Posts Tagged ‘Lieutenant John Macarthur’

DARK MATTER – ‘McMafia’ MACARTHUR & ‘FIERY INDIAN RUM’ THE TEETOTALLER’S DRUG OF CHOICE FOR OTHERS

Tuesday, January 19th, 2021

Sydney – June 1790: ‘On a high bluff, called South-head, at the entrance of the harbour…every morning from daylight until the sun sunk, did we sweep the horizon, in the hope of seeing a sail.

No communication  whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th May 1787 the day of our departure from Portsmouth….The misery and horror of such a situation cannot be imparted even by those who have suffered under it’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961

***********

‘Until, the year 1823 the government of New South Wales was vested entirely in the Governor who worked under the control of the Secretary of State for the Home Department.

He was an autocrat, wielding the widest powers, amenable to no criticism but than of the Minister [13,000 miles (21,000 km) away] in England’. Professor Ernest Scott, A Short History of Australia, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1953

***********

London – January 1790: ‘I am commanded to signify to you the King’s pleasure that directions be immediately given for the embarkation of the Corps raised for service in New South Wales and commanded by Major Grose’. Right Hon.W.W. Grenville to Secretary of War, London, 20 January 1790

***********

‘It does not appear that Grose’s antecedents had qualified him in any way for the performance of gubernatorial functions. He had been trained from his youth to arms and was essentially and only a soldier’. M.H. Bladen, Journal Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. I

***********

‘[Grose] had not been many hours in charge before [13 December 1792] he introduced into the Government of the colony the same system, and very much the same forms, which prevailed in his regiment…From this period, the ascendancy of the military dates. They became an aristocracy’ .Bladen. op.cit. 

***********

‘It was a great misfortune that this period of military rule occurred because in the course of it the colony was brought to degradation by drink, corruption, and general iniquity, which required years to mitigate’. Ernest Scott. op.cit.

***********

‘For the length of the interregnum the British Government was greatly at fault’. J.J. Achmutty, John Hunter, Australian Dictionary of Biography See: A Black Hole the First Interregnum December 1792-September 1795

***********

‘Military power was the most decisive fact about the early settlements; it was the frame within which everything else happened’. R. Connell and T.H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History, Documents, Narrative and Argument, 1987

Sydney – 1790, June: The first contingent, one hundred and fifteen (115) ,Officers NCOs and ORs of the New South Wales Corps, reached Sydney in June 1790.

Major Francis Grose their commander remained in England to recruit sufficient numbers to meet establishment requirement.

Lieutenant John Macarthur, an ambitious self-centred junior Corps Officer, took advantage of deep dissensions among his fellow officers and moved swiftly to fill the power vacuum created by Grose’s absence. See: The Switch 1790 – Context – War With France 1793-1815

Sydney -1792, 14 February:  Pitt  a convict transport with three hundred (300) male prisoners reached Sydney on Valentine’s Day 1792.  The Pitt also brought Major Grose with an additional two hundred (200) infantry troops.

(more…)

AN UGLY WAR – BRITAIN VERSUS ‘THE OTHER’

Thursday, December 31st, 2020

‘The territory of England is too small for its population. She requires a monopoly of the four [4] corners of the globe to enable her to exist. War procures this monopoly, because it gives England the right of destruction at sea’. Napoleon, cited Jonathan Holslag, A Political History of the World, 3000 Years of War and Peace, Pelican, 2018  

************

‘Phillip was authorised to see to the defence of the colony…Military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted  from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.

These raids [‘kill 6… bring in the heads’] had commenced by December [14] 1790′. Professor Bruce Kercher, History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995

************

‘Dawes whose duty it was to go out with that party [14 December] refused that duty by letter’.  Professor G. Arnold Wood, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society Vol. X, 1924, Part  1

***********

‘From 1788 there had been continuous disputation between the civil power represented by the autocratic uniformed naval governors and the military’. John McMahon, Not a Rum Rebellion But a Military Insurrection, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 92, 2006

§ Œ §

1790 – September 7, Manly Beach: A ‘tremendous monster’ stranded on Manly Beach.  Aborigines greeted the seasonal return of their totem with ‘rapture’.  After an extremely lean winter the whale flagged the promise of coming abundance.See: Manly Location, Location, Location

The stranding however proved a tipping point for ‘further mischief’ that can be linked to the near annihilation of a free people, Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples. See: Arthur’s Algorithm – ‘infuse universal terror’ open – sesame

Governor Arthur Phillip’s career in the Royal Navy had began harpooning whales in the Arctic. Now (1790) armed with a pistol, dirk’ and a bottle or two of fine French reds he was rowed across to Manly where he met up again with the warrior Bennalong.

‘[The governor] uncorked a bottle, and poured out a glass of it, which the other [Bennelong] drank off with his former marks of relish and good humour, giving for a toast, as he had been taught “the King”. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961 

A little way off a group of ‘other’ Aborigines stood watching this strange pantomime.

(more…)

MACHIAVELLIAN MACARTHUR POST GOVERNOR PHILLIP

Thursday, December 31st, 2020

‘From 1788 there had been continuous disputation between the civil power represented by the autocratic uniformed naval governors and the military’. John McMahon, Not a Rum Rebellion But A Military Insurrection, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society. Vol. 92, 2006

**********

‘A knowledge of the position of the military and their immediate friends occupied from 1792-1810, affords a key to the whole history of the colony; and without this knowledge many important transactions, affecting the civil, social and political interests of the community would appear almost incomprehensible’. Samuel Bennett, Australian Discovery and Colonisation Vol. 1 to 1800, Facsimile Edition, 1981.

**********

‘There are two kinds of error: those of commission, doing something that should not be done, and those of omission, not doing something that should be done. The latter are much more serious than, the former’. Kenneth Hopper and William Hopper, The Puritan Gift, Forward Professor Russell Lincoln Ackoff, I.B. Tauris, New York,

**********

‘For the length of the [first] interregnum [1792-1795] the British government was greatly at fault’. J.J. Auchmuty, Hunter, Australian Dictionary of Biography

***********

‘His [Hunter’s] commission as captain-general and governor-in-chief was dated 6 February 1794 [he] did not sail until 25 February 1795…arrived [Sydney] 7 September 1795 and assumed office four days later’. Auchmuty. op.cit.

αααααααα

Following repeated requests for repatriation Governor Arthur Phillip RN received approval to return to England.

Sydney – 1792, December 12: Phillip departed Sydney for England at the end of 1792 in the Atlantic taking Bennalong and Yemmerrawannie a younger warrior  with him.

By default after Governor Phillip’s departure ‘the plenitude of power’ Britain vested in its naval governors fell into the hands of the military exposing the First Australians to the brutality of the New South Wales ‘Rum’ Corps. See:  Arthur’s Algorithm – Infuse Universal Terror – Open Sesame 

Shortly after reaching England Phillip resigned Governorship of New South Wales. His successor, the First Fleet’s courageous Captain John Hunter RN, was not commissioned until 6th of February 1794. See Proximity Not Distance Drove Britain’s Invasion of New Holland.

(more…)

SHOCK AND AWE – ‘INFUSE UNIVERSAL TERROR’ ‘MY MEN HEARD A CHILD CRY’

Wednesday, November 25th, 2020

Sydney Cove – 1790 June 1 : ‘We had now been [thirty-six] months from England in which long period …we had been entirely cut off, no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th May, 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth.

Here on the summit of the hill, every morning from daylight until the sun sunk, did we sweep the horizon, in hope of seeing a sail…at every fleeting speck which arose from the bosom of the sea, the heart bounded’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardige, Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1961

*********

Sydney – 1790, June 3: ‘Great change came 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 owning elite’. Nigel Rigby, Peter Van Der Merwe & Glyn Williams, National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Pacific Explorations, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, 2018

*******

Sydney Headquarters – 1790,  December 13:  ‘The governor pitched upon me [Tench] to execute the…command…those natives who reside  near the head of Botany Bay….put ten [10] to death…bring in the heads of the slain [and] two [2] prisoners to  execute in the most most public and exemplary manner;…my fixed determination to repeat it, whenever any future breach of good conduct on their side, shall render it necessary’.  His Excellency Governor Arthur Phillip RN, General Orders to Marine Captain Watkin Tench

(more…)

A TETHERED GOAT – JOHN McENTIRE- DECEMBER 1790

Tuesday, October 27th, 2020

Sydney – 1790 January 1: ‘Since we first arrived at this distant country [January 1788] all this while we have been as it were buried alive, never having the opportunity to hear from our friends…our hopes are now almost vanished’. Reverend Richard Johnson, 9 April 1790‘. Jack Egan, Buried Alive, Eyewitness accounts of the making of a nation 1788-92, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1999

June 1790  Flags Up…a ship with London on her stern’.

On the 3rd of June 1790,  two (2) months after  ‘hope [had] now almost vanished’– the cry ‘Flags Up’ rang out.  Lady Juliana with two hundred and twenty six (226) ‘useless’ women prisoners broke the terrible isolation.

She was first of four (4) vessels that made up the second fleet Britain’s Grim Armada .By the end of June 1790 Alexander, Scarborough Suprize the fleet’s death ships arrived with approximately one thousand (1000) men.

One hundred and fifteen (115) officers and other ranks, first contingent of the New South Wales Corps of Infantry guarded the prisoners during the voyage.

London Gazette Extract

‘The great change came in the arrival with the Second Fleet of the first companies of the New South Wales Corps’. Nigel Rigby, Peter van der Merwse, Glyn Williams. Pacific Explorations, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, London, 2018

Just six (6) months later; ‘military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. These raids had commenced by December 1790’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995

(more…)

A Corps of Foot for NSW

Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

London Gazette, October 1789. including article War-Office, Corps of Foot for NSW.

Excert from London Gazette showing Ensign John M’Arthur to be promoted to Lieutenant