he rigidly adhered, wishing that if a convict complained, he might see that want was not unfelt even at Government House (21).
While this was the spirit in which Phillip met the privations he had to encounter, the Lieutenant-Governor found time to write a letter of complaint to England, in which the Governor was represented as offensively arbitrary and inconsiderate, subjecting the officers of the garrison to unnecessary hardships and indignities, apparently for no other purpose than that of swelling his own importance at their expense:-
I believe there never was a set of people so much upon the parrish at this garrison is; and what little we want, even to a shingle nail, we must not send to the Commissary for it, but must apply to his Excellency; and when we do, he allways sayes - "there is but little come out," - and of course it is but little we get, and what we are obliged to take as a mark of favor.
There were other officers attached to the establishment who had complaints to make on their own account. One of them, for instance, wrote a letter to Sir Joseph Banks in November, 1788, in which he complained of the hardship he had undergone in having to cut thatch and wattles for his own hut, and concluded by assuring his friend that although he might have "a flattering public account" he need not rely upon it; adding that "every gentleman here, two or three excepted, concurs with me in opinion, and sincerely wish that the expedition may be recalled." Surgeon White, whose Journal is scrupulously free from any remarks calculated to prejudice the colony in the eyes of the British public, described it in a subsequent letter to Sir Joseph Banks as "a country and place so forbidden and so hateful as only to merit execration and curses (22)." He was not the only one that held that opinion; Major Ross, in a letter to Nepean, said he did not "scruple to pronounce that in the whole world there is not a worse country than that we have yet seen of this (22)."
Phillip seems to have stood almost alone in his disregard of present privations and his confidence in the future of the country. The grievances which appeared so unendurable to the men who surrounded him, he spoke of as "the little difficultys we have met with, which time and proper people for cultivating the land will remove." The spirit in which he had settled down to his work may be judged from the assurance he gave Lord Sydney while in the midst of his troubles:-
Anxious to render a very essential service to my country by the establishment of a colony which, from its situation, must hereafter be a valuable acquisition to Great Britain, no perseverance will be wanting on my part, and which consideration alone would make amends for the being surrounded by the most infamous of mankind. Time will remove all difficulties. As to myself, I am satisfied to remain as long as my services are wanted; I am serving my country, and serving the cause of humanity.
NOTES:
(1) Post, p, 495.
(2) Journal, p. 114.
(3) Tench, Narrative, p. 46.
(4) Captain Tench was not quite so pleased with the provisions:- "When the reader is told that some of the necessary articles allowed to ships on a common passage to the West Indies were withheld from us; that portable soup, wheat, and pickled vegetables were not allowed; and that an inadequate quantity of essence of malt was the only anti-scorbutic supplied, his surprise will redouble at the result of the voyage." - Narrative, p. 46.
(5) Sir Joseph Banks, in a letter dated August 16, 1791, addressed to Mr. Richards, the contractor, said:- "It appears clear, however, from the remarkable healthyness of the crews that went out with Governor Phillip, and from the as remarkable unhealthyness of some transports that have arrived since, that the good sense and personal attention of the commanders to enforce cleanliness and order among those unfortunate people is the principal cause of the success with which they can be carried out. Government is always ready to allow the necessary expense, but not always able to find out proper people to take charge of the ships."
(6) "Had that river (the Hawkesbury) and its fertile banks been discovered before the establishment at Sydney Cove had proceeded too far to remove it, how eligible a place would it have been for the principal settlement!" - Collins, p. 540.
(7) Lieutenant-Governor Collins abandoned Port Phillip as unfit for settlement in 1803, and removed his establishment to the banks of the river Derwent in Tasmania. It is not probable that such a mistake would have been made by Phillip. Nor would he have had any difficulty in determining the question as to the best site for a settlement on the South Australian coast. The first settlers on that territory occupied Kangaroo Island, but Colonel Light, the surveyor sent out by the Home Government in 1836, removed the settlement to the plain on which Adelaide now stands. When Governor Hindmarsh arrived some months afterwards he condemned the site, and proposed to remove the settlement to Encounter Bay. The contention on this point lasted for over a year, and was not settled until the Home Government interfered by recalling the Governor and sending out another, who confirmed the action of the surveyor.
(8) None of his officers seemed to share his predictions as to the future of the settlement. Tench wrote:- "Speculators who may feel inclined to try their fortunes here will do well to weigh what I have said. If golden dreams of commerce and wealth flatter their imaginations, disappointment will follow; the remoteness of situation, productions of the country, and want of connection with other parts of the world, justify me in the assertion." - Narrative, p. 138. Collins did not permit himself to indulge in any dreams of a brilliant future. "As to its utility, besides the circumstance of its freeing the mother country from the depraved branches of her offspring, it may prove a valuable nursery to our East India possessions for soldiers and seamen." - Preface, p. ix. Hunter did not commit himself to any expression of opinion, beyond saying that if the Government should determine to persevere in establishing a settlement upon an extensive plan, it would be attended with considerable expense to the nation. It would be necessary to stock the country with cattle, and to find people to look after the cattle. - Journal, p. 202. He was so thoroughly practical that, although he surveyed Port Jackson, he had not a word to say for it as regards its attractions, his attention being apparently absorbed by the natives whom he met along its shores. Surgeon White records that when Phillip returned to Botany Bay from his first visit to Port Jackson, he and his friends were "full of praises on the extent and excellence of the harbour." And his own impression is thus stated:- "Port Jackson I believe to be, without exception, the finest harbour in the universe, and at the same time the most secure." But he had nothing further to say in commendation of the country; on the contrary, he wrote a very depressing letter about it from Sydney Cove in April, 1790; post, p. 506.
(9) Compare Phillip's despatch, post, pp.283-6, with the reproduction of it in Phillip's Voyage, pp. 76-84. Phillip might have offered the same excuse for his literary deficiences that Captain Cook did, when, in concluding the introductory discourse to his Second Voyage, he desired the reader "to excuse the inaccuracies of style," and to recollect that "it is the production of a man who has not had the advantage of much school education, but who has been constantly at sea from his youth; and though, with the assistance of a few good friends, he has passed through all the stations belonging to a seaman, from an apprentice boy in the coal trade to a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy, he has had no opportunity of cultivating letters."
(10) Post, p. 514.
(11) Bennett, History of Australian Discovery and Colonisation, 1865, p. 169. The punishments inflicted by Phillip for disobedience of his General Orders were prompt, but not terrible. When, for instance, a party of convicts set out with the intention of avenging the death of a comrade, who had been killed by the natives, Phillip sentenced them to receive one hundred and fifty lashes each, and to wear a fetter for a twelve-month. Judged by the standard of that day, the punishment was a mild one; for there could not well have been a lore aggravated case of insubordination. As Collins expressed it (p. 58), the men in question had "daringly and flagrantly broken through every order which had been given to prevent their interfering with the natives," - a matter of the highest importance in Phillip's eyes.
(12) Collins, p. 56.
(13) In Phillip's Voyage, p. 68, he is described as "intelligent, active, persevering, with firmness to make his authority respected and mildness to render it pleasing." That was the opinion expressed of him in England; and a similar estimate seems to have been formed of his character by his critics in the colony. Collins, for instance (p. 72), speaking of the capture of Cæsar - a notorious offender who had incurred the penalty of death - says that "the Governor, with the humanity that was always conspicuous in his exercise of authority vested in him, directed that he should be sent to Garden Island, there to work in fetters; and in addition to his ration of provisions, he was to be supplied with vegetables from the garden." And West, in his History of Tasmania, vol. ii, p. 144, states that "the solicitude of Phillip (for the welfare of his people) was displayed in every form of kindness."
(14) Collins, p. 136.
(15) On the first celebration of the royal birthday at Sydney Cove, "the three convicts who had been sent to the rock, in the hope that lenity to them might operate also upon others, were on the occasion of his Majesty's birthday liberated from their chains and confinement, and his Excellency forgave the offences of which they had been respectively guilty." - Collins, p. 33. Another birthday was marked in the same manner. "And to make it a cheerful day to every one, all offenders who had, for stealing Indian corn, been ordered to wear iron collars, were pardoned," - p. 165.
(16) He asked for power to exile simply, but it was not given. The only sentences provided for by the Act and Letters Patent constituting the Criminal Court were death and corporal punishment; post, pp. 455, 535.
(17) This practice was known as marooning, and was a common one among the buccaneers. Dampier relates that "while we lay here" - off the north-west coast of New Holland - "I did endeavour to persuade our men to go to some English factory; but was threatened to be turned ashore and left here for it. This made me desist." - Vol. i, p. 469.
(18) Phillip's despatch, post, p. 274. According to White, Journal, p. 128, three men were convicted on the 27th February, 1788, of "feloniously and fraudulently taking away from the public store beef and pease, the property of the Crown;" but one only was executed. They were all, "about 6 o'clock the same evening, taken to the fatal tree," but two "were respited until 6 o'clock the next evening. When that awful hour arrived, they were led to the place of execution, and just as they were on the point of ascending the ladder, the Judge-Advocate arrived with the Governor's pardon, on condition of their being banished to some uninhabited place." On the 29th, two men were convicted of stealing wine, and sentenced to death; but one being "and ignorant black youth" was pardoned by the Governor, and the other, another black, "had his sentence od death, while at the gallows, changed to banishment." At a leter period Norfolk Island was utilised for this purpose. A soldier condemned to death in September, 1789, for a rape on a child of eight years of age, having been recommended to mercy, was pardoned "on condition of his residing, during the term of his natural life, at Norfolk Island." - Collins, p. 80.
(19) "On the 26th May, 1788, a soldier and a sailor were tried by the Criminal Court of Judicature for assaulting and dangerously wounding James McNeal, a seaman. These people belonged to the Sirius, and were employed on the island where the ship's company had their garden" - hence called Garden Island - "the seamen in cultivating the ground and the soldier in protecting them, for which prupose he had his firelock with him. They all lived together in a hut that was built for them, and on the evening preceding the assault had received their week's allowance of spirits, with which they intoxicated themselves and quarrelled. They were found guilty of the assault, and as pecuniary damages were out of the question, were each sentenced to receive five hundred lashes." - Collins, p. 30.
(20) Post, p. 499.
(21) Collins, p. 108.
(22) Post, p. 507; p.500.
