FF Captain David Collins,
Captain of Marines/Judge Advocate ‘HMS Sirius’(1756–1810)
David Collins (1756-1810), deputy judge
advocate and lieutenant-governor, was born on 3 March
1756 in London, the third child of Arthur Tooker
Collins, an officer of marines and later major-general
commanding the Plymouth Division, and his wife Henrietta
Caroline, née Fraser, of Park, King's County, Ireland.
His grandfather, Arthur Collins (1684-1760), with Abel
Roper, in 1709 issued the first edition of Collins's
Peerage of England. David probably attended the
Exeter Grammar School under John Marshall, and at 14
joined his father's division as an ensign. He was
promoted second lieutenant on 20 February 1771, and next
year served in H.M.S. Southhampton when Queen
Matilda of Denmark was rescued. About March 1775 he left
for North America and was at the battle of Bunker's Hill
on 17 June when the British suffered heavy losses,
especially of commissioned officers, but occupied the
heights of Charlestown. A week later he was promoted
first lieutenant and by November 1776 was stationed at
Halifax, Nova Scotia. Here at the Church of St Paul on
13 June 1777 he married Mary (Maria Stuart), daughter of
Captain Charles Proctor. By that time Collins had become
adjutant in the Chatham Division. He was promoted
captain-lieutenant in August 1779, captain in July 1780,
and in February 1781 joined the Courageux in the
Channel Squadron. He hated 'the salt sea ocean' and with
relief returned to Chatham in January 1783; in September
he was placed on half-pay.
In 1786 with the prospect of a long
peace, Collins was influenced by his father to accept
appointment to the expedition to Botany Bay. On 24
October he was commissioned deputy judge advocate of the
new colony and likewise, by Admiralty warrant, of the
marine detachment. His half-pay ended in December and in
the new year he received 10s. a day for each legal
office and was allowed a year's pay in advance. He
sailed without Maria in the Sirius with the First
Fleet, arriving at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788. Next
day he went with Governor
Arthur Phillip's
party to examine Port Jackson. Six days later the
fleet's transfer to Sydney Cove was completed and the
business of settlement began. On 7 February the
government was formally inaugurated, Collins reading the
relevant Act, commissions and letters patent.
Collins was responsible, under the
governor, for the colony's entire legal establishment.
He issued all writs, summonses and processes, retained
certain fees, and with one other justice of the peace
formed the bench of magistrates. His small knowledge of
the law was of little import, for at first few cases
came before the Civil Court over which he presided,
assisted by two nominees. With him in the Criminal
Court, over which he also presided, sat six naval or
military officers, and it met more frequently. Collins
was necessarily involved in the disputes between Phillip
and Major
Robert Ross,
the commanding officer of the marines, especially when
they concerned the Criminal Court. Collins always
sympathized with the governor. He felt that the officers
should not always remain sticklers for their rights, and
that if they acted without authorization, they should
throw themselves 'with the strong plea of necessity' on
the Admiralty to secure indemnification. In March 1790
after Ross had been appointed lieutenant-governor at
Norfolk Island, Collins could write to his father,
'Since Major Ross went from here, tranquillity may be
said to have been our guest. Oh! that the Sirius when
she was lost, had proved his—but no more of that. While
here he made me the object of his persecution—if a day
will come—a day of retribution'.
Early in 1789, after Captain Shea's
death, Ross had invited Collins to take the vacancy.
Acceptance would certainly have bettered his advancement
in the marines, but he refused, to the great
satisfaction of Phillip who in June 1788 had appointed
him secretary to the governor, or as Collins preferred,
to the colony, at an additional 5s. a day. With his
multiple duties he was deeply involved in questions of
crime and punishment, convict labour, health, rations
and stores. He organized the celebration of each new
year and royal birthday, and on occasions accompanied
expeditions to outlying areas proposed for new
settlements and places of secondary punishment. Like
Phillip he had a compassionate interest in the
Aboriginals, and deplored each racial clash, tending
always to blame the convicts for disobedience of the
governor's orders.
The Second Fleet brought news that the
New South Wales Corps was to relieve the marines, who
were to choose between returning to England or joining
the corps. Most of the marines left in the Gorgon
in December 1791, Collins watching them go with mixed
feelings. Nothing would induce him to sail in the same
ship as Ross, but it is clear from his letters that he
was eager to escape 'from a country that is nothing
better than a Place of Banishment for the Outcasts of
Society'. Maria was insisting that he had already stayed
too long in 'that Infernal place', and offering to
accompany him to some other country where they could
live contentedly on his half-pay. His father was urging
his return, and reported that, although the Admiralty
had passed him over when his turn came to be put on full
pay, his presence in England would ensure his
advancement. His prospects in the colony were not
encouraging. Phillip had twice offered him a company in
the New South Wales Corps, but Collins disliked its
officers and the thought of serving under men younger
than himself. Nevertheless he decided to stay, at least
until his father could find him a civil appointment in
England.
It was a costly decision. When the
marines detachment departed, Collins ceased to be its
judge-advocate and thereby lost £100 a year, yet he
could not reconcile his mind 'to leave Governor Phillip,
with whom I have now lived so long, that I am blended in
every concern of his'. Certainly Collins was no longer
attracted by soldiering and, perhaps unconsciously, his
taste of civil authority had whetted his appetite,
seasoned by the opiate of being thought, and thinking
himself, indispensable. He was also encouraged to stay
by Phillip, and did not write to London for permission
to leave until the eve of Phillip's departure in
December 1792. In his application he pleaded 'some very
urgent private and family affairs', but before it was
approved next June he had yielded to persuasion and
stayed on to help Lieutenant-Governor
Francis Grose,
although he knew that his father was ill, and that he
had agreed to hold a general court martial, demanded by
Ross, on the misdeeds allegedly committed by Captain
Meredith while in the colony. In October 1793 he heard
from Maria that his father had died, his last days
troubled by a prosecution which the court hearing it
thought 'groundless and malicious', and in which 'that
Devil Ross … had spoke disrespectfully of your conduct'.
She pleaded again for his return, but next year he
reported that Grose had asked him to stay to help his
successor as acting-governor,
William Paterson:
'he put it on such a footing that I could not but comply
… he declared that he could not think of going unless I
would stay'.
In October 1795, a month after Governor
John Hunter's
arrival, Collins sought a salary increase for the first
time, claiming that his duties had become
disproportionate to the reward. Hunter who had 'long
been acquainted with his zeal and very great ability'
strongly supported the claim which he thought 'but a
justice due to his meritorious exertions and diligence';
probably because Collins had been given leave of absence
two years before, no reply was sent. When Collins did
sail for England in the Britannia in August 1796,
Hunter apparently expected him to return and told the
Duke of Portland that 'the colony, my Lord, will suffer
exceedingly in the department of law during his
absence'.
Collins reached London in June 1797, to
find Maria 'ill and weakened beyond anything I could
have imagined'. At the Admiralty he was told 'to his
infinite distress' that he could only return to service
in the marines as the youngest captain. Left with his
half-pay of 5s.a day, he wrote to his mother, 'is not
this charming, are not my employers, just, equitable,
delightful rascals?' Interviews with Portland and Sydney
were no more fruitful, although on 1 January 1798 he was
promoted lieutenant-colonel, without pay or command, in
recognition of his services in New South Wales. Since
his return people had flocked to his home for
information about friends and relations in the colony.
From his own records he completed in May 1798 the first
volume of An Account of the English Colony in New
South Wales, illustrated from engravings by Edward
Dayes, some of them after drawings by
Thomas Watling.
It was more complete in detail than earlier works on the
colony, and claimed as its object the dissuasion of his
countrymen from regarding New South Wales with 'odium
and disgust'. Earlier he had told his father that
'nature intended and fashioned me to ascend the pulpit',
and now his sombre annals of crime and calamity seemed
to have the homiletic aims of promoting tranquillity and
preserving conventional decorum. The book received
deserved praise and sold reasonably well, and a German
edition followed in 1799. After the second volume, which
was largely based on Hunter's reports, was published in
1802, Maria helped to abridge and edit his work in a
single volume in 1804. She also appears to have written
at least one novel of her own.
In 1800 while the colonies were
controlled by various departments in London, Collins
wrote to the under-secretary of war, John Sullivan,
offering to act as liaison officer for New South Wales.
Nothing came of it, but his exceptional knowledge of the
colony's affairs was recognized and in 1802 he was
chosen to form a new settlement in Bass Strait. Although
grieved by another separation from Maria, he predicted a
bright future and hoped that persecution by his 'evil
genius' had ended. On 4 January 1803 he was commissioned
lieutenant governor of the proposed new dependency under
the governor of New South Wales. His salary was £450
and, to equip himself, he mortgaged his patrimony and
ran up a large debt. He sailed in April in H.M.S.
Calcutta. When he arrived at Port Phillip Bay on 9
October, two days after the storeshipOcean,
Collins was dismayed by the lack of timber and water,
but he began unloading his convicts, settlers and stores
at Sullivan Bay (near Sorrento), while Lieutenant Tuckey
and
George Prideaux Harris
explored. Their reports were not encouraging, so he
wrote to Governor
Philip Gidley King
suggesting removal of the settlement. King agreed, and
Collins decided to move to the Derwent where Lieutenant
John Bowen
had already established a settlement at Risdon.
After reaching the Derwent, Collins
landed at Risdon on 16 February, but he disapproved the
place and soon chose and named Sullivan Cove as a better
harbour and site for Hobart Town. By July he had his own
house built, over 400 people hutted, his stores
temporarily covered, timber cleared and a government
farm started at Cornelian Bay. In this repetition of his
experience at Sydney Cove, Collins's task was not easy.
Although his convicts were fewer than those of Phillip,
they were not skilled pioneers; his marines were no less
troublesome, his free settlers either apathetic or
aggressively demanding, and his tools and equipment from
England poor in quality, incomplete and often unusable.
Although he had brought enough provisions for a year,
they were much damaged by many loadings and exposure,
and had to be supplemented with kangaroos and other
game, and this hunting led to much trouble with
absconders and Aboriginals. Supplies came from Sydney
irregularly and often had to be condemned; many of the
cattle and sheep he asked for died in transit. By
carefully husbanding his stores and buying what he could
from occasional whalers and trading ships, he struggled
along, often reducing rations and never far from
starvation. In 1805 his dispatches to London became
vehement, and next year he appealed to the
commander-in-chief at the Cape of Good Hope, but no
relief came. Later he risked his reputation in trying to
obtain Bengal cattle for the colony, and his contract
for their import was censured by Lieutenant-Colonel
Joseph Foveaux,
Paterson and Governor
William Bligh.
Collins had just cause to complain of
neglect. Although he wrote frequently to London and to
Sydney, no dispatch reached him direct from Downing
Street while he was in Van Diemen's Land; even rebukes
for excessive demands came through the governor in
Sydney. According to the Colonial Office, he seemed
'desirous of withdrawing himself upon every occasion
from the superintendence of the government of New South
Wales'. He was also thought 'inattentive in the article
of expenditure' and warned that he would be held
responsible for all accounts not sanctioned in Sydney.
Disheartened by this censure, he confided in his
brother: 'my gratification will be, when I resign my
office, to lay my hand on my heart and say I never
misappropriated a sixpence of the Government money to my
own use'.
In April 1808 Collins was given brevet
rank of colonel in the army, but this did nothing to
dispel his loneliness. Maria had spoken of joining him,
but could not leave her ailing mother. He had little
intellectual company and few of his officers were
reliable. They quarrelled among themselves, ignored
regulations that prohibited them to trade, and often
paid more for kangaroo meat and grain than the prices
fixed by Collins. His deputy judge advocate had no
patent for a criminal court, so those accused of crimes
too serious to be tried by the magistrates had to be
escorted to Sydney for trial. He was not consulted when
the British government decided to send most of the
settlers on Norfolk Island to Van Diemen's Land. By
October 1808 more than 550 had arrived, doubling the
population. Some were able and energetic, others
listless, and nearly all had to be clothed and fed from
scanty resources. Also to compensate for their removal,
the settlers had been promised cleared land, convict
servants, buildings and livestock. Collins placed many
of them at New Norfolk, but his inability to fulfil all
the promises created a large discontented group in the
colony. On the other hand he achieved some success in
the measures he took to promote and encourage whale
fishing based on the Derwent.
More trouble came when Bligh arrived at
Hobart in the Porpoise on 30 March 1809. Collins
received him with courtesy and vacated Government House.
Bligh assured Collins that he would not interfere with
his administration, but he did. After learning that
Bligh had pledged himself to go direct to England,
Collins decided to recognize Paterson's government in
Sydney. Bligh then moved the Porpoise into
midstream and later to Storm Bay passage, where he
levied toll on incoming ships and fired on boats that
refused to come within hail. This virtual blockade
lasted until 4 January 1810 when Bligh sailed to seek
news of Governor
Lachlan Macquarie's
arrival in Sydney.
Bligh was not alone in his unkind
criticism of Collins's morals and administration. Joseph
Foveaux, who acted as lieutenant governor at Sydney
before Paterson and coveted Collins's post, had reported
to London that at the Derwent 'a system of the most
unexampled profusion, waste and fraud, with respect to
money, and stores, had been carried on, almost without
the affectation of concealment and sense of shame'. Many
of Collins's difficulties were due to neglect in London
and Sydney and to his subordinates' incompetence, but he
seems to have shown some lack of energy in his
management of affairs. For all that,
Joseph Holt
testified that he 'had the good wishes and good word of
everyone in the settlement. His conduct was exemplary
and his disposition most humane'. A generation later
John West added that 'to a cultivated understanding' he
'joined a most cheerful and social disposition'.
Collins died suddenly on 24 March 1810.
He was buried with full military honours on the spot
intended for a church, and St David's Cathedral in
Hobart now bears his name.
By Maria, Collins had a daughter who died
in infancy.
In Sydney he had a daughter and a son,
George (b.1794) by Ann Yeates, and in Hobart two
children by Margaret Eddington in 1808-09. George became
a midshipman in the navy and had served five years by
March 1812 when he petitioned the Colonial Office for a
free passage to Hobart to rejoin his family and adjust
his father's affairs.
According to Maria, Collins died
insolvent, leaving her with only £36, the pension of a
captain's widow. Again and again she appealed to the
Colonial Office, until a letter was found from
Lord Hobart,
dated 4 February 1803, promising to support her
application for aid should any accident happen to her
husband while in public service. In 1813 she was granted
an allowance of £120 a year, retrospective to January
1812 in 'Consideration of her husband's services in
superintending the Commencement of the Settlement at
Hobart's Town'. She died at Plymouth on 13 April 1830,
but her name and pension appeared yearly on Tasmanian
estimates until 1842.
Complied by John Boyd 2020
This article was published in
Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Volume 1, (MUP), 1966
The Fellowship of First Fleeters
installed a FFF Plaque on Capt David Collins’s Grave on
2nd November 1988.
Refer FFF Web Site:http://www.fellowshipfirstfleeters.org.au/graves.html
Under
see
FFF Plaque 70 – Installed 2nd November
1988for
FF Capt DAVID COLLINS
Capt of Marines/Judge Advocate‘HMS
Sirius’ (1756-1810)
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