‘He [Dawes] was the scholar of the [First Fleet] expedition, man of letters and man of science, explorer, mapmaker, student of language of anthropology, teacher and philanthropist’. Professor G.A. Wood, Lieutenant William Dawes and Captain Watkin Tench, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal, Vol. 19, Part 1, 1924
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‘English clockmaker John Harrison, a mechanical genius who pioneered the science of portable precision timekeeping…invented a clock that would carry the true time from the home port, like an eternal flame, to any remote corner of the world’. Dava Sobel, Longitude, Fourth Estate, 1998
1788 – Warranne – Sydney Cove, 26 January: K I – a faithful replica of H-4 John Harrison’s ‘sea-going pocket watch’ fetched up at one particular ‘remote corner of the world’ aboard HMS Supply one (1) of eleven (11) ‘First Fleet’ ships with a complement of 1500 souls.
While Indigenous Australians know of Marine Lieutenant William Dawes non-indigenous Australians ‘and from all the lands on earth we come’ know almost nothing of Dawes.
And it appears northing at all of Harrison’s chronometer H-4. The ‘portable precision timekeep[er]’ whose ‘eternal flame’, played such an important role in the invasion of New Holland and dispossession of its First Peoples?
Harrison H-4 Chronometer
‘When leaving Botany Bay [for Sydney Cove] Phillip noticed [La Perouse with] two French ships in the offing….there would seem to be “some justification for the saying that England won Australia by six days”. Edward Jenks, History of the Australian Colonies, cited H.E. Egerton, A short History of British Colonial Policy, Methuen, London 1928
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