The Botany Bay Medallion

LIEUTENANT WILLIAM DAWES – THE ‘ETERNAL FLAME’ & THE SHOCK OF THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS

‘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

In the race for New Holland, now Australia, K-1 played a large part in Britain’s narrow victory over France. Rev. Nevil Maskelyne, Britain’s Astronomer Royal gave K-1 into the care of Marine Lieutenant William Dawes.

1788 – Norfolk Island, 14 February: Three (3) weeks after the English arrived, in order to prevent La Perouse, ‘hanging around at Botany Bay’ from claiming Norfolk Island for France, K-1 left Sydney in HMS Supply with Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN to establish an outpost of empire on the uninhabited island.

Before leaving England Governor Arthur Phillip RN, had been assured reinforcements and supplies would ‘follow shortly’. But nothing came.

Phillip estimated the local Eora Aboriginals numbered 1500. So overnight the population had doubled. It soon became evident that white survival would depend on hunting, gathering and fishing – stealing the local peoples’ foods. See: A Plague of Locusts

‘Our customary method was to leave Sydney Cove about four [4] o’clock in the afternoon and go down the harbour and fish [trawl] all night from one cove to another cove’.Jacob Nagle, First Fleet Journal.

Stealing without equity. Worse was to come as in winter fish leave Sydney Harbour to breed See: Abandoned and Left to Starve January 1788 to June 1790

‘They’ Phillip wrote ‘are not pleased with our remaining amongst them, as they see we deprive them of fish, which is almost their only support’. Governor Phillip to Evan Nepean, Home Office, September 1788

Phillip could wait no longer he ordered Captain John Hunter RN, the fleet’s navigator, prepare HMS Sirius for a lone voyage to the Cape of Good Hope to buy food and medicines from the Dutch at Cape Town.

1788 – Africa, October: K1 was set up aboard not long before Sirius sailed out through the Heads on the 2nd of October 1788.

‘The main battle was about having enough to eat’. Don Watson, The Story of Australia.

‘Here on the summit of the hill [South Head] every morning from daylight until the sun sunk did we sweep the horizon in the hope of seeing a sail’. Marine Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961

Black and white populations were starving. Something had to give and it did.

1789 – April: ‘A smallpox epidemic struck the Aboriginal population around Sydney. Inexplicably the epidemic did not affect the Europeans. But [Governor] Phillip estimated that it resulted in the death of ‘. People of Australia, Macquarie Series, Ed. Bryce Fraser, 1998

‘The epidemic did not affect the white population’ . Inexplicable ? See Dead Aborigines Don’t Eat

1789 – Sydney, 8 May: An English sail but not as it turned out from England.

HMS Sirius ‘after an absence of 219 days of which 51 lay in Table Bay Cape of Good Hope, so that, although during the voyage we had fairly gone around the world, we had only been 168 days in describing that circles… [Port Jackson] an important Post should it ever be necessary to carry…war in those seas…Coast of Chile and Peru’. John Hunter Journal Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island , England 1793, Bibliobaazar ed. 2008

Sirius purchased 127,000 lbs. of flour and some medicines. Most intended for the king’s ships. Captain David Collins described the amount as ‘unflattering’. There would have been very little flour for the settlement.

1790 – Sydney, January: ‘No supplies…except what was obtained for us by Sirius at Cape of Good Hope…no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th of May 1787 the day of our departure from Portsmouth…in which long time we had been entirely cut off…the misery and horror of such a situation cannot be imparted, even by those who have suffered under it’. Tench.ibid.

‘Phillip’s people’ were starving. The previous year the death of ‘50% of the local Aboriginal community’ took pressure off the Sydney area’s food resources.

Governor Phillip drew on that experience and ordered 50% of Sydney’s ‘European’ population evacuate to Norfolk Island.

1790 – Norfolk Island, 6 March : One-half of of Sydney’s starving whites were crammed aboard Sirius and Supply.

Phillip took the opportunity to rid himself of Marine Major Robert Ross by replacing Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN with the cantankerous, rebellious commander of the Sydney garrison.

‘No one in the colony caused Phillip more trouble than Major Ross. Of all Phillip’s problems including the terrible famine of 1789 and 1790, probably none was so harassing as the persistent antagonism, both covert and open, which Ross pursued against him’. John Moore, The First Fleet Marines, 1786-1792, Queensland University Press, 1987

Supply was to return to Sydney and continue to trawl for fish. Captain Hunter was to sail HMS Sirius to China and arrange a rescue mission. K-1 was installed in Captain Hunter’s cabin.

Sirius’ primary task however was to inform the Admiralty; ‘we had fairly gone around the world, we had only been 168 days in describing that circles….Chili…Peru…had proved the supreme importance of Port Jackson. See: ‘168 days‘ Proximity not Distance Drove the Invasion of New Holland.

As Norfolk Island had no safe harbour landing people and supplies, especially at that time of the year, was always going to be difficult and so it proved.

1790 – March 16: Sirius landed her evacuees safely when, driven by cyclonic winds, she swung on her anchor and hit a submerged reef. It was reported K-1 was the first item removed from Sirius before she sank and given into the care of Lieutenant Henry Ball on Supply.

Caught in ‘pounding surf’ Sirius broke up over several days,160 Royal Naval personnel, were taken off without loss but marooned now on the island.

1790 -Sydney, 6 April – K 1 returned to Sydney on HMS Supply.

1790 – Jakarta, 17 April on Supply sailed to Batavia.

1790 – Sydney, 17 October: K-1 arrived back from Jakarta on Supply. Lieutenant Ball had chartered a Dutch ship Waaksamheyd to bring tonnes of supplies to Sydney as soon as possible.

1790 – Sydney, 16 December Waaksamheyd arrived from Jakarta

Together ‘the man of science’ and the ‘pocket-watch’ that ‘wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars’ can play a pivotal role in revealing the how ,why and wherefore of the ‘war nasty and decidedly lacking in glory’ Britain waged against Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples.

‘The decision to colonise New South Wales cannot be isolated from the strategic imperatives of the world’s first global struggle, the Seven Years’ War (1757-1763). . Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, Third ed. Cambridge University Press, 2008

‘Our wealth and power in India is their [France ] great and constant object of jealously; and they will never miss an opportunity of attempting to wrest it out of our hands’. Sir James Harris cited, Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip Sailor Mercenary Governor Spy, Hardie Grant Books. Melbourne, London, 2013

Botany Bay – 1788 January 24: Four (4) days after the ‘First Fleet’ dropped anchor in Botany Bay, Comte Jean-Francois La Perouse at the helm of La Boussole with La Astrolabe astern, appeared in the entrance to Botany Bay and was refused entry. See: Australia – Britain By A Short Half-Head

‘He [Phillip] ordered a party be sent to Point Sutherland to hoist English colours. He also stipulated that no one was to go on board the French ships’. John Moore, The First Fleet Marines 1786-1792, Queensland University Press, 1987

Sydney – 25 January: An ‘alarmed’ Captain Phillip quit Botany Bay on the 25th of January1788. Aboard HMS Supply he made for Sydney Cove, Captain Cook’s ‘Port Jackson’, arriving just on dark.

‘He thought it wise’ to delay the fleet’s departure till the following day’ in case the French again tried to enter Botany Bay.

Sydney – 26 January: At dawn Phillip landed with a party of marines and ‘hoisted English colours’. By nightfall the entire English fleet were at anchor in Sydney Cove.

Sirius was last to leave. Hunter stayed to guide La Boussole and L’Astrolabe to a safe anchorage in Frenchmen’s Cove where they could repair their ships and rest the crews in preparation for the voyage home. See: A Band of Brothers and Mortal Enemies

Phillip the spy was well aware of France’s burning ambition to regain territory lost to Britain in the Seven Years’ War 1756-1763.

Following France’s spectacular success in the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) King Louis XV1 was determined not only to regain but to expand his nation’s colonial interests in India.

Uncertain of La Perouse’s immediate intentions Phillip acted quickly to prevent France securing a naval base in the Pacific Ocean.

Captain James Cook RN had, on his second voyage in HMS Resolution, among many English names conferred on coves, bays and islands, named New Caledonia (4 September 1774) and Norfolk Island (10 October 1774).

Phillip chose to occupy Norfolk Island two weeks sailing time away – approximately – 1136 nautical miles from Sydney.

Norfolk Island – 14 February: Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN sailed to the island in HMS Supply taking six (6) months of provisions to support a party of marines, a doctor, nine (9) male and six (6) female convicts.

As Supply disappeared from sight consider the English castaways at Sydney Cove. Twenty-one thousand (21,000) kilometres from home, squeezed between sea and bush, filled with fear of what lay ahead, struggling to make sense of their surroundings, the urge to flee must have been overwhelming.

With La Boussole and L’Astrolabe close by in Botany Bay, Phillip felt compelled to assert authority over ‘his people’.

With few options he chose diversion and arranged a gruesome pantomime.See: Terror in Three Acts – From Here to Eternity 27th, Blind Man’s Bluff 28th, Catch 22 – 29th February 1788

1788 – 27 February: A matter of days after convict Thomas Barrett finished engraving the Botany Bay Medallion, Governor Phillip signed his death warrant.

The million dollar (AUD $1000, 000) Botany Bay Medallion, purchased for nation in 2008, is on permanent display at Australia’s Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, Sydney.

As plaque on the corner of Harrington and Essex Street Sydney marks Thomas Barrett’s fleeting presence in Australia.

‘THE ETERNAL FLAME

Greewich Observatory – 1675: Acrimony over the best method of determining longitude when a ship at sea was beyond sight of land had played out more than a century earlier during the reign of the ‘Restoration King’ Charles the Second (1660-16*****

In 1675 King Charles II established Greenwich Observatory. He appointed John Flamsteed Britain’s first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich Observatory, from the time of that Institution’s inception in 1675

During Flamsteed long tenure (1675-1720) Edmond Halley of comet fame, with the connivance of Isaac Newton, purloined plagiarised and, without the author’s authority published Flamsteed’s life’s work, the ‘Star Catalog’.

Halley and Newton’s antics paled however when compared to those of Reverend Nevil Maskelyne Britain’s fifth Astronomer Royal who held the position from 1765 to 1811. See: Malicious Maskelyne BBBB

He waged a pitched battle against John Harrison and H-4 his invention that, as Dava Sobel so poetically has it, ‘wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch’. See: Lotto and Longitude.

Maskelyne, before and during his Greenwich tenure, persecuted Harrison. In 1768 he withheld H-4 from Lieutenant James Cook RN. See: Cook, Harrison, Green – Three Yorkshire-men Walked into a Bar

Tahiti – 1769: Cook with Joseph Banks set off in 1769 aboard HMS Endeavour on a dual mission. First they were to observe the Transit of Venus at Tahiti for the Royal Society.

Afterwards, for the Admiralty who had supplied Endeavour and paid the wages of her Royal Navy crew, Cook was to search for the fabled Great South Land.

Although none of Endeavour’s crew died of scurvy and, for this Cook is rightly lauded, at Batavia – modern-day Jakarta – on the homeward leg much to Cook’s sorrow, 50% of his men succumbed to malaria and dysentery.

Surely the absence of Harrison’s ‘precision time-keeper’ must be factored into the length of Endeavour’s extended voyage.

‘Of all the equipment put on board the Resolution the most notable and exciting was the Larcum Kendall K 1 which was a replica of the acclaimed H-4 the most advanced time-piece in the world for the calculation of longitude’. Rob Mundle, Cook, Harper Collins, Sydney, 2013

K-1 was the chronometer Cook took on his second voyage (1772-1775) with Resolution, Adventure and, on his third and fatal voyage (1776-1780) with Resolution, Discovery.

Hawaii – 1779: It is said K-1 stopped at the time of Captain Cook’s death at Hawaii on the 14th of February 1779.

In 1787 Maskelyne, still Britain’s Astronomer Royal, delivered K-1 into the care of Marine Lieutenant William Dawes.

It would be hard to imagine the reverence with which Dawes received this iconic time-piece.

‘There is no man among the founders who ought to have given so much information about himself and his views as Lieutenant Dawes, and there is no man among them who has given us so little’. Wood. op. cit.

An extraordinary statement given Dawes the ‘scholar of the expedition’ would, twice in December 1790, put his life on the line.

Lieutenant William Dawes

Born at Portsmouth in 1762 Dawes, like many First Fleet senior officers, Governor Phillip RN, his 2-I-C Captain Hunter RN, Marines, Major Robert Ross, Captain David Collins, Lieutenant Watkin Tench and chief medical officer John White among them, had seen active service during America’s Revolutionary War of Independence 1775-1783.

American Map

1781 – Chesapeake, Virginia: Dawes, at a pivotal point in that conflict, September 1781, was wounded when his ship engaged in a fire-fight with the French in what is known as the Battle of the Capes.

In that action French Admiral de Grasses’ dominance over the Royal Navy denied the landing of reinforcements and heavy artillery that, a month later, could have delivered the British a critical victory.

1781 – Yorktown: In October 1781, survivors of General, Lord Charles Cornwallis’ large land army, surrendered at Yorktown to a combined army of French – Marquis de Rochambeau’s Regulars, and General George Washington’s Patriot home-spun militia.

By the time of the siege of Yorktown, in 1781,Britain was becoming overwhelmed by the effort of fighting five separate nation-states around the globe – France, Spain, the United States, the Dutch Republic, and the kingdom of Mysore, in India’. Larrie D. Ferreiro, Introduction, The American Revolution – A World War, David K. Allison, Larrie D. Ferreiro, Smithsonian, 2013

Although fighting continued ‘around the globe’ it is from Britain’s defeat at the Battle of Yorktown (1781) historians date America’s revolutionary victory.

For Australia’s First Peoples the reason for and, timing of the invasion of New Holland is no mystery, France (1779) and Spain (1780 – ‘vying for dominance’ over Britain had bank-rolled General George Washington.

‘I need not enlarge on the benefit of stationary a large body of troops in New South Wales…when we want to add to the military strength of India……they may be transported thither… before our enemies in Europe [France, the Dutch and and Spain knew anything of the matter’. Anon to Evan Nepean, Edinburgh 1789, Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Record of New South Wales. Vol. 1 Part 1 & 2

The ‘legacies of that distant [American] war persisis‘. In particular the mind-set of ‘chattel-slavery’. Britain’s unique value-added model of slavery seeded in Jamaica and played out here in the ‘Stolen Generations’.

‘Between 1701 and 1810 British North America received about 380,000 slaves, the British Caribbean about 1.4 million. The trade was viewed as a pillar of the plantations and necessary to economic commercial expansion’. Richard C. Simmons, Professor American History, University of Birmingham, Oxford Companion to British History, ed. John Cannon, Oxford University Press, 1997

Following the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) that brought a formal end to the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713) Britain became the prime mover of bodies in the infamous ‘middle passage’ Atlantic slave trade.

Terrified Africans filled the holds of her ships destined for the slave markets of America and the Caribbean. But this was slavery with a difference; ‘Chattel slavery’ sold in perpetuity – their children and their children’s children.

‘The expanding plantation economy demanded more labor than could be supplied by white servants, Africans were imported as slaves; that is chattel slaves.

Chattel slavery, the most debased form of bondage was not something inherited from the past or borrowed from the Mediterranean or South or Central America

In its more extreme form it evolved in British America, took form in British-American law, in response to the need for a totally reliable, totally exploitable, and infinitely recruitable labour force. Bernard Bailyn , The Peopling of the British Peripheries in the Eighteenth Century, Esso Lecture, Occasional Paper No. 5, Canberra 22 August 1988

In the case of chattel slavery the driver was money. Much of England’s prosperity was built on on human trafficking as demonstrated on by T.V. Antique Road Show.

However why Britain’s colonisation was marked by an extreme propensity to separate children from their families is yet to be explained.

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Sydney Cove – 1 January 1790: ‘No communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th of May, 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth’.. Tench

Governor Phillip’s ‘duty’ as commander of a Royal Navy Expeditionary Force of eleven (11) vessels was to invade New Holland and retain a foot-hold until the infantry arrived from England to prosecute the military campaign required for consolidation and subjugation of the country’s original inhabitants.

But they were a long time coming and; famine was approaching with gigantic strides’. Criminally under-resourced the invaders had been were callously left to starve. See: On the Rocks

‘The misery and horror of such a situation cannot be imparted, even by those who have suffered under it’. Marine Watkin Tench ……..

Phillip now faced another winter without support. Norfolk Island’s soil was fertile, fish plentiful year round, so the decision to evacuate 50% of Sydney’s population there although highly desirable was extremely risky and so it proved.

Norfolk Island – 1790 March: By the beginning of March preparations were complete and on the 6th of March Sirius and Supply sailed out through the Heads.

Norfolk Island had no safe harbour anchorage. That Phillip sent both ships speaks to the desperation of the situation at Sydney.

1790 -Norfolk Island, 19 March: Standing off HMS Sirius swung on her anchor and run onto a submerged reef and sank. Thankfully Captain Hunter made sure Cook’s K-1 chronometer was off before she disappeared below the waves.

Hunter was to have sailed Sirius onto China and arrange a rescue mission for Sydney. Now her crew, one hundred and sixty (160) Royal Navy personnel, were marooned on the island along with the evacuees.

Sydney – 5 April: Supply returned with the news – no China rescue; ‘Dismay was printed on every countenance when the tidings were proclaimed at Sydney..all hopes are now concentrated in the little Supply’.

Sydney – 6 April: ‘the following ration was decreed to commence immediately…per week to every grown person, and to every child of more than eighteen months old, two pounds of pork, two pounds and a half pounds of rice, or a quart of pease’. Tench. ibid.

Lieutenant Gidley King who Phillip brought back from Norfolk, was to take ‘urgent news‘ from Jakarta to London.

1790 – Jakarta,17 April: In mid April 1790 Supply’s Captain Lieutenant Henry Ball RN took K1 and sailed to Batavia, present day Jakarta.He was to buy tons of urgently needed food and medicines from the Dutch and charter a large vessel to bring them to Sydney.

Tench did not elaborate but we know the English were existing almost entirely on the local Aborigines’ foods. The previous year, and at the same time – April 1789 – 50% of local Aborigines had died of smallpox taking pressure off what foods were available. See: Smallpox – A Lethal Weapon

Sydney – 1790, 3 June: ‘Flags up …she [Lady Juliana] is from Old England…Letters! Letters!…for the first time we heard of…the French Revolution of 1789, with all the attendant circumstances of what that wonderful and unexpected event, succeeded to amaze us’. Tench

News of the French Revolution changed everything for Governor Arthur Phillip RN. Now the French were fighting each other to the death on the streets of Paris ‘Raleigh‘ knew Chile, Peru, Nicaragua and Panama had moved to the top of the pile of Britain’s must haves.

‘Since the age of [Tudor] Elizabeth I, the British had had global ambitions in which possession of Central America offered the prospect of opening a path between the Atlantic and Pacific’. Andrew Jackson O’Shaughessy, The Men Who Lost America, Yale University Press, New Haven London 2013

‘I need not enlarge on the benefit of stationary a large body of troops in New South Wales…when we want to add to the military strength of India……they may be transported thither… before our enemies in Europe [France, the Dutch and and Spain] knew anything of the matter’.

‘No person, not even yourself, shall ever know whence this proceeds and I give my honor not a hint of it shall ever transpire’. Anon to Evan Nepean, I am &c. “W. Raleigh”. Bladen.

‘The British had long sought to penetrate Spain’s jealously guarded South American trade’. Pacific Explorations, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle’. Nigel Rigby, Peter Van Der Merwe & Glynn Williams, Pacific Explorations, Maritime Museum Greenwich, Bloomsbury, Adlard Cole, London. 2018

Britain’s domination over the sea-route to Spain’s Pacific West Coast Central and South American ‘treasure’ colonies, via the Southern Oceans, would expose the ‘glittering prize’ – Spanish galleons laden with silver and gold -were now vulnerable to attack from a humiliated Royal Navy seeking revenge for the loss of her American ‘New World’ empire. See: Proximity not Distance Drove Britain’s Invasion of New Holland

rrrrrrrrrrr20/3THE SHOCK OF THE NEW – SOUTH WALES CORPS

London Gazette Extract

‘War Office, Corps of Foot for New South Wales. Major Francis Gross, from the Half-pay of the late 96th Regiment, is appointed to be Major Commandant’. Whitehall – 16 October 1789

‘The great change came in the arrival with the Second Fleet of the first companies of the New South Wales Corps [among them] Lieutenant John Macarthur a central figure in the military ‘mafia’ which quickly established itself as Australia’s first governing and property elite’. Nigel Rigby, Peter van der Mere, Glyn Williams, National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Pacific Explorations, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, London, 2018

1790 – Plymouth, January 17: The second fleet ships Neptune, Scarborough and Suprize departed England in mid January 1790.

[‘The troops sent to garrison the Australian colonies’ had been a long time coming and when they did arrive they brought trouble to the starving settlement. (kept )]

1790 – Sydney – June 1790: By the end of June 1790 they arrived with one hundred and fifteen (115) officers and men of ‘foot’ – the New South Wales Infantry Corps who were to replace the garrison marine of 1788 now overdue for repatriation.

‘Camden, Calvert and King…were to preside over a great loss of life in a context of cruelty and suffering’. Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet, Britain’s Grim Armada, Library of Australian History, Sydney 1993

Government had issued ‘slave’ contracts – paid per body embarked – to Camden, Calvert and King a London company prominent in the ‘Guinea slave trade’. The earlier the body died the greater the profit.

Since the Treaty Utrecht (1713-14) English ships trafficked African slaves to work Britain’s lucrative sugar plantations in the West Indies and her North American colonial cotton and tobacco fields. See: The Zong – Britain’s Economic Addiction to Chattel Slavery (pending)

On the voyage troops of the New South Wales Corps served as guards to prevent mutiny among the one thousand (1000) male and seventy-eight (78) women convicts.See: ‘Britain’s Grim Armada’ – The Dead and the Living Dead.

The slave trade is merciful compared to what I’ve seen in this fleet. The irons [Guinea shackle] used upon these unhappy wretches were barbarous. Used in the Guinea trade…not more than three-quarters in length of a foot…thus fettered so that they could not extend either leg from the other it was impossible for them to move but at the risk of both legs being broken’. Captain William Hill, Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1.

Starved, locked below docks throughout the voyage, treated with savage brutality, one-quarter (25%) of approximately one thousand (1000) male prisoners embarked had died during the passage.

‘Humanity shudders to think that of the nine hundred [900] male Convicts embark’d in this Fleet. Three hundred and seventy [370] are already dead & four hundred and fifty [450] are landed sick, and so emaciated and helpless, that very few, or any of them, can be saved by care or medicine. Captain William Hill to Jonathan Watham Esqr. Bond Court, Walbrook London, Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, 25th July 1790, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1

Sydney – June 1790:‘Some….died after the ships came into the harbour, before they could be taken on shore part of these had been thrown into the harbour and their dead bodies cast upon the shore, and were seen lying naked upon the rocks’. Reverend Richard Johnson, First Fleet Chaplain, cited Jack Egan, Buried Alive, Allen and Unwin, 1999

Captain Hill who sailed in Suprize wrote;‘I imagine the [Sydney] Medicine Chest to be nearly exhausted and Provisions are a scarce Article’.

A further 15% died within weeks of landing; ‘every exertion was made to get up the portable hospital but, although we were informed that it had been put up in London in a very few hours, we did not complete it until the 7th [July], when it was instantly filled with patients. Marine Captain David Collins, First Fleet Journal

The sick and dying placed severe strain on the available food and medicines exacerbating an already critical situation. In similar vein Captain Hill wrote of the voyage to William Wilberforce a prominent English anti-slavery activist.

In similar vein Captain Hill wrote of the voyage to William Wilberforce a prominent English anti-slavery activist who spoke out in favour’ of ending Britain’s economic dependence on chattel slavery earning him the title ‘God’s Politician’.

{{{{{{{{Wilberforce, a close friend of Prime Minister William Pitt, was England’s leading Parliamentary abolitionist. His efforts to ‘regain God’s favour’ earned him the title God’s Politician’.}}}}}}}KEEEP FOR LATER

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‘The troops sent to garrison the Australian colonies’ had been a long time coming.; when they did arrive they brought trouble to the starving settlement.

Above is the story I can tell the rest prepares for the one I can’t manage

NOW FOR THE REST London Gazette

Major Grose did not accompany the first contingent, He stayed in London to recruit sufficient numbers to satisfy establishment requirements some were ‘deserters [from] London’s Savoy Military Prison’.

Lieutenant John Macarthur, an ambitious land-hungry junior officer, took advantage of deep divisions that had, surfaced among the Corps’ senior officers and moved to fill the power vacuum created by Major Grose’s absence.

‘Lord Carmarthan, the Foreign Secretary….in early October 1784… stressed the necessity of knowing the extent of the proposed French and Dutch forces in India’. Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip Sailor Mercenary Governor Spy, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne London, 2013

With the French fighting each other India at least for a time, could be relegated to the back-burner. Phillip was fully aware of the full spectrum the Pitt Administration expected from the conquest of New Holland and altered his focus

‘There was plans to use the corps in expeditions against Panama, Peru and the Philippines, but nothing eventuated and the corps’ first experience of war came in January January 1795 on the Hawkesbury River River north-west of Sydney’. Peter Stanley. Ibid.

He assessed the arrogant Macarthur’s evident overarching personal ambition posed a serious challenge to the ambitions of ‘King and Country’.

Phillip, now without naval support,was aware ‘certain officers’ of the recently arrived (June 1790) New South Wales Corps, impatient winners in the land lottery, were circling the tents. See: Missing in Action, Sirius (wrecked) Supply ( @ Jakrta).

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20 June 1790: ‘We were joyfully suprised on the 20th of the month to see another sail enter the harbour. She proved to be the Justinian transport…laden entirely with provisions for our use. Full allowance and general congratulations immediately took place. Tench. ibid.

Neither ‘joy’ nor ‘full allowance’ lasted long. Much of Justinan’s cargo was for sale and there were many more mouths to feed . lrrrrrrrrrr20/3.

‘The Act of 1786 [Geo.III. c.59] for the Encouragement of the Southern Whale Fishery proved to be the foundation of an important industry…in the wake of whalers other British traders would follow. The furtherance of this plan became one of the central objects of Lord Hawkesbury’s commercial policy’. Vincent T. Harlow, Founding of the Second British Empire 1763-1793, Longmans, London, 196420/3§

1790 – Manly Beach, September: A migrating ‘monster’ whale on its way from Antarctica beached on the sand at Manly.

The stranding caused great excitement in both black and white camps. Whale, totem of the local Eora Peoples, drew them to Manly to marvel at its grandeur.

A land base to support ship-based whaling and sealing industries was high on the list of Britain’s ambitions for New Holland. Governor Phillip, whose salt-water career began hunting whale in Arctic waters, was rowed across the harbour to see if it was the species that produced the much valued spermacetti oil.

Just on a year earlier (November 1789) Phillip had ordered the capture of two (2) Aboriginal men Colbee and Bennalong. See: Kidnapped – Manly – What’s In A Name Check these dates

Colbee aged about thirty (30) ‘lightly framed’ Tench says ‘better fitted for purposes of activity’ escaped with Bennalong’s help .

Bennalong was caught in the act. Kept prisoner within English lines he often dined with the Governor. Despite increased surveillance he managed to escape in May 1790 and returned to his people.

In September Bennalong and Phillip met up again on Manly Beach; ‘they discoursed for some time…Baneelon express[ed] pleasure to see his old acquaintance’.

A bottle of Phillip’s fine French reds was offered and Bennalong tossed down ‘a toast to the King as he had been taught’.

Phillip then turned his attention to the whale. Phillip was armed and as ‘a native [Wileemarin] with a spear in his hand came forward the nearer, the governor approached, the greater became the terror and agitation of [ the Indian.

To remove his fear, governor Phillip threw down a dirk, he wore at his side…the other…instantly fixed his lance …with force and dexterity striking the governor’s right shoulder just above the collar bone’. Tench. op.cit

The spear exited Phillip’s back so could not be removed on the spot. It took two (2) hours of furious rowing to get him back to Sydney during which time the wound ‘bled a great deal’.

William Balmain, the fleet’s senior surgeon, sought advise from local Aboriginals as to the spear’s idiosyncrasies prior to its successful extraction.

Phillip recovered slowly. He attributed Wileemarin’s attack to ‘misapprehension’ and gave orders there be no reprisals.

‘From so unfavourable an omen as I have related [Phillip’s spearing] who could prognosticate that an [amicable] intercourse with the natives was about to commence!.

The aftermath of the spearing was friendly dialogue;‘with the natives we [the old hands] are now hand in glove’. Tench ibid

The outcome was surprising. At the time; ‘the natives expressed great dissatisfaction at the number of white men who had settled at Rose Hill…200 acres…of land was under cultivation…the main street already began…will make Pall-Mall and Portland Place to “hide their diminished heads”…. the detachment at Rose Hill was reinforced’. Tench. ibid.

21 /3 However Governor Phillip’s troubles had surfaced from the same common dominator – land – but it came from a hostile soldiery who saw Phillip’s ‘no reprisals’ response as weakness.

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Sydney – 19 October 1790: ‘We witnessed her departure [April] with tears HMS Supply arrived from Jakarta ‘we hailed her return with transport’.

Joy was tempered by sadness. ‘While at Batavia [she] had lost many of her people by sickness, and left several others in the general hospital at that place’. Tench. ibid.

Lieutenant Ball gave Governor Phillip an account of his difficult dealings with the Dutch. Nevertheless he had purchased tons of food and medicines and chartered a vessel Waaksamheyd to bring them to Sydney.

Phillip with memories of extortionate prices demanded of him by the Dutch colonial administration at Cape Town (1787) on the final leg of the First Fleet’s voyage was apprehensive. Would Waaksamheyd turn up?

1790 – November: Justinian’s supplies were dwindling; ‘every was hungry ….the natives throng the camp, every day…God knows we have little enough for ourselves.

If the Dutch Snow does not arrive arrive soon it [ration] must be shortened, as the casks in the storehouse, I observed yesterday are woefully decreased’. Tench.

1790 – December 9: Still no Dutch ship; ‘everyone was hungry’.

From the very earliest days in 1788, without any regard for the needs of local Aboriginal families, armed fishing hunting and gathering parties, had been essential to the invaders survival.

1790 – Botany Bay 10 December: One such party, three (3) armed convicts Patrick Burn, Joohn Randall, John McEntire – the person of whom Baneelon, had on ‘former occasions (when a captive) shewn so much dread and hatred’ – were sent to Botany Bay on a kangaroo shoot.

1790 – December 11: At 1 am a single assailant, Pemulwuy a Bidjgal warrior, identified by ‘a speck in his left eye’,speared Mc Intyre. Severely wounded he did not want to be left to die in the bush and begged to be taken back to camp.

1790 – December 12: Tench says they ‘reached Sydney about two o’clock the next morning…the surgeons pronounced [his wound] mortal…[whereupon] the poor wretch …accused himself of the c omission of crimes of the deepest dye’.

***It is here we meet Watkin Tench the author. His ‘Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay’ was selling like hot cakes in London while ‘A Complete Account of The Settlement at Port Jackson’ his on the spot diary account was building.***

December 13: Governor Phillip summoned Captain Tench to Headquarters and gave orders; ‘tomorrow…march to Botany Bay…instil universal terror… bring in two (2) prisoners …I am resolved to execute in the most public and exemplary manner, [kill ten] cut off, and bring in the heads of the slain, for which purpose, ropes to bind our prisoners, hatchets and bags would be furnished’. Governor Arthur Phillip RN, General Orders to Marine Captain Watkin Tench, 13 December 1790, cited Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1961

‘Here the governor stopped…could I propose any alteration….this scheme his Excellency was pleased instantly to adopt, adding; ‘if six cannot be taken…let that number be shot…bring in the heads of the slain’.

Phillip spelt out his rationale for the raid. ‘Since our arrival in the country no less than seventeen [17] of our people had either been killed or wounded by the natives’.

He ‘was now pleased to enter into the reasons which induced him to adopt measures of such severity….the barbarity of their conduct admits no extenuation’

When Tench queried why he waited so long to punish the natives Phillip explained;… ‘in every former instance of hostility, they had acted either from having received injury or from misapprehension…to the latter of these causes” he added I attribute my own wound…but in this business of McEntire, I am fully persuaded that they were unprovoked, and the barbarity of their conduct admits of no extenuation.

‘Unprovoked’ ! ‘M’Entire, the governor’s game-keeper (the person of whom Baneelon had on former occasions shewn so much dread and hatred). Tench

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‘Military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries…These raids had commenced by [on 14th] December 1790’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, Allen & Unwin, 1995.

Governor Phillip then made a statement that put no limit on white ‘barbarity’. ‘My fixed determination to repeat…such punishment…whenever any future breach of good conduct on their side, shall render it necessary’.

22/3‘Dawes, whose tour of duty it was to go out with that [December 14th] party, refused that duty by letter…even after the Governor had taken great pains to point out the consequences of his being put under an arrest’. 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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But in this business with McEntire I [Phillip] am fully persuaded that they were unprovoked’.

21-With a marine NCO, three ( 3) armed convicts Patrick Burn, John Randall and John McEntire –

I am persuaded Britain will not thank our governor for ‘a mean…unstable plan’, to the great disquiet of every individual in the colony’. Hill. Captain Hill, to William Waltham, London 26 July 1790, cited Jack Egan,Buried Alive, Sydney 1788-1792, Allen and Unwin, 1999

But in attributing the plan to Governor Phillip Captain Hill had it wrong. As with Rio Tinto in 2020 the ‘mean…unstable’ plan had been hatched in a ‘London Board of Directors’ the British Government.

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‘In America the officers and settlers had grants of land in proportion to their rank, but those [First Fleet officers] who have borne every hardship have no such thing, neither is there an intention of giving each their portion’. Captain Hill, to William Waltham, London 26 July 1790, cited Jack Egan,Buried Alive, Sydney 1788-1792, Allen and Unwin, 1999

But Hill got it wrong ; ‘I am persuaded Britain will not thank our governor for ‘a mean…unstable plan’, to the great disquiet of every individual in the colony’. Hill. op. cit.

As with Rio Tinto 2020 the ‘mean…unstable’ plan was mandated, not from Government House Sydney Town but from the ‘London Board of Directors’ -British Government.

{‘In America the officers and settlers had grants of land in proportion to their rank, but those [First Fleet officers] who have borne every hardship have no such thing, neither is there an intention of giving each their portion’. Captain Hill, to William Waltham, London 26 July 1790, cited Jack Egan,Buried Alive, Sydney 1788-1792, Allen and Unwin, 1999

As with Rio Tinto 2020 the ‘mean…unstable’ plan was mandated, not from Government House Sydney Town but from a ‘London Board of Directors’ -British Government.

‘With the natives we [the old hands] are now hand in glove’. Tench}}}}}}}

20/3 discard

But

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Sydney – April:

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‘Congratulations on the Recovery of your Majesty [King George III] from that Severity of Disease [madness] to which it has been the Will of the Almighty….that your Royal Person should be lately subjected’.

South Head – 3 June 1790: Lady Juliana with ‘London on her stern’ –

Letters! Letters! – Lady Juliana broke the terrible silence. See: Abandoned and Left to Starve January 1788 to June 1790

‘They were produced, and torn open in trembling agitation. News burst upon us like meridian splendor on a blind man. We were overwhelmed with it, public, private, general and particular’. Tench. ibid.

‘News of the disaster which had befallen the Guardian’. See: Titanic – Australia’s Titanic – HMS Guardian

‘The final battles of the American Revolution were fought not in North America but in India, another theater where Britain and France were vying for political dominance.

In both the United States and India as well as throughout the developing world legacies of that distant war persist’. Essays, The American Revolution – A World War, Part 2, British Global Ambitions and Indian Identity David K. Allison, Larrie D. Ferreiro, Smithsonian, 2013

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10 10 10

‘Bring in six [6] of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or if that should be found impracticable, to put that number [6] to death…bring back the heads of the slain’.

‘Lieutenant William Dawes whose tour of duty it was to go out with that party refused that duty by letter’. Professor G.A. Wood, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal; Vol. 19, Part 1, 1924

Read More

Sydney – 1790, 13 December: Governor Phillip ordered a detachment of fifty (50) men under command of Marine Captain Watkin Tench, march to Botany Bay… ‘instil universal terror…kill ten…bring in the heads of the slain’.

‘Dawes whose tour of duty it was to go out with that party [14 December 1790 to] ‘ bring back the heads of the slain’ refused that duty by letter’. Professor G.A. Wood. ibid.

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‘Dawes who had dreamed of finding a life in Australia for himself, applied to stay in the colony…Dawes refused…to apologise for his public comments condemning the punitive expeditions[s]’. Larrissa Behrendt.ibid.

Dawes ‘refusal to apologise’ holds the key to the jig-saw of modern Australia’s place in the cauldron of Europe’s dark history of imperial conflict and colonial conquests.

‘I should gladly have reconciled with this officer to a proper sense of his duty; but as he returns to England and thinks his conduct justifiable it become necessary to inform you Lordship on what grounds I was displeased with Lieutenant Dawes who, from being an officer of His Majesty’s Marine Forces, was not amenable to a general court-martial in this country. Governor Phillip to Lord Grenville, Historical Records of New South Wales

Phillip recommended Dawes face court-martial for his courageous stance in the face of a series of moral dilemmas that presented during his deployment. See: Smallpox – A Lethal Weapon, Boston 1775 – Sydney 1789

1791 – December, England: Lieutenant Dawes with other officers including Captain Tench, Lieutenant Ralph Clarke and Lieutenant Henry Ball RN HMS Supply’s captain, departed the colony on HMS Gorgan. See

We know Dawes sailed home under a cloud because K-1 was given not to Dawes but to Ball. Whether he was under close arrest is not known. Nor do we know if he faced a court-martial.

From England ‘he then went to Sierra Leone as Governor…In 1799, he gave evidence before a House of Lords committee considering legislation to limit the slave trade’. Larissa Behrendt. op.cit.

This is not the normal trajectory for an officer and gentlemen who ‘considers his [mutinous] conduct justifiable’.

Court-martial – yes or no? Either way there is a paper trail. Find it. See: Proximity and Not Distance Drove the Invasion of New Holland.

xxxxxxxxxI wish to remain Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Record of New South Wales. Vol. 1 Part 1 & 2

…However what happened did it take place

The refusal reveals an ignition point for Britain’s ‘nasty war’. The war that wrested New Holland from Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples and led to their near destruction.

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‘ ‘Dawes whose tour of duty it was to go out with that party refused that duty by letter’. Wood. op.cit..

When Governor Phillip gave orders; ‘instil universal terror….

Wiilliam

William England: Born at Portsmouth in 1762 Dawes, like many First Fleet senior officers, Governor Phillip RN, his 2-I-C Captain Hunter RN, Marines, Major Robert Ross, Captain David Collins, Lieutenant Watkin Tench and chief medical officer John White among them, had seen active service during America’s Revolutionary War of Independence 1775-1783.

Chesapeake, Virginia – 1781: At a pivotal point in that conflict – September 1781 – Dawes was wounded when his ship engaged in a fire-fight with French vessels off Chesapeake Bay, known as the Battle of the Capes.

In that action France’s Admiral de Grasses’ victory over the Royal Navy denied the British infantry reinforcements and the heavy artillery that could have delivered Britain victory at Yorktown.

Yorktown – 1781: The following month, October 1781, survivors of General Lord Charles Cornwallis’ large land army surrendered at Yorktown to a combined army of French – Marquis de Rochambeau’s Regulars – and General George Washington’s – Patriot militia.

‘By the time of the siege of Yorktown, in 1781,Britain was becoming overwhelmed by the effort of fighting five separate nation-states around the globe – France, Spain, the United States, the Dutch Republic, and the kingdom of Mysore, in India’. Larrie D. Ferreiro, Introduction, The American Revolution – A World War, David K. Allison, Larrie D. Ferreiro, Smithsonian, 2013

Although fighting continued ‘around the globe’ it is from Britain’s defeat at the Battle of Yorktown (1781) historians date America’s revolutionary victory.

A victory made possible primarily because France – ‘vying for dominance’ over Britain – bank-rolled General George Washington’s Patriot rebel militia.

‘The final battles of the American Revolution were fought not in North America but in India, another theater where Britain and France were vying for political dominance. In both the United States and India as well as throughout the developing world legacies of that distant war persist’. Essays, The American Revolution – A World War, Part 2, British Global Ambitions and Indian Identity David K. Allison, Larrie D. Ferreiro, Smithsonian, 2013

For Australia’s First Peoples the negative ‘legacies of that distant war persist’.

THE SHOCK OF THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS

‘We, reposing especial trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage and experience in military affairs, do appoint you to be Governor of our territory called New South Wales…Cape York to…South Cape…all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean’. His Majesty George III to Arthur Phillip, 12 October 1786. Historical Records of New South Wales Vol. 1

5atkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 19611790

England: News proclaiming; ‘Con

Paris: After months of unrest and street riots, on the 14th of July 1789, starving French men and women stormed the Bastille Prison. Prisoners stumbled from its dungeons to take revenge on the rich and famous.

In 1793 they would behead King Louis XVI their King and his Queen Antoinette.

19 3/ 2022VVVVVVVVVVV

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‘At the end of the American Revolutionary Wars [1775-1783] it had become clear that the upsurge in French shipbuilding activity had reached new heights and that the French and the Dutch were manoeuvring for advantage in India and the East’. Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip Sailor, Mercenary Governor Spy, Hardie Grant Books (Australia – UK ) 2013

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The French (Deéjà vu) September 1790

A land base to support ship-based whaling and sealing industries was high on the list of Britain’s ambitions for New Holland.

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Colbee aged about thirty (30) ‘lightly framed’ Tench says ‘better fitted for purposes of activity’ escaped. Bennalong, a year or so younger, was caught in the act.

Despite increased surveillance he managed to escape in May 1790 and returned to his people.

Tench says when Bennalong and Phillip met up again on Manly Beach in September ‘they discoursed for some time…Baneelon express[ed] pleasure to see his old acquaintance’.

A glass of Phillip’s fine French reds was offered and Bennalong tossed down ‘a toast to the King as he had been taught’.

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It is clear local Aborigines had changed tactics immediately they saw they were dealing with two (2) ‘unstable‘ groups of white people very much at each other’s throat.

And it must be mentioned the weekly ration ‘without distinction‘ for all males, soldier and convict alike, was already a bone of contention between the ‘old lags’ and these newcomers.

rrrrr 20/3 October 1790: ‘Butter from England…expended‘. Four (4) months without rain, no cows, milk or butter.

20/3************rrrrrrrr 20/3

November 1790: Justinian’s supplies were dwindling. ‘The natives throng the camp, every day…God knows we have little enough for ourselves.

If the Dutch Snow does not arrive arrive soon it [ration] must be shortened, as the casks in the storehouse, I observed yesterday are woefully decreased’. Tench.(used)

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‘His Excellency was now pleased to enter into the reasons which induced him to adopt measures of such severity….The barbarity of their conduct admits no extenuation’. Tench. op.cit.

Governor Phillip spelt out his rationale. ‘Since our arrival in the country no less than seventeen [17] of our people had either been killed or wounded by the natives.

In every former instance of hostility, they had acted either from having received injury or from misapprehension…”to the latter of these causes” added he “I attribute my own wound”.

But in this business with McEntire I [Phillip] am fully persuaded that they were unprovoked’.

Here it must be asked had t MacIntyre taken a U-turn on McIntyre? Emphatically no.

21/3 ……he first raid

211790 – October: In late October Bennalong had visited Government House to enquire on Phillip’s progress. There were no hard feelings between them and they ‘ceremoniously’ exchanged gifts.

Bennalong then went ‘room to room’ greeting members of the household with ‘great affection‘. He kissed Phillip’s French cook and the ‘orderly serjeant.

‘But the game-keeper McEntire he continued to hold in abhorrence, and would not suffer his approach’. Tench.

Putting aside ‘unprovoked’ what was ‘the barbarity of their conduct’ about. A single known assailant – their conduct’ – collective punishment of the innocent as well as the guilty.

Disproportionate, indiscriminate collective punishment was, then as now, contrary to the ‘rules and disciplines of war’.

The question must be asked, in the face of general unrest, did the raid of the 14th of December 1790 serve merely as tactical diversion.?

Create a common enemy and take off the heat.

Or was it as Michael Pembroke in Phillip Sailor Mercenary Governor Spy has it ‘an extravagant charade…served only as a melodramatic show of force’?

Not under any circumstance would God-fearing William Dawes have put his life, or the lives of others – black or white on the line, for a ‘charade’ a bit of fun. See: John McIntyre – Death of a Sure Thing

‘Dawes, whose tour of duty it was to go out with that [December 14th] party, refused that duty by letter…even after the Governor had taken great pains to point out the consequences of his being put under an arrest’. Professor G.A. Wood, Lieutenant William Dawes and Captain Watkin Tench, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal, Vol. 19, Part 1, 1924

And Phillip had been down that road before with Thomas Barrett’s execution (February 1788). The gruesome pantomime of Blind Man’s Bluff and Catch 22 had also served as a tactical diversion.

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dddddd##########Both Captain Tench and Lieutenant Dawes knew, when Governor Phillip issued these orders, his position as Captain-General, isolated as he was in the midst of a hostile military, was precarious in the extreme.

‘Certain officers’ of the newly arrived (June 1790) New South Wales Corps, impatient winners in the land lottery, were circling the tents.

Botany Bay – 1790 December 14: At dawn on the 14 December Tench’s detachment of fifty (50) men moved out for Botany Bay with; ‘three [3] days provisions, ropes to bind our prisoners, and hatchets and bags, to cut off and contain the heads of the slain’. Tench. ibid.

Sydney: Three (3) days later (17th) the exhausted troops returned to Sydney empty-handed with no prisoners or heads.

But they returned to a very different settlement.

Jakarta – 17 December: At dawn Waaksamheyd arrived from Jakarta loaded with food, medicines. She also brought hope of escape.

Sydney – 19 December: Lieutenant Dawes wrote to Governor Phillip via Company Adjacent Lowe repeating his initial reservations.

‘With regard to my declaration of the 13th December 1790…by which I do not by any means wish to have forgotten…I feel at this instant no reason to alter the sentiments I then entertained…inform[ing] the Governor that he was sorry he had been persuaded to comply with the order [13th] and very clearly showed that he would not obey a similar order in future’. Wood. ibid.

Dawe’s failure to ‘comply’ – dereliction of duty – was a capital offence. Phillip could have had him shot or hanged as a traitor. He did neither but recommended Dawes face court-martial and a possible death sentence on his return to England.

Botany Bay – 22 December: ‘Our first expedition having so totally failed, the governor resolved to try the fate of a second; and the ‘painful pre-eminence’ again devolved on me [Tench].

The orders under which I am commanded to act differing in no respect from the last. A little before sun-set on the the evening of the 22d we marched’. See: Arthur Phillip & John Macarthur ‘A Man Who Made Enemies’.

Marine Lieutenant William Dawes was not among their rank

Correspondence between Lieutenant Dawes, Governor Phillip and Lord Grenville, who replaced Lord Sydney as Home Secretary, reveal Phillip denied Lieutenant Dawes’ fervent request to be allowed to remain in Sydney.

1791 – Sydney: Three (3) months later (15 March 1791) HMS Gorgan, a converted warship of 911 tons packed to the gunnels with relief supplies and more troops arrived from England.

Captain John Parker RN her commander was under orders to discharge his cargo and return to England with marines of the Sydney Garrison overdue for repatriation.

England: HMS Gorgan sailed for England on the 19th of December 1791 with Tench, Dawes, Ball and almost the entire marine battalion, including twenty-one (21) marine wives and forty-six (46) children. See: HMS Gorgan and the Botany Bay Escapees

Because of the extremes of heat and cold, many children did not survive the challenging voyage home.

Captain Parker set a course for England by way of Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. On the long, difficult passage, Parker relied on both Lieutenant Dawes and Lieutenant Ball, who had taken true time’ K-1 with him to Jakarta.. See: HMS Gorgan and the Botany Bay Escapees

1792 – Portsmouth: Almost immediately Gorgan docked at Portsmouth on 18th June 1792 Dawes hired a carriage and set off for Greenwich Observatory to return ‘the eternal flame’ and other astronomical instruments supplied him by Astronomer Royal Rev. Nevil Maskelyne. See: Lotto and Longitude

POSTSCRIPT

2020 – Greenwich: At the Royal Observatory ‘H-4 hibernates, un-moving and untouchable mated for life with K-1 in the sea-through cave they share’. Sobel. ibid

KKK add Sierra Leonie

But as Stephen Conway points out in a recent publication there was more than met the eye to the anti-slavery campaign campaign; ‘the London government [of Pitt the Younger [was] keen to do the new [American] republic [damage] and the religiously committed were keen to regain God’s favour….’

‘In the aftermath of the [American] conflict, when the London government was keen to restore its own image and even more keen to do the new republic [damage], and the religiously committed were keen to regain God’s favour, British commentators made much of the movement to abolish the slave trade…and readily drew a contrast with the United States where [chattel] slavery not only remained a vital institution but became enshrined in the new constitution eventually agreed in 1787’. Stephen Conway, A Short History of the American Revolutionary War, Stephen Conway I.B. Tauris, , London, New York, reprint 2017

Tags: Aborigines, arthur phillip, Astronomer Royal, beheading, H-4, harrions chronometer, john m'entire, john macarthur, kendal K-1, nevil maskelyne, william dawes

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LIEUTENANT WILLIAM DAWES – THE ‘ETERNAL FLAME’ & THE SHOCK OF THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS

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The Botany Bay Medallion

LIEUTENANT WILLIAM DAWES – THE ‘ETERNAL FLAME’ & THE SHOCK OF THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS

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