Admiral Phillip/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
In the famine time, Collins says, the little society that was in the place was broken up, and every man seemed left to brood in solitary silence over the dreary prospect before him.
With the exception of the Johnsons, the only free women and children in the settlement were the families of the marines, and it was not until the arrival of the New South Wales Corps, in the ships of the Second and Third Fleets, that a 'Government House set' began to loom on the social horizon.
Many of the officers of the regiment were men of good family. Major Grose, who brought with him a Commission as Lieutenant-Governor, and was accompanied by his wife, was a man who had seen much active service, and it was at his suggestion, and by him, that the corps was raised. The senior captain was a brother of Nepean, the Under-Secretary to the Home Department, and Macarthur, the senior lieutenant (whose name will be remembered when all the others are forgotten, since he founded the wool industry of the colony), took pains to prove himself, on the passage out, 'an officer and a gentleman.' Says the Morning Post of 2d December 1789:—
'In consequence of a private dispute on board the Neptune, Captain Gilbert, the commander of that ship, attended by his second, Mr Nelson of Plymouth Dock, met by appointment Lieutenant Macarthur of the Botany Bay Rangers, with his second, the surgeon's mate of the Neptune, at the Old Gun Wharf, near the lines. The distance of ten paces being measured, both gentlemen fired their pistols together. Lieutenant Macarthur's ball passed through Captain Gilbert's coat. They then fired a second pistol, each without effect, when the seconds interposed, and the business was settled by Lieutenant Macarthur declaring Captain Gilbert's conduct was in every respect that of a gentleman and a man of honour. In the evening, Lieutenant Macarthur declared the same on the quarter-deck of the Neptune, to the satisfaction of all parties. It is said that the quarrel originated on a refusal of Captain Gilbert to admit Lieutenant Macarthur into his own private mess; at the same time he offered him every accommodation for himself and his family that the ship would allow. This brought on some dispute, which occasioned very high words, but we are happy to say the duel ended without bloodshed.'
Mrs Macarthur, in letters to England written soon after her arrival at Sydney in 1791, gives us a not altogether gloomy picture of the colony. Some weeks were passed cheerfully, if not gaily. 'On my first landing everything was new to me—every bird, every insect, every flower, etc.—in short, all was novelty around me, and was noticed with a degree of eager curiosity and pertubation that, after a while, subsided into that calmness I have already described. In my former letters I gave you the character of Mr Dawes, and also of Captain Tench. Those gentlemen and a few others are the chief among whom we visit; indeed, we are in that habit of intimacy with Captain Tench that there are few days pass that we do not spend some part of together. Mr Dawes we do not see so frequently. He is so much engaged with the stars that, to mortal eyes, he is not always visible. I had the presumption to become his pupil, and meant to learn a little astronomy. It is true that I have had many a pleasant walk to his house (something less than half a mile from Sydney), have given him much trouble in making orrerys, and explaining to me the general principle of the heavenly bodies; but I soon found I had mistaken my abilities, and blush at my error.
'Still, I wanted something to fill up a certain vacancy in my time, which could neither be done by writing, reading or conversation. To the two first I did not feel myself always inclined, and the latter was not in my power, having no female friends to unbend my mind to, nor a single woman with whom I could converse with any satisfaction to myself.
'I shall now tell you of another recourse I had to fill up some of my vacant hours. Our new house is ornamented with a pianoforte of Mr Worgan's. He kindly means to leave it with me, and now, under his direction, I have begun a new study; but I fear, without my master, I shall not make any great proficiency. I am told, however, I have done wonders in being able to play off God Save the King, and Foot's Minuet, besides that of reading the notes with great facility.'
The Governor gave a dinner during the stay of the Gorgon, when, according to Collins, upwards of fifty persons were at table, and such a gathering had not before been witnessed in the colony.
We have a picture of Phillip's entertaining the new arrivals from England in the Gorgon, drawn by Mrs Parker, wife of the captain of the ship, which is worth reproducing here:—
'When we went on shore, we were all admiration at the natural beauties raised by the hand of Providence without expense or toil. The gentle ascents, the valleys, and the abundance of flowering shrubs, render the face of the country very delightful. The shrub which most attracted my attention was one which bears a white flower, very much resembling our English hawthorn; the smell of it is both sweet and fragrant, and perfumes the air around to a considerable distance. 'In Botany Bay there are not many land-fowls; of the larger sort, only eagles are seen; of the smaller kind, though not numerous, there is a variety, from the size of a wren to that of a lark; all of which are remarkable for fine loud notes and beautiful plumage, particularly those of the paroquet kind. Crows are also found here, exactly the same as those in England.
'Our amusements, although neither numerous or expensive, were to me perfectly novel and agreeable; the fatherly attention of the good Governor upon all occasions, with the friendly politeness of the officers, rendered our sèjour perfectly happy and comfortable.
'After our arrival here. Governor King and his lady resided on shore at Governor Phillip's, to whose house I generally repaired after breakfasting on board; indeed it has always proved a home for me: under this hospitable roof I have often ate part of a kangaroo with as much glee as if I had been a partaker of some of the greatest delicacies of this metropolis, although latterly I was cloyed with them, and found them very disagreeable.
'We made several pleasant excursions up the cove to the settlement called Parramatta. The numerous branches, creeks and inlets that are formed in the harbour of Port Jackson, and the wood that covers all their shores down to the very edge of the water, make the scenery beautiful; the north branch is particularly so, from the sloping of its shores, the interspersion of tufted woods, verdant lawns, and the small islands, which are covered with trees, scattered up and down.
'Upon our first arrival at Parramatta, I was surprised to find that so great a progress has been made in this new, settlement, which contains above one thousand convicts, besides the military. There is a very good level road, of great breadth, that runs nearly a mile in a straight direction from the landing-place to the Governor's house, which is a small, convenient building, placed upon a gentle ascent, and surrounded by about a couple of acres of garden ground: this spot is called Rose Hill. On both sides of the road are small thatched huts, at an equal distance from each other. After spending the day very agreeably at the Governor's, we repaired to the lodging which had been provided for us, where we had the comfort of a large wood fire, and found everything perfectly quiet, although surrounded by more than one thousand convicts.
'This little excursion afforded us the opportunity of noticing the beautiful plumage of the birds in general, and of the emu in particular, two of which we discovered in the woods. Their plumage is remarkably fine, and rendered particularly curious, as each hen has two feathers generally of a light brown; the wings are so small as hardly to deserve the name. They can run with such swiftness that a greyhound can with difficulty keep pace with them. The flesh tastes somewhat like beef.'[1]
Before the first Governor left, the traffic in rum was already growing into an evil, and Phillip, foreseeing the consequences, wrote home more than once on the subject. Grose, Phillip's successor, as soon as he took charge, relaxed the wise restrictions put upon the sale of spirits by Phillip.
Mr Johnson, in a letter to Hunter on the state of the colony during the administration of Phillip's successor, shows the effect of the liquor traffic:—
'Yourself, sir, being a kind of resident amongst us at the first formation of the colony, and for some time afterwards, I need not state to you the plans adopted and the measures pursued by Governor Phillip for the proper regulation and good order of the colony, as well as in a moral as in a civil point of view.
'Little or no alterations were made from those plans or measures, from the time you then left us to that when Governor Phillip himself returned to England, in December 1792.
'Some time previous to his going I was at his request sworn in to act as a civil magistrate in your place, which duty I continued to perform until the time he left us, at which time the colony was as peaceable, orderly and moral as could be expected from such a description of people as the colony was formed of.
'But no sooner had Governor Phillip left the colony than I was convinced that the plan or measures of Government were about to undergo an entire change. The civil magistrates, within two days, received an order that their duty would in future be dispensed with, and from that time till your Excellency's arrival again in the colony, everything was conducted in a kind of military manner.
'This, I believe, was the first step toward overturning all those attempts and endeavours that had hitherto been planned and pursued for the establishment of good order to be kept up amongst the different ranks and orders of the inhabitants of the colony.
'Every order that had been given tending to promote morality and religion seemed to be laid aside, and fresh orders issued tending to banish whatever (in the opinion of a good and virtuous mind) is or ought to be the first considered and promoted (and particularly in a colony like this, where by far the major part of the inhabitants are lost to all sense of virtue, and abandoned to every species of wickedness), viz., a reverence for the Supreme Being, and a strict observance of all His just and righteous precepts.'
Surgeon Arndell in a letter on the same subject says:—
'Nothing more painful or distressing can be imagined than our situation during the last-mentioned period. The departure of Governor Phillip from the colony was soon followed by a surprising change in the management of civil affairs: for the security of good order and public peace were in a moment almost annihilated, and a torrent of licentiousness bore everything civil and sacred before it. Whatever was injurious or disgraceful to human nature might have been reasonably expected from general drunkenness; yet general and habitual drunkenness absolutely became the unfortunate fashion of the times: the consequence was that crimes of every sort increased to an alarming degree: thefts and robberies became so numerous that they were spoken of as mere matters of course, and even rapes and murders were not infrequent. The respect due to superiors, and the subordination so essential to the welfare of civil society, seemed banished from the minds of the unthinking multitude, and that to such a degree that no one could think himself safe in passing from one part of the town to another. Among several insults I have myself met with, a soldier accosted me one evening in the road at Parramatta and insisted on my spending a bottle with him. Upon saying that I would see him home to his barracks he told me he would spare me that trouble by knocking me down, which he would certainly have done at the moment if he had not been prevented by a person who joined us at the time.'
Six years before this time Phillip had written thus to Nepean:—
'The impossibility of preventing the convicts' cloathing and necessaries from passing into the hands of those for whom those articles are not intended, makes me wish that every article intended for the convicts should be marked. Their linens and woollens might, I think, without any additional expense, have stripes of a different colour wove in them. The iron pots and every other article should likewise be marked : and this is absolutely necessary, for a convict will sell for a pint of spirits the necessaries which should serve him for months, and there always will be those who will purchase them. …
'The landing of spirits without having a permit has been prohibited in the Port Orders, in order to prevent the convicts procuring any; but if some duty was laid on all spirits landed in the settlement it would more effectually answer the purpose. The duties so collected would, of course, be applied for the benefit of the Crown. You will. Sir, favour me with your opinion on that head.'
The Government informed him that an allowance of rum for the troops was on the way out, and to this Phillip replied, in 1792, that 'the permitting of spirits amongst the civil and military may be necessary, but it will certainly be a great evil.'
A similar, but less serious, scandal was promptly put a stop to by Phillip. This was the bringing out of contraband cargo. The Governor wrote home in reference to this in November 1791, to the Commissioners of the Navy, as follows:—
'Having been informed that there were great quantities of cordage, copper, lead and iron on board the Albemarle, Active, Admiral Barrington and Queen transports, the masters of those ships were sent for, and from the master of the Albemarle an account was received of what they admitted to have been put on board by the owners, which they say was done after Government had sent all the stores and provisions which were intended for the colony, and that they had never declared their ships full. A copy of the account received from the master of the Albemarle is enclosed, but which can be but a very small part of what those ships have brought out: a copy of the masters' declaration as to their having never declared their ships full is likewise enclosed.
'The great inconvenience attending the want of limestone has been pointed out: and if it was necessary for those ships to bring ballast, limestone might have been put on board, and would have been easily changed for the stone of this country, and which I hope the Board will order to be done on any future occasion.'
It must be admitted that Phillip's time was pretty well occupied in the serious duties of his office, and that in a colony where the Governor had to devise means to feed his people, to see that ships arriving in his territory brought limestone for general use, instead of lead for private purposes, and to take care that the rum traffic was kept within bounds, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the 'social functions,' which nowadays are among the chief duties of Australian Governors, in Phillip's time took the form of an occasional 'cold collation,' or an invitation to dinner with a request to 'bring your bread in your pocket.'
- ↑ 'A Voyage Round the World in the Gorgon man-of-war. Captain John Parker; performed and written by his widow for the advantage of a numerous family. Dedicated by permission to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.' London : John Nichols, Fleet Street.