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FF Captain Arthur Phillip RN, HMAT
Supply
(1738–1814)
Commodore of the Fleet and 1st Governor of
NSW
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Arthur Phillip (1738-1814), admiral and
governor, was born on 11 October 1738 in the parish of
Allhallows, ward of Bread Street, London, the second
child of Jacob Phillip, a language teacher who came to
London from Frankfurt, and Elizabeth, née Breach, former
wife of Captain Herbert, R.N., a relative of Lord
Pembroke. It was possibly the influence of his mother
that was instrumental in determining his future
seafaring career. On 24 June 1751 he was enrolled on
'the establishment of poor boys' in the Greenwich school
for the sons of seamen. Thus began a period of
apprenticeship in the mercantile service that was
completed in 1755 after two years at sea under Captain
Redhead in the Fortune. During the Seven Years'
war he saw active service in the Royal Navy, to which he
had transferred. On 7 July 1761 he was provisionally
appointed lieutenant, the promotion being confirmed a
year later following an engagement resulting in the
capture of Havana. With the coming of peace on 25 April
1763 he was retired on half-pay.
Save for the months between 13 November
1770 and 8 July 1771, when he served in H.M.S. Egmont,
his connexions with the British navy in the next fifteen
years were largely nominal. Probably much of his time
was taken up with the properties known as Vernals Farm
and Glasshayes which he acquired at Lyndhurst,
Hampshire. There he had settled with his wife Margaret,
the widow of John Denison, a prosperous London merchant.
The marriage was celebrated on 19 July 1763, but could
scarcely have been happy for by 1769 the two were
separated. In 1774-78 Phillip served with distinction in
South American waters as a captain in the Portuguese
fleet, which he entered with the Admiralty's permission
after the outbreak of the Spanish-Portuguese war. In
1778 he returned to the English Royal Navy. In November
1781 he was made a post captain and was given command of
the 24-gun Ariadne; on 27 December 1782 he left
her to take charge of the 64-gun Europe, taking
with him his friend, Lieutenant
Philip Gidley King.
His sealed orders sent him to India, but he saw no
action in either vessel and was again retired on
half-pay on 25 May 1784, after the signing of the peace
treaties which ended the wars connected with the
struggle of the British colonies in America for
independence. He then spent a year in southern France
and, when appointed the first governor of New South
Wales on 12 October 1786, was engaged in survey work for
the Admiralty.
By then Phillip was a man of mature years
whose attainments, though not particularly outstanding,
were solid. From inauspicious beginnings he had risen
largely through his own merit, attracting favourable
comment from those under whom he had served. The
Portuguese authorities had described him as brave,
honest, obedient and self-sacrificing. Experience had
broadened without hardening or coarsening his somewhat
sensitive nature and in a variety of ways prepared him
for his new task. He was accustomed to command men and
had even, while in the Portuguese navy, transported
convicts from Lisbon to the Brazils. His naval training
proved invaluable on the trip to Botany Bay and stood
him in good stead when exploring the hinterland. Work on
his Lyndhurst property had made him familiar with at
least the rudiments of farming and added yet another
dimension to his qualifications. How far these
considerations weighed with the British government is
difficult to say, for the circumstances surrounding both
their offer and his acceptance of the governorship
remain obscure. The first lord of the Admiralty had
nothing to do with it, for Lord Howe, though prepared to
accept the decision, stated that he personally did not
think Phillip suited to the task. The governor's
detractors maliciously claimed that he was chosen to rid
the authorities of one pressing for preferment. It has
also been suggested that Lord Sydney, faced with the
need hurriedly to find someone for a mediocre post that
no one else wanted, offered it to Phillip who was known
to be reliable and trustworthy. Perhaps the most likely
explanation is that the appointment was made on the
advice of Sir George Rose, treasurer of the navy, who
lived near Lyndhurst, knew Phillip and was impressed by
him. Whatever the reason Phillip was presumably
attracted by the prospect of returning to active service
in a capacity that could satisfy his desire for
adventure and his wish to command.
To the British government the new
settlement was primarily to be an outlet for convicts
whom it was undesirable to keep at home and impossible
to transport elsewhere, but Phillip was inspired by the
vision of a new outpost of empire growing up in the
South Seas. He showed himself anxious to encourage free
settlers to migrate, drew up plans for their reception,
urged the extension of British law for their protection
and resolved to insulate them from the contamination of
convicts. 'As I would not wish convicts to lay the
foundation of an Empire', he observed, 'I think they
should ever remain separated from the garrison and other
settlers that may come from Europe', even after their
sentences were completed.
When these words were written Phillip was
immersed in preparations for the sailing of the
expedition and the planning of the actual settlement.
His correspondence with the authorities between October
1786 and May 1787 revealed a sound grasp of
administrative detail and a degree of foresight that
confirmed the wisdom of their choice. In contrast to his
superiors he displayed an awareness of the multitudinous
problems inevitably involved in transplanting Englishmen
to a little-known land on the far side of the globe. Not
all his proposed solutions were accepted, but enough
were incorporated to support the claim that he made a
noteworthy contribution to the organization of the
venture. Besides offering practical advice Phillip also
enunciated some of the principles that were intended to
guide his conduct. He proposed to treat the Aboriginals
kindly and to establish harmonious relations with them.
He resolved to try to reform as well as to discipline
the convicts. In these respects his views were in
keeping with the more advanced opinion of his age.
Similarly his rational approach to life and indifference
to religious fervour stamped him as a product of the
eighteenth century and a not untypical member of the
contemporary Church of England into which he had been
baptized.
The First Fleet left England on 13 May
1787 and arrived at Botany Bay on 18 January 1788 after
a voyage whose success again owed much to Phillip's
care. The original site proved unsuited to settlement.
Three days later Phillip discovered an appropriate spot
at Port Jackson and on 26 January landing operations
began there. All told 1030 persons went ashore, of whom
736 were convicts, including 188 women, the rest marines
and civil officers, 27 with wives, and 37 children.
These people formed the human material for a gaol and
not surprisingly were placed under a form of government
that gave an unusual amount of power to the governor.
Phillip's first and second Commissions, dated 12 October
1786 and 2 April 1787, appointed him as the
representative of the Crown in an area embracing roughly
the eastern half of Australia together with adjacent
Pacific islands. His responsibility was solely to his
superiors in London and he was expected to carry out
their orders as embodied in his first Instructions of 25
April 1787, his second Instructions of 20 August 1789
and official dispatches. Within these limits his powers
were absolute. The Crown vested him with complete
authority over the inhabitants and gave him the right to
promulgate regulations touching practically all aspects
of their lives. He combined executive and legislative
functions and could remit sentences imposed by the Civil
and Criminal Courts established under a warrant issued
on 2 April 1787. Only the crimes of treason or wilful
murder were exempt from this provision, but even here he
could grant a reprieve while awaiting advice from
London. Distance from Britain and the relative
indifference of the Home Office towards the affairs of
the infant colony enlarged even further the scope of the
governor's initiative and increased his
responsibilities.
The subordinate officers appointed to
assist him proved of varied merit. Some worked
diligently enough in their particular spheres and in
addition made their mark as explorers or commentators on
the contemporary scene. Several left behind journals of
literary merit and historical value. Rarely, however,
did they share Phillip's vision and enthusiasm, and most
quickly came to despair of their mission, wrote home in
gloomy tones of the hardships they were obliged to
endure and urged the abandonment of the settlement. None
felt more strongly on this score than the marine
officers and their testy commander, Major
Robert Ross,
who was also lieutenant-governor and Vice-Admiralty
Court judge, and described New South Wales as the
'outcast of God's works'. The officers, construing their
duties as being primarily military, caused Phillip much
trouble. They refused to help in supervising the
activities of the convicts even though, through the
oversight of the British authorities, few suitable
persons were available, and they objected to having to
sit on the Criminal Court. Their discontent was
heightened by the fact that unlike emancipists they were
denied free grants of land and lacked the opportunity to
secure any of the other perquisites traditionally
associated with colonial service. Ross made matters
worse by his high-handed actions, such as the arrest of
five of his officers, which created friction in the mess
and prompted Lieutenant
Ralph Clark
to describe him as 'the most disagreeable commanding
officer I ever knew'. Although at first on reasonable
terms with Phillip, Ross soon became quarrelsome, acting
both as a focus of discontent and a major irritant. He
supported and encouraged his fellow officers in their
conflicts with Phillip, engaged in clashes of his own,
and complained of the governor's actions to the Home
Office. Phillip for his part, more placid and forbearing
in temperament, was anxious in the interests of the
community as a whole to avoid friction between the civil
and military authorities. Though firm in his attitude he
endeavoured to placate Ross, but to little effect. In
the end he solved the problem by ordering Ross to
Norfolk Island on 5 March 1790 to replace P. G. King,
the commandant there, whom he had previously decided to
send to England to report personally on the
establishment.
Far from being able to fall back on his
aides in the initial trying years, therefore, Phillip
had to struggle against widespread defeatism and
occasional opposition. The attitude of the marine
officers affected their men and possibly the convicts
who had least cause of any to feel content with their
lot. Partly to counter this attitude Phillip in his
dispatches highlighted favourable developments and
concealed the personal misgivings that constant
tribulation must have led him to experience from time to
time. Not the least of his accomplishments was to help
to keep faith in the venture alive in official circles
in London, and provide the optimism as well as the
leadership without which morale in New South Wales
itself might have crumbled completely.
Phillip's enthusiasm is all the more
remarkable in view of the fact that during his five year
term of office the colony assumed a shape that was not
in accord with his wishes. Instead of the migrants whom
he sought to encourage with grants of from 'five hundred
[202 ha] to one thousand acres [405 ha]' and the
assistance of 'not less than twenty men' maintained at
government expense for two years, only convicts arrived.
Nor was this surprising. When the Home Office finally
dispatched Instructions to Phillip in August 1789
authorizing him to give grants to migrants it was on
terms far less generous than he had contemplated. People
leaving England lacked any real incentive to come to New
South Wales and continued to sail for more accessible
parts of the empire that were untainted by the stigma of
convictism. Only thirteen venturesome souls departed for
Sydney in the first five years and none of these landed
until after Phillip's departure. The governor had
expected a variety of advantages to flow from the
presence of migrants; besides forming the basis for the
kind of settlement he hoped would emerge, he thought
they would also prove of practical value from the penal
standpoint by assisting in administration and convict
control, by employing the prisoners and by setting an
example for them to follow. Inspired as they must be by
the profit motive they would quickly make the settlement
self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs. Their failure to
materialize forced Phillip to depend on methods which he
would have preferred to drop and which further increased
his burdens.
Between 1788 and 1792 about 3546 male and
766 female convicts were landed at Port Jackson and
handed over by the contractors to the governor, who
faced the task of deciding how their sentences were to
be served. Anxious to keep costs low the British
government insisted that they be disposed of in such a
way as to involve the Treasury in a minimum of
expenditure. Previously, in the American colonies,
settlers had taken them into employment, but in the
absence of private employers in New South Wales most
convicts remained in government hands throughout the
first five years, and upon Phillip devolved the
responsibility for directing their energies. The task
was not made easier by the characteristics of the
convicts themselves. Historians no longer regard them as
the innocent victims of adverse social conditions and a
harsh penal code. In dispelling this myth recent
research has presented them as including a high
proportion of professional criminals drawn from the more
worthless element in society. Certainly they were for
the most part unfit subjects for an experiment in
colonization. Not unnaturally they resented being
wrenched from their homeland and taken to a harsh,
hostile and uncivilized land. Phillip found them lazy
and anxious to escape work by any means possible. Few
were mechanics or knew anything of agriculture, and each
of the fleets that arrived up to 1792 contained a high
proportion of aged and sick who were unfit for work.
Worst of all was the Second Fleet which arrived in June
1790 after losing more than a quarter of its
'passengers' en route through sickness. Phillip's
reports on the unscrupulous behaviour of the private
contractors helped to produce improvements, but not
until after the Third Fleet had arrived bearing convicts
whose physical condition appalled him once more.
Matters were made even worse by
continuing privation within the settlement itself
resulting from the shortcomings of local agriculture and
the failure of supplies to arrive on time from overseas.
The crisis reached a peak in 1790 after the wreck of the
storeship Guardian off the Cape of Good Hope;
although the situation eased in 1791, it remained
uncertain and even when the full ration could be issued
it was generally unappetizing and often of poor quality.
Under such conditions the health of the convicts
deteriorated and they found prolonged manual labour
difficult. Faced with a lack of suitable personnel to
act as supervisors Phillip selected superintendents from
among the better-behaved convicts, placed them under the
few free men in the settlement, ex-marines, a few from
the ships' crews, and some whose sentences had expired.
He encouraged gardening. He had dispatched a party to
Norfolk Island within a month of his arrival, and
constantly reinforced it when he found that the island
was more fertile than the land around Sydney. He
exercised great care in distributing the ration and
insisted on complete equality for all regardless of
their standing. Some writers have attached the label
communism to this egalitarian system. Such a term
connotes a body of dogma completely foreign to Phillip
and is highly misleading. The governor based his actions
on no particular set of beliefs except a broad
humanitarianism. By nature self-sacrificing he was not
prepared to inflict greater suffering on others than on
himself and he felt that gradations in the ration were
unfair in time of scarcity.
Phillip's measures at best proved mere
palliatives, but they helped to keep the settlement
alive in its early years. In 1791 the marines were
replaced by the New South Wales Corps. In the light of
what was to come this may appear unfortunate, but
Phillip's relations with the corps, though marked by
occasional disagreement, were reasonably pleasant,
partly because its officers had not then acquired the
economic interests that led to conflict with later
governors. The military commandant, Major
Francis Grose,
was easygoing and affable; his only recorded
disagreement with Phillip arose from his action in
permitting his officers to charter a vessel to procure
necessities from the Cape of Good Hope. Unlike Ross,
Grose was highly impressed with the colony, and his
attitude was shared by many of his officers and a number
of the convicts, who showed an increasing tendency to
settle after their sentences were completed. The more
regular arrival of ships from overseas and the
beginnings of trading contacts with foreign speculators
lessened the feeling of isolation besides improving
supplies. More important, however, by now much of the
initial spadework had been completed and the outlines of
a permanent settlement were becoming more firmly etched.
The community which, under Phillip's
guidance, was gradually establishing itself, remained
confined to a minute portion of the vast region over
which his jurisdiction extended. The governor himself
had from the outset been anxious to gain information
about the hinterland of Port Jackson. Curiosity, the
need to find areas of good soil, and a desire to escape
tensions at headquarters all played a part in prompting
his explorations. The difficulties of the terrain, the
problems involved in provisioning a lengthy expedition
through inhospitable country and the impossibility of
being away long from the centre of affairs prevented him
from penetrating very far inland. Nevertheless trips in
which he took part resulted in the discovery of the
Hawkesbury River and the gaining of detailed knowledge
about the area between it and Port Jackson, including
the Parramatta district. With his encouragement later
expeditions were made that established the relationship
between the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers and gained
additional information about the quality of the soil.
Meanwhile knowledge of the coastal area had been
enlarged by whale-fishing and other sea-going parties.
Phillip opposed the settlement of the
Hawkesbury because the area was too isolated and too
little known, and 'proper people to conduct it' were
lacking. The Parramatta region, on the other hand, he
thought ideally suited because of its good soil, ready
accessibility and proximity to water. There he moved
many of the convicts from late 1788 onwards after the
shortcomings of Sydney for agricultural purposes had
become apparent. In this area Phillip established a
small township, which quickly emerged as the main centre
of the colony's economic life; his naming one choice
site within its bounds Rose Hill has been interpreted as
additional evidence that Sir George Rose had been
helpful in securing his appointment. Sydney, which he
named and helped to design, and for which he planned
broad streets, directed to suit the prevailing winds as
well as the contours of its hills, remained important as
a port and as the focus of social life, but its economic
significance was slight until after the turn of the
century, and his plans for its development had by then
been abandoned.
Besides determining where the inhabitants
should live Phillip also decided how they were to be
occupied. At first he gave priority to the construction
of necessary buildings, diverting most convict labour to
this end; however, some public farming was carried on
almost from the outset, originally at Farm Cove and
later at Parramatta and Toongabbie. Its slow progress
reflected the governor's inability to find adequate
means of surmounting the many obstacles in his path.
Poor seasons, the lack of suitable equipment and the
difficulty of clearing and cultivating the thickly
wooded land added to his problems. By 1791 a mere 213
acres (86 ha) were under crop and the number of farm
animals amounted to only 126 head, for some of the
cattle brought out had strayed, while others had died or
been slaughtered. The building programme, by contrast,
had advanced more satisfactorily, resulting in the
erection of dwelling places for the governor, the
officers, the convicts and some of the troops, together
with several store-houses. Having completed these and
other essential tasks Phillip was able to give more
attention to farming. The area cultivated by government
labour expanded much more rapidly after 1791 and by
October 1792 some 1017 acres (412 ha) were under crop on
the public domain; although livestock was still scarce
important advances had been made towards the attainment
of self-sufficiency in grain. The community was still
vitally dependent on overseas supplies for most of its
needs, but no longer was survival thought to be
impossible.
Providing for material needs formed only
part of the task of running what was primarily a prison.
Effective discipline was a vital necessity in an
isolated community where convicts far outnumbered their
gaolers and where it was impracticable to segregate them
behind bars. Phillip housed the convicts in a series of
huts so arranged that they could be policed at night;
but the watch of necessity had to be drawn mainly from
among the better convicts, and this caused further
trouble with the marines who complained bitterly on the
odd occasion when a convict policeman detected one of
their number breaking the law. Offences committed within
the colony were, if only minor, tried by the
magistrates, or when more serious by the Civil and
Criminal Courts. Phillip sat on neither bench, but he
was able within limits to determine their composition
and to vary their sentences, thereby influencing the
course of justice. Before leaving England he had stated
his opposition to the death penalty save for murder and
sodomy, which crimes he felt best punished by handing
guilty persons over to be eaten by 'the natives of New
Zealand'. This harsh sentence was never imposed, but
there were some executions, particularly for the theft
of food in time of scarcity. More usual was the lash,
then a standard punishment in the army and navy, or
committal to a gaol-gang.
Phillip's discipline was firm, but by the
standards of his time could not be considered unduly
harsh or severe. Moreover he recognized the need to
encourage good behaviour as well as to punish bad
conduct. He rewarded signs of industry by personal
commendation and sometimes by appointment to positions
of trust, which carried various privileges. He granted
twenty-six pardons to exemplary characters, including
fourteen prisoners who had behaved well when the
Guardian was wrecked. In a further effort to
encourage the convicts Phillip made it clear that land
grants would only be given to those who proved their
worth while under sentence. These measures indicated his
desire to reform his charges, an object to which the
Home Office paid only lip service. How much success
attended his efforts is difficult to say. Contemporaries
as well as more recent writers, however, have paid
testimony to the effectiveness of his rule. In general
the convicts responded well to his guidance. Crimes
against the person were rare and while thefts were
fairly common many of these resulted from sheer
desperation and hunger.
One of the offences Phillip refused to
tolerate was ill treatment of the Aboriginals. In his
Instructions he had been ordered to establish contact
and maintain friendly relations with them and he took
these humanitarian injunctions seriously. He interested
himself in the life of the natives whose customs also
attracted considerable attention from his fellow
officers. He made them presents, placed two, Colebe and
Bennelong,
under his personal care, and did his utmost to win and
keep their friendship. At first he seemed to have
succeeded. The Aboriginals evinced no desire to drive
the whites out and showed admiration for their power and
their leader whose missing front tooth apparently
possessed symbolic value. Friction later developed and
matters eventually reached the point where Phillip was
forced to take punitive action, though he continued to
exercise restraint even after being wounded by a spear
at Manly Cove. Throughout he sought to maintain harmony
while gradually persuading the Aboriginals of the
superiority of British civilization. Settlers who
interfered with their pursuits remained liable to heavy
punishment.
Although in 1788-92 convicts and their
gaolers made up the bulk of the population there
gradually appeared others who fell into neither
category. As early as July 1789 a small batch of
convicts sought their freedom, claiming that their
sentences had expired. Through oversight Phillip had not
been supplied with their records and being unable to
verify their claims shelved them. Later this deficiency
was remedied enabling the governor to liberate the
growing number of convicts who each year completed their
sentences. By 1792 some 350 persons, of whom the
majority were men, had been restored to freedom. Some
secured passages home but most were unable to do so and
were obliged with diminishing reluctance to stay in New
South Wales. There they found employment mainly on
government works, but a minority struck out on their own
and took up farming, introducing a new element into an
economy dominated by public enterprise.
Phillip's second Commission dated 2 April
1787 had given him the power of granting land to
approved persons, defined in his first Instructions as
former convicts. The British government was anxious to
encourage people of this kind to remain at Port Jackson
and for this reason offered them small plots of land and
full maintenance during the early months of operations.
The Home Office also indicated its willingness to make
grants to the non-commissioned officers and privates of
the marines who might elect to remain after completing a
tour of duty, and to any migrants who might arrive.
Phillip was ordered to examine the soil, report on its
quality and suggest terms on which it might be
alienated. Without fully waiting for his advice,
however, the secretary of state dispatched on 22 August
1789 fresh Instructions on the granting of land.
The only residents not permitted to own
land were the civil staff and military officers, whose
pleas for this concession were not satisfied until after
Phillip had departed. The governor himself had viewed
their requests with no great enthusiasm. While willing
to allow them to grow foodstuff in time of shortage or
run livestock on plots of crown land he was not happy at
the thought of their becoming property owners. He feared
their attention might be distracted from their duties.
He realized that they would wish to employ convicts, and
these he thought might be left too much to their own
devices. Shortly before leaving England he stressed that
insufficient convicts were available to make it possible
for the officers' likely demands to be met. Phillip was
also reserved in his attitude towards the issuing of
land grants to emancipists, for he rightly felt that
many would never succeed at farming.
Historians have been unable to agree as
to the exact area he alienated. Judging by the Register
of Land Grants, which has not been used by earlier
writers, he granted 3440 acres (1392 ha) on the
mainland. At Norfolk Island he was obliged to recall
some of the grants originally issued and by December
1792 had reallotted titles to a mere 49 acres (20 ha),
making a grand total of 3489 acres (1412 ha). This was
considerably less than the area alienated by his
immediate successors, a fact which resulted not from
niggardliness but from the unwillingness of more than a
handful of persons to try their hand at what was to most
an unfamiliar occupation. Apart from
James Ruse
there were no requests for land until 1791 and by
December 1792 only seventy-three persons occupied
holdings on the mainland.
With characteristic thoroughness the
governor did his utmost to ensure the success of a group
whose activities might improve the food situation. He
personally selected land for them in the vicinity of
Parramatta close to water, protection, market and
supplies. Where necessary he varied his Instructions in
their interests providing them with aid for eighteen
months instead of the year stipulated by the British
government. Originally he had been ordered to reserve
between each 150-acre (61 ha) block 'a space of ten
acres (4 ha) in breadth and of thirty acres (12 ha) in
depth'. Realizing the dangers of natives lurking in the
undergrowth on such land and convinced of the need for
farmers to live side by side so as to provide mutual aid
he successfully recommended the abandonment of this
injunction. To deter settlers from disposing of land he
incorporated in the title deeds, whose wording he
himself devised, a clause forbidding them to sell their
grants until they had occupied them continuously for at
least five years. On two occasions he took land away
from men who had made little attempt to cultivate it.
The progress of farming, however, was inevitably slow,
for the settlers possessed few resources, inadequate
tools and little experience. By December 1792 they had
cleared little more than 517 acres (209 ha), owned
scarcely any livestock and were still mostly dependent
on government aid for survival.
Although Phillip's reputation as an
administrator must rest primarily on his work on the
mainland of New South Wales, Norfolk Island also came
under his control. In 1787 he had been ordered to settle
this potentially useful spot to forestall occupation by
any other power. On 12 February 1788 he made P. G. King
the first commandant and two days later dispatched him
to the island with a party of twenty-one, including
fifteen convicts. Others were sent later mainly to ease
the famine in New South Wales. By late 1792 the
population totalled 1115 persons, and the island's
activities, which at first had been dominated by
government enterprise, were diversified by settlers from
the marines. Effort had also been made to grow flax
though little had been accomplished. The real burden of
controlling these and other developments fell on the
rulers on the spot, successively P. G. King, Major Ross
and Captain
William Paterson;
nevertheless Phillip was in constant communication with
them and as the person responsible for the island's
management laid down some of the principles on which
their actions were based.
On 11 December 1792 Phillip sailed for
England in the Atlantic to seek medical attention
for a pain in his side which had involved him in
constant suffering. His work in New South Wales has been
widely commended and, given the circumstances under
which he was obliged to operate, it is difficult to see
how he could have accomplished more than he did. Many of
his hopes, including those for the encouragement of
whaling off the coast which he recommended very
strongly, were not realized. Despite these frustrations
he retained his optimism to the end, displaying a
fortitude and sense of duty that carried him through
periods of great difficulty and physical pain. He left
at a time when developments loomed which were to undo
much of his work. One consequence of the discovery of
the settlement by overseas merchants was that in
increasing numbers they brought cargoes including liquor
for sale. Phillip recognized the dangers of permitting
the convicts to obtain spirits and the one occasion, in
October 1792, when he allowed it to be sold to the other
residents confirmed his fears, for there was widespread
drunkenness and disturbance. The episode was not
repeated but it must remain a matter of doubt whether,
had he stayed much longer, Phillip could have countered
the many problems that were to arise from the liquor
trade. Similarly his departure preceded by only two
months the arrival from London of orders allowing civil
and military officers to own land, an event which
provided these men with an opportunity to promote their
interests and heightened the possibility of their
conflict with a governor anxious to favour no single
element in the community. It was perhaps fortunate that
Phillip was unable to follow his original intention of
returning to Port Jackson once his health was restored,
but medical advice compelled him formally to resign on
23 July 1793. One of his first tasks upon returning to
England was to raise an additional company for service
with the New South Wales Corps; this was his last
practical contribution to the settlement but he
maintained an interest in its affairs and continued to
be consulted on them for some time, though his
recommendation of King as his successor was turned down.
By 1796 Phillip had sufficiently
recovered his health to resume active naval duties.
After successively commanding several ships, of which
the last was the 98-gun Blenheim, he was given a
shore appointment in 1798 as commander of the Hampshire
Sea Fencibles whose purpose was to defend that county
against invasion by Napoleon.
Early in January 1799 he became a Rear
Admiral of the Blue and soon afterwards was given charge
of the Sea Fencibles throughout England. This task fully
absorbed his energies and involved him in much
travelling and administrative work until he retired in
1805.
The last nine years of his life saw him
steadily advancing in the naval hierarchy while living
in retirement at 19 Bennett Street, Bath, with his
second wife Isabella, née Whitehead, whom he had married
on 8 May 1794.
He died on 31 August 1814
three months after receiving his last promotion to
admiral of the Blue.
He left an estate worth about £25,000 and
was buried in the church of St Nicholas, Bathampton.
A memorial to him is in Bath Abbey, and
portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery, London,
and the Mitchell and Dixson Galleries, Sydney.
by
B.
H. Fletcher.1985.
The Fellowship of First Fleeters
installed a FFF Plaque on Capt Arthur Phillip’s Grave on
11th October 1985.
Refer FFF Web Site:http://www.fellowshipfirstfleeters.org.au/graves.html
Under
 see
FFF Plaque 40 – Installed 11th October 1985
for
FF CAPT ARTHUR PHILLIP RN
Commodore of the Fleet‘HMS Sirius’(1738-1814)
Source:-This article was published in
Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Volume 2, (MUP), 1967
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