‘When leaving Botany Bay [for Sydney Cove 25 January 1788] Phillip noticed 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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‘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
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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
Harrison H-4 Chronometer
‘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 Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, Allen & Unwin, 1995.
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‘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 n umber [6] to death…bring back the heads of the slain’. 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
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‘Lieutenant William Dawes whose tour of duty it was to go out with that party refused that duty by letter’. Professor G.A. Wood, Lieutenant William Dawes and Captain Watkin Tench, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal; Vol. 10, Part 1, 1924
Australia knows little of the ‘eternal flame’ or the remarkable role it played in the invasion of New Holland, and dispossession of its First Peoples.
Warranne – 26 January 1788: K I – a faithful replica of John Harrison’s H-4 a ‘sea-going pocket watch’, given by Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne into the care of marine Lieutenant William Dawes, fetched up at one particular ‘remote corner of the world’ – Sydney Cove – aboard HMS Supply one (1) of the First Fleet’s eleven (11) ships.
It was the essential ingredient in both the survival of the British invaders and near destruction of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples.
‘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. Arnold Wood, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society Vol. X, 1924, Part 1
However, aside from Daniel Rooke, Kate Grenville’s star-struck cardboard cut-out hero of The Lieutenant, non-indigenous Australians know almost nothing of him.
‘Dawes whose tour of duty it was to go out with that [14 December 1790] party [refused that duty by letter’. Wood. ibid.
Australia either knows nothing of, or turns a blind eye, on Lieutenant Dawes’ 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. See: The Big Switch
‘Phillip noticed two [2] French ships in the offing‘.
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
25 January: An ‘alarmed’ Captain Phillip quit Botany Bay on the 25th of January1788. Should the French try again to enter Botany Bay; ‘he thought it wise to delay the fleet’s departure till the following day’.
Aboard HMS Supply, Phillip sailed for Sydney Cove ‘to hoist English colours’ arriving there just as night fell.
26 January: Next day the English fleet departed Botany Bay for Sydney Cove. That same afternoon La Boussole and L’Astrolabe entered and anchored in Frenchmen’s Cove to rest their crews and repair the ships.
§
Phillip the spy was well aware of France’s burning ambition to regain territory lost to Britain in the Seven Years’ War 1756-1763. If it could be done at the expense of her arch-rival all the better.
Following France’s spectacular success in the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) King Louis XVI was determined to expand his nation’s colonial interests in India.
Phillip was uncertain of La Perouse’s immediate intentions. He acted quickly to prevent France securing a naval base in the Pacific Ocean.
Captain James Cook RN in HMS Resolution on his second voyage had, among many English names he conferred on coves, bays and islands were New Caledonia (4 September 1774) and Norfolk Island (10 October 1774).
Norfolk Island – 14 February: Phillip chose Norfolk Island 1136 nautical miles from Sydney and two weeks sailing time away.
Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN sailed to the island in HMS Supply with six (6) months of provisions to support marines, a doctor, nine (9) male and six (6) female convicts.
§
Consider the English castaways at Sydney Cove squeezed between sea and bush, twenty-one thousand (21,000) kilometres from home. Filled with fear of what lay ahead while struggling to make sense of their surroundings. The urge to flee must have been overwhelming.
Phillip, with La Boussole and L’Astrolabe close by, felt compelled to assert authority over ‘his people’. With few options he chose diversion – a gruesome pantomime.
1788 – 27 February: A matter of days after convict Thomas Barrett finished engraving the Botany Bay Medallion, Governor Phillip signed his death warrant. See: Terror in Three Acts – From Here to Eternity 27th, Blind Man’s Bluff 28th, Catch 22 – 29th February 1788
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. A plaque on the corner of Harrington and Essex Street Sydney marks Thomas Barrett’s fleeting presence in Australia.
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‘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 John Flamsteed’s long tenure as Britain’s first Astronomer Royal at Greenwich Observatory, from the time of that Institution’s inception in 1675 during the reign of Charles the Second – the ‘Restoration King’.
Similarly the discord that attended H-4’s birth accompanied K-1 to New Holland but for very different reasons.
While the Reverend Flamsteed was Astronomer Royal (1675-1720) Edmond Halley of comet fame, with the connivance of Isaac Newton, purloined plagiarised and published without authority Flamsteed’s ‘Star Catalog’ his life’s work.
.Halley and Newton’s antics paled however when compared to those of Reverend Nevil Maskelyne Britain’s fifth Astronomer Royal from 1765 to 1811. See: Malicious Maskelyne
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 l 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 to observe the Transit of Venus at Tahiti for the Royal Society and afterwards search for the fabled Great South Land. for the Admiralty.
Surely the absence of Harrison’s ‘precision time-keeper’ must be factored into the length of Endeavour’s extended voyage. No crew died of scurvy, for this Cook is rightly lauded.
But at Batavia, modern-day Jakarta on the homeward leg much to Cook’s sorrow, 50% of his men succumbed to malaria and dysentery.
§
Marine Lieutenant William Dawes
Greenwich: Two decades later, in 1787 Maskelyne then Astronomer Royal, delivered K-1 into the care of Marine Lieutenant William Dawes.
It was the chronometer Cook took on his second voyage (1772-1775) with Resolution, Adventure and on his third (1776-1780) with Resolution, Discovery .
‘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
Hawaii – 1779: K-1 is said to have stopped at the time of Captain Cook’s death at Hawaii on the 14th of February 1779.
Dawes would also have been aware it was Maskelyne who denied Cook the H-4 on the Endeavour voyage. It would be hard to imagine the reverence with which Lieutenant 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’ put his life on the line in December 1790; when Governor Phillip gave orders; ‘instil universal terror…. if six [natives] cannot be taken, let this number be shot ‘.
‘Dawes whose tour of duty it was to go out with that party refused that duty by letter’. Wood. op.cit..
Botany Bay -13 December 1790: Governor Phillip ordered a detachment of fifty (50) men under command of Marine Captain Watkin Tench, march to Botany Bay with orders ‘kill ten…bring in the heads of the slain’.
§
‘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 knew anything of the matter’. Anon to Evan Nepean, Historical Record of New South Wales
The timing of the invasion of New Holland is no mystery. Dawes refusal to obey Governor Phillip holds the key to the jig-saw of modern Australia’s place in the cauldron of Europe’s dark history of imperial conflict and competing colonial conquests.
It 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.
Phillip recommended Dawes face court-martial on his return to England to answer 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
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
Governor Phillip’s ‘duty’ as commander of a Royal Navy Expeditionary Force was to invade New Holland and retain a foot-hold until reinforcements – the infantry – arrived from England to prosecute the military campaign required for consolidation and subjugation of the country’s original inhabitants.
‘The troops sent to garrison the Australian colonies’ were a long time coming.
The under-resourced invaders, were callously abandoned. Not until June 1790 did a ship arrive from England. See: Abandoned and Left to Starve Sydney Cove January 1788 to June 1790
The long lag-time forced Governor Phillip adopt the role of enforcer.
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…From the intelligence our our friends and connections we had been entirely cut off.
Famine was approaching with gigantic strides...the misery and horror of such a situation cannot be imparted, even by those who have suffered under it’. Marine Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 19611790
South Head – 3 June 1790: Lady Juliana with ‘London on her stern’ – first of four (4) second fleet vessels – sailed through Sydney Heads with two hundred and twenty-six (226) women convicts.
Lady Juliana broke the terrible silence. See: Abandoned and Left to Starve January 1788 to June 1790
Letters! Letters! 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
England: News proclaiming; ‘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’.
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.
§
‘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
In 1790 ‘circumstances’ changed everything. With the French fighting each other India could, at least for a time, be relegated to the back-burner.
‘The French revolution of 1789 with all the attendant circumstances of that wonderful and unexpected event, succeeded to amaze us’. Tench. ibid.
Previously: ‘New Holland [was] a good blind, then, when we want to add to the military strength of India’. Anon. to Evan Nepean, Historical Records of New South Wales
Now (1790) in Phillip’s estimation Chile, Peru, Nicaragua, Panama had moved to the top of the pile of Britain’s must haves.
Britain’s domination over the sea-route to Spain’s Pacific West Coast, Central and South American ‘treasure’ colonies, via the Southern Oceans, would leave the ‘glittering prize’ – silver and gold – 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
.THE BACK STORY
London Gazette 17 October 1789
London Gazette Extract
Whitehall – 16 October 1789: ‘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’.
Plymouth – 17 January 1790: In mid January one thousand (1000) male and seventy-eight (78) women convicts departed England for Botany Bay in the second fleet’s remaining ships Neptune, Scarborough, Suprize.
Government had issued ‘slave’ contracts to Camden, Calvert and King a London company prominent in the ‘Guinea slave trade’. See: ‘Britain’s Grim Armada’ – The Dead and the Living Dead.
Since the Treaty Utrecht 1713-14 English ships transported 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 – Chattel Slavery – Britain’s Economic Addiction (pending)
‘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
To guard against mutiny, distributed throughout three (3)ships of the second fleet, were one hundred and fifteen (115) infantry officers and men of ‘foot’ – the New South Wales Corps.
‘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, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1.
Sydney – June 1790: Before the end of June 1790 Neptune, Suprize, Scarborough the fleet’s death ships arrived.
Laden with sick and dying men they exacerbated an already critical situation by placing severe strain on available food and medicines.
Captain Hill who sailed in Suprize wrote;‘I imagine the [Sydney] Medicine Chest to be nearly exhausted and Provisions are a scarce Article’.
Starved, locked below docks throughout the voyage, treated with savage brutality, one-quarter (25%) of approximately one thousand (1000) male prisoners embarked died during the passage.
‘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
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
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.
§
‘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
In similar vein Captain Hill wrote of the voyage to William Wilberforce a prominent English anti-slavery activist.
‘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
Wilberforce, a close friend of Prime Minister William Pitt, was England’s leading Parliamentary abolitionist. His efforts to ‘regain God’s favour’ by ending Britain’s economic dependence on chattel slavery earned him the title ‘God’s Politician’.
§
‘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
Major Grose the Corps commander remained 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 even before the ships left England.
In Sydney the arrogant Macarthur moved to fill the power vacuum created by Major Grose’s absence.
§
‘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
Governor Phillip was fully aware of what the Pitt Administration expected from the conquest and occupation of New Holland. When news of the French Revolution reached Sydney in June 1790 Phillip’s focus altered.
‘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’. Stanley. Ibid.
He assessed the arrogant Macarthur’s evident overarching personal ambition posed a serious challenge to the ambitions of ‘King and Country’. See: Machiavellian Macarthur
But ‘famine was approaching with gigantic strides’ and the naval Governor Phillip was isolated in the midst of an increasingly hostile soldiery.
Norfolk Island: ‘Famine’ three months earlier, 19th of March 1790, while evacuating 50% of Sydney’s starving white population to Norfolk Island, HMS Sirius run onto a submerged reef and sank.
Thankfully Captain Hunter made sure, ‘the eternal flame‘ Captain Cook’s K-1 chronometer, had been taken off Sirius before she sank below the waves.
China: Hunter was to have sailed Sirius onto China and arrange a rescue mission. 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 [China} tidings were proclaimed at Sydney…The most distracting apprehensions were entertained’ Tench continued; ‘all hopes are now concentrated in the little Supply’.
Batavia – April: In mid April 1790 Captain Lieutenant Henry Ball RN took K1 and sailed HMS Supply to present day Jakarta.
There he was to buy tons of urgently needed food and medicines from the Dutch and charter a large vessel to bring them to Sydney. See: Missing in Action – HMS Sirius & HMS Supply
Sydney – 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.
§
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.
‘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, 1964
Manly Beach – September: A migrating ‘monster’ whale on its way from Antarctica beached on the sand at Manly.
Governor Phillip, whose salt-water career began hunting whale in Arctic waters, was rowed across the harbour to see what species it might be.
The stranding caused great excitement in both camps. Whale, totem of the Eora Peoples, drew them to Manly to marvel at its grandeur. Among them was Bennalong a young warrior.
Months earlier (November 1789) Phillip had ordered the capture of two (2) Aboriginal men. In December Colbee and Bennalong were kidnapped from Manly Beach. See: Kidnapped – Manly – What’s In A Name
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’.
Phillip then turned his attention on the whale.
‘A native with a spear in his hand came forward…the nearer, the governor approached, the greater became the terror and agitation of [Wileemarin] 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’.
Prior to its successful extraction William Balmain, the fleet’s senior surgeon, sought advise from local Aboriginals as to the spear’s idiosyncrasies.
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’! Tench. ibid.
The aftermath of the attack was clearly the opposite of what Tench expected. Instead of ‘bloodshed and horror’ came friendly dialogue.
An outcome even more surprising as; ‘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.
There was however another side to the ‘great dissatisfaction‘ equation. ‘Dissatisfaction’ was not limited to ‘the natives’.
‘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 emanated, not from Government House Sydney Town but from the ‘London Board of Directors’ -British Government.
‘With the natives we [the old hands] are now hand in glove’. Tench
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.
October 1790: ‘Butter from England…expended‘. Four (4) months without rain, no cows, milk or butter.
19 October 1790: HMS Supply ‘we witnessed her departure [April] with tears’ 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 somewhat difficult dealings with the Dutch. Nevertheless tons of food and medicines were purchased and a vessel Waaksamheyd chartered 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 the Waaksamheyd even turn up?
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.
December 9: Still no Dutch ship; ‘everyone was hungry’. With a marine NCO three ( 3) armed convicts, Patrick Burn, John Randall and John McEntire – ‘the person of whom Baneelon, had on former occasions, shewn so much dread and hatred’ – were sent to Botany Bay on a kangaroo shoot.
December 10: At 1 am a single assailant, Pemulwuy a Bidjigal warrior, identified by ‘a speck in his left eye’, speared and severely wounded Mc Intyre.
December 13: The Governor called Captain Tench to Headquarters; ‘tomorrow…march to Botany Bay…instil universal terror… [kill ten] cut off, and bring in the heads of the slain, for which purpose, hatchets and bags would be furnished’. Tench. ibid.
§
‘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 Bennlong who ‘on former occasions [had] shewn so much dread and hatred’ taken a U-turn on McIntyre? Emphatically no.
In late October Bennalong 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
‘Even after the Governor had taken great pains to point out the consequences of his being put under an arrest Dawes, whose tour of duty it was to go out with that [December 14th] party, refused that duty by letter’. 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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In 1788 Dawes had supplied convict Thomas Barrett with the technical details he engraved on the Botany Bay Medallion. Not many days after its completion Dawes witnessed as Barrett strangled slowly hanging from the gallows-tree. See: From Here to Eternity
In December 1790 Dawes laid his moral dilemma – a known assailant and punishing both guilty and innocent – before Rev. Richard Johnson, Chaplain of the ‘First Fleet’ who counselled Dawes on his military obligation.
Following that conversation Dawes; ‘informed Captain Campbell that the Rev. Mr. Johnson thought he might obey the order, and that he was ready to go out with the party, which he did’. Tench. ibid.
Tench too showed unease. Governor Phillip subsequently amended his General Orders.
‘Ten’ became ‘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 in the heads of the slain’. Governor Arthur Phillip, General Order to Marine Captain Tench.
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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
‘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
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.
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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
Tags: arthur phillip, Captain cook, conflict, crime and punishment, exploration, first fleet, Harrisons chronometer, hms endeavour, K1 chronometer, navigation, william dawes