The schemes for Lemane and Das Voltas Bay were only marginally more realistic than the Portuguese slave option. The idea of a convict colony at Lemane died under the withering parliamentary rhetoric of that conservative hero Edmund Burke, who described Gambia as ‘the capital seat of plague, pestilence and famine’. It was, he said, quoting the poet John Milton, a place where ‘all life dies and all death lives’. If convicts were just sent away to die, as they assuredly would in such a place, a serious question would arise as to the humanity, and possibly validity, of a sentence of transportation. Then the scheme for Das Voltas Bay, which had been recommended by the Beauchamp Committee in place of Lemane, simply disappeared when the sloop Nautilis returned from a survey of the region in late July 1786 and her captain reported that any proposed settlement there would be utterly hopeless. He had never seen ‘so dreary a coast, along which we had sailed nearly 1,200 miles in a direct line, without seeing a tree, or procuring a drop of fresh water’. He was referring to what we now know as the Skeleton Coast of Namibia.
Within a few weeks of the dispiriting report from the captain of the Nautilis, the Cabinet settled on New South Wales. The decision was made on Saturday, 19 August 1786 at the beginning of the summer recess. Cabinet meetings were normally held on Tuesdays and Fridays but a royal levee had delayed the meeting. There were no minutes, and on the following Monday, Sydney’s Under-Secretary, Nepean, drafted the letter announcing the decision. The resolution to found a settlement in New South Wales was effectively an executive decision of Pitt, Sydney and Nepean. Some others outside Cabinet were probably influential. On many questions, Pitt tended to operate through an inner circle of advisors, not all of whom were necessarily within Cabinet. The extent to which Pitt sometimes bypassed his ministers explains why historians have described him in the early years of his administration as ‘essentially the government in all its departments’. Henry Dundas, WW Grenville, Lord Mulgrave and Lord Hawkesbury were part of Pitt’s circle. There was no transparency in the dealings of these confident and imperious men. Much of the planning and policy making of government was conducted between them in conversation without formal agenda or memoranda. Their practice was explained by Dundas, reminiscing after Pitt had died. He said they sometimes lived almost unremittingly together, occupied in discussions of a public concern, and that there were no written documents recording their discussions and decisions, merely memory and recollection.
Helpfully for Phillip, the implementation of the decision to settle New South Wales was underpinned by sage and experienced departmental secretaries – particularly Evan Nepean at the Home Office, Philip Stephens at the Admiralty and George Rose at the Treasury. Phillip was well known to these mandarins of the public service. Stephens had been First Secretary of the Admiralty for over twenty years. Phillip had been in contact with him since at least 1778, when he commenced his consultations with Lord Sandwich concerning raids on Spanish settlements in South America. His familiarity with Nepean may have commenced in late 1779 when he sought permission from Sandwich ‘to Cruise as a Volunteer in the Victory’, on which Nepean may have been the purser. Their relationship was cemented after 1782 when Nepean became Under-Secretary of the Home Office – and by 1787 they were firm friends. This could be seen occasionally when Phillip abandoned formality in his private letters. Writing to Nepean from Rio de Janeiro en route to New South Wales, he concluded affectionately, ‘Adieu, my dear friend; health and happiness attend you and your good little woman and child.’ Rose, with whom Phillip would need to deal frequently in the funding and fitting out of the expedition to New South Wales, owned a grand home called ‘Cuffnells’ at Lyndhurst. But despite occasional references to the supposed connection between Phillip and Rose through neighbouring farming interests, there was none. Rose did not acquire Cuffnells until 1784 and his relationship with Phillip was professional, not personal. We may never know whether Phillip also dealt with William Pitt. Pitt was directly and personally involved in the decision to establish a settlement at New South Wales, but Sydney as Home Secretary and Nepean as his Under-Secretary were responsible for its implementation and Phillip was mostly engaged with them.
When the decision was finally made, the wheels of the bureaucracy cranked quickly into motion. On 21 August Treasury was informed and funds were requested. On 31 August the Admiralty was informed and ships were requested. And on 15 September the East India Company was informed and its approval requested, something that was necessary because its Royal Charter gave it the exclusive monopoly of all British trade in the vast region from the Cape of Good Hope to the Americas. As to a leader for the expedition, Nepean and Sydney seem to have had Phillip firmly in mind. In late August Sydney made known to Howe, the then First Lord of the Admiralty, his intention to appoint Phillip to lead the convoy and to establish the settlement. Howe, an ‘austere, morose and inaccessible’ man, was not enthusiastic about Phillip, and doubted his suitability ‘for a service of this complicated nature’. But Howe’s views did not seem to matter. Phillip was Nepean’s man and the expedition was a Home Office responsibility.
History and circumstance combined to make Phillip an astute choice. He knew the South Atlantic and was familiar with the Canaries, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. He had doubled the Cape of Good Hope and crossed the Indian Ocean to the Bay of Bengal. He had served as a covert agent in France and understood its naval threat and probably also its territorial aspirations. He had experience as a farmer at Lyndhurst. He was cerebral and his natural disposition was thoughtful. He had impressed the Portuguese Viceroy in Brazil and gained the confidence of the British administration in Whitehall. And if there is any substance in the legend about him, he had already transported a shipload of convicts from Lisbon to Brazil. Phillip’s credentials for the assignment were no better pinpointed than by Captain John Faithful Fortescue, who commanded the 50-gun Trusty from 1783 to 1785. He is reputed to have said that:
I do think God Almighty made Phillip on purpose for the place, for never did man better know what to do, or with more determination to see it done; and yet, if they’ll let him, he will make them all very happy.
His words were echoed in a letter written by a midshipman who accompanied Phillip to New South Wales on the Sirius. The young correspondent informed his uncle from Rio de Janeiro that Phillip had ‘seen much of the service, and much of the World; and studied it’; that he was ‘possess’d of gt good sence, well inform’d, indefatigable upon service’; that he was ‘humane and at the same time spirited and resolute’; and that he was ‘made on purpose for such a Trial of Abilities’. And looking back from the mid-nineteenth century, George Landmann, whose biography of his father described Phillip as Isaac Landmann’s oldest and most intimate friend, colourfully stated that ‘the Commodore … had doubled every cape, had navigated every sea, had been tossed by the severest hurricanes, and … been longer on the seas than on the land’.
Phillip received his commission as Governor of New South Wales on 12 October 1786. In one relatively undisguised respect, its terms revealed the expedition’s international political context. Phillip was given authority over the whole of the land of New South Wales from Cape York in the north to Van Diemen’s Land in the south and as far west as longitude 135°E. Curiously, the western boundary was seven degrees further west than even Cook had claimed in 1770. The willingness to extend British sovereignty this far but not to claim the whole of the continent had its source in Dutch political sensitivities – which Pitt’s administration did not wish to offend at a time of delicate political relations. The reason was the 1777 Treaty of Santo Ildefonso, which had concluded the war in South America between Spain and Portugal. Phillip knew all about it, perhaps more than anyone else in Whitehall.
The text of the Treaty of Santo Ildefonso reached Rio de Janeiro in January 1778 and was a prime subject of interest and conversation. Phillip had been at leisure in Rio de Janeiro until May of that year and would no doubt have considered the treaty’s effect. He would certainly have discuss
ed it with Nepean in the process of drawing up his commission. Article 21 of the treaty recognised that the ‘Ancient Line of Separation’ was still operative. This was a reference to the line of demarcation laid down in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas – the line that divided the then known world between Spain and Portugal. Significantly, the 1777 treaty made clear that what had originally been a line of demarcation through the Atlantic was regarded as continuing through the corresponding meridian on the other side of the globe – in the eastern hemisphere.
As the Dutch republic had become Portugal’s legatee in the Indian Ocean, it was now the country with the primary interest in the western half of what had been known for two centuries as ‘New Holland’. Although there was uncertainty as to where precisely the ancient line ran in the eastern hemisphere, a contemporary map that was almost certainly available to Pitt’s administration shows the line of demarcation along the 135th meridian. This was the boundary chosen to delineate the western extremity of the land over which Phillip’s commission would extend. By adopting that boundary, the British government was seeking to respect the ancient line of demarcation and avoid offending the Dutch. The prospect of offending the Spanish did not seem to matter. That this was the true reason was later confirmed by Sir Joseph Banks in a preface he wrote for Matthew Flinders’ 1811 book A Voyage to Terra Australis, in which he explained that the selection of the 135th meridian was intended to observe ‘the Ancient Line of Separation’ with which it was ‘nearly corresponding’. The issue, however, was apparently so sensitive that Sir Robert Peel, then the Prime Minister, wrote to Banks requesting that he ‘omit any notice of the reasons which are supposed to have informed His Majesty’s Government in placing the western boundary of New South Wales’. Banks withdrew his preface, which was never published.
In April 1787 Phillip’s commission was expanded. His powers were broadened but the extent of the land over which he would govern was unchanged. The first commission had assumed a military form of government but the administration soon recognised that convicts sentenced under civil law could not be made amenable to military justice. And martial law was not consistent with the lofty ideal of ‘improvement’ that Sydney increasingly hoped to achieve in the proposed settlement. Phillip’s second commission, based on the commission given the year before to Lord Dorchester, the Governor-General of Canada, was more detailed and extensive than the first. Its principal distinguishing feature was that, unlike the Canadian commission, Phillip was authorised to govern alone and without a council. A council would be impracticable in New South Wales where, for the time being, there would not be a sufficient number of free men to make up such a body. In theory, however, Phillip’s power was not completely untrammelled. He was subject to the rule of law and a system for the administration of justice through a court structure was contemplated from the outset. There was to be a civil court and a court of criminal jurisdiction. An appeal from the civil court lay to the Governor, unless the amount in question was more than £300. And the criminal court could not issue a capital sentence unless five of its members agreed.
In reality, the embryonic society under Phillip’s governorship would be patriarchal, his authority effectively total. It would extend over half a continent and he would be almost as much a ‘viceroy’ as his friend Vasconselos in Brazil. He received all the powers that he thought a founding Governor should have. And his commission was arguably ‘a more unlimited one than was ever before granted to any Governor under the British Crown’. He could raise an army, erect forts, castles and fortifications, grant pardons absolutely or conditionally, remit the sentences of convicts and of course make grants of land to those convicts whom he emancipated. And whenever he thought it appropriate, he could also make grants of land to marines and sailors who wished to settle in the colony.
Associated with Phillip’s appointment as Governor was the question of his naval rank. He had been a post captain since 30 November 1781. Admirals were chosen by seniority from the top of the captains list. Phillip was still relatively junior, the list was long and promotion to admiral was only a distant future prospect. But captains were sometimes appointed as commodores when they were in command of a detached squadron. ‘Commodore’ was a temporary rank that lasted only for the duration of the command. It carried with it the right to fly a broad red pendant from the masthead and most of the status of a rear admiral. It also entitled the recipient to additional remuneration. Phillip duly requested permission from the Admiralty to fly the broad pendant – in effect that the rank of commodore be given to him – but without the increased remuneration. There was clearly some justification for Phillip’s request as he would command eleven ships and John Hunter would be his second captain on the flagship Sirius. But once the transport ships were safely delivered to New South Wales, Phillip would be exercising a civil command and would direct the colony on behalf of the Home Office, to which alone he would be answerable. The Home Office and not the Admiralty would pay his salary and emoluments in New South Wales. In these circumstances the naval promotion that Phillip sought was complicated. Howe disliked innovation in naval protocol and refused the request.
Phillip, however, persisted. He took the issue up with Sydney, emphasising that however flattering he found the offer of the governorship, the task was not without its désagrémens for which the broad pendant would compensate. He even went so far as to say that the granting of it would be of small consequence to the nation but of considerable consequence to him. Sydney, however, had no authority on matters of naval rank and protocol and could do no more than ensure that Phillip was adequately recompensed by the Home Office. He fixed Phillip’s remuneration as Governor at £1000 a year. This was a substantial sum and several times the rate of pay for naval captains. Even after the increases that occurred during the Napoleonic Wars, a captain of a typical sixth-rate vessel received no more than £200 a year; a captain of a first-rate vessel less than £400 a year. Phillip’s senior civil officers, John White the principal surgeon and David Collins the judge-advocate, only received £182 a year. And in London, Evan Nepean received only £500 a year as Under-Secretary of one of the most important state departments in the most powerful country in the world. In fact, Phillip’s remuneration put him on the same level as six of the seven Lords of the Admiralty. The amount was such that the authors of a nineteenth-century biography of Phillip referred to ‘the outstanding generosity of the Government’.
Ultimately, Phillip sailed for New South Wales as a captain and not as a commodore. He was probably unfortunate and may have been hard done by. The sensitivity he displayed, although perhaps precious from a contemporary perspective, was probably no more or no worse than could have been expected from most senior naval officers of the era. Rank and title were matters of some moment. Phillip’s strong feelings even continued after he reached New South Wales. In July 1790 he wrote privately to Sydney, taking up the subject again. Sydney’s son-in-law had by then succeeded Howe as First Lord of the Admiralty. Phillip requested Sydney ‘to submit to the consideration of Lord Chatham, whether employing an Officer on a Service which renders the appointing of a Second Captain to that Ship necessary, and refusing at the same time to give the Commanding Officer a distinguishing Pendant, as is the established custom of the Service on which he is employed … tend[s] to any real advantage to His Majesty’s Service’. His plea was to no avail.
CHAPTER 9
PHILOSOPHER
Administrative, practical and philosophical preparations for the settlement in New South Wales including the symbolism of ‘Albion’ and the Wheatley portraits
From October 1786 to May 1787 Phillip was constantly engaged in the preparation of the expedition for New South Wales. His immediate concern was the conversion and fitting out of the ships and the procuring of food, medicine, clothing and building supplies for the voyage and first years of the settlement. But there were many other issues that engaged his pragmatic and contemplative sides. It was necessary to consult with Admiralty officials in
determining the route that the convoy would take. And hundreds of hours were required to be spent with Home Office officials discussing and resolving the detail of his instructions, the terms of his commission, the nature of government that should apply and the system of laws that should be administered. Phillip, Nepean, Sydney and their officials were in truth deliberating over the creation of a new society, one where there would be no currency and no slavery, and where the labour of convicts would be used to build the settlement and cultivate the land. There was no precedent for what they were seeking to achieve.
The first practical issue, the fitting out of the ships and the procuring of supplies, was a complex, disagreeable and troublesome business that required Phillip to call on all of his experience of the naval administration. He knew that his expedition would be longer, more difficult and qualitatively different from any previous undertaking in the navy’s history. But the officials with whom he dealt at the Navy Board and its related departments could not always see it. These men, perhaps lacking imagination, inevitably hidebound by precedent, were the bureaucrats who pursued their careers in the multiple bodies and related departments with which it was necessary for Phillip to deal. Men such as these were not disposed by nature or training to make exceptions to longstanding practices. For eight months Phillip engaged in tedious and interminable negotiations. Approximately 800 letters were written and there were many hundreds of personal attendances.
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