Philip Gidley King

Sir John Call, MP for Callington in 1784 and a partner in the Pybus and Son banking house, had argued the advantages of Norfolk Island in that it is uninhabited and that flax grows there.

The British government includes Norfolk Island as an auxiliary settlement, as proposed by Call, in its plan for colonization of New South Wales in 1786.

The decision to settle Norfolk Island is taken due to the decision by Empress Catherine of Russia to restrict sales of hemp.

Practically all the hemp and flax required by the Royal Navy for cordage and sailcloth is imported from Russia.

Philip Gidley King was born at Launceston, Cornwall, England on April 23, 1758.

Joining the Royal Navy at the age of twelve as captain's servant, he had been commissioned as a lieutenant in 1778.

King had served under Arthur Phillip, who had chose him as second lieutenant on HMS Sirius for the expedition to establish a convict settlement in New South Wales.

On arrival, in January 1788, King had been selected to lead a small party of fifteen convicts and seven free men to set up a settlement at Norfolk Island, nearly a thousand miles (sixteen hundred kilometers) distant, and prepare for its commercial development as a second station for transported convicts.

King and his party land on March 6, 1788, with difficulty, owing to the lack of a suitable harbor, and set about building huts, clearing the land, planting crops, and resisting the ravages of grubs, salt air and hurricanes.

More convicts and soldiers are sent to the island from New South Wales during the first year of the settlement, which is also called "Sydney" like its parent.

Philip King prevents a mutiny early in 1789, when some of the convicts plan to take him and other officers prisoner, and escape on the next boat to arrive.

While commandant on Norfolk Island, King has formed a relationship with the female convict Ann Inett—their first son, born on January 8, 1789, is named Norfolk. (He will go on to become the first Australian-born officer in the Royal Navy and the captain of the schooner Ballahoo.)

To King and Ann Inett is born another son, named Sydney, in 1790.

King, following the wreck of Sirius at Norfolk Island in March 1790, returns to England to report on the difficulties of the settlements at New South Wales.

Ann is left in Sydney with the boys; she will later marry another man in 1792, and will go on to lead a comfortable and respected life in the colony.

King, who had probably arranged the marriage, will also arrange for their two sons to be educated in England, where they will become officers in the navy.

King, while in England, had married Anna Josepha Coombe (his first cousin) on March 11, 1791 and returned shortly after on HMS Gorgon to take up his post as Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island, at an annual salary of two hundred and fifty pounds.

King's first legitimate offspring, Phillip Parker King, is born here in December 1791; and four daughters will follow.

Philip King had returned to Norfolk Island to find its nearly one thousand inhabitants torn apart by discontent after the strict regime of Major Robert Ross.

Setting about enthusiastically to improve conditions, he had encouraged settlers, drawn from ex-convicts and ex-marines, and had listened to their views on wages and prices.

The island is self-sufficient in grain by 1794, and surplus swine are being sent to Sydney.

The Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales, Francis Grose, suggests the closure of Norfolk Island as a penal settlement as early as 1794, as it is too remote and difficult for shipping and too costly to maintain.

The number of people living off the government store is high, and few settlers want to leave.

King is faced in February 1794 with unfounded allegations by members of the New South Wales Corps on the island that he is punishing them too severely and ex-convicts too lightly when disputes arise.

As their conduct becomes mutinous, he sends twenty of them to Sydney for trial by court-martial.

There, Lieutenant-Governor Grose censures King's actions and issues orders which give the military illegal authority over the civilian population.

Grose later apologizes, but conflict with the military continues to plague King.

A pelt and sketch of the platypus, when the animal is first discovered by Europeans in 1798, are sent back to the United Kingdom by John Hunter.

John Hunter's difficulties as governor had soon begun: Phillip had immediately left the colony and the military took complete control.

During the lieutenant-governorship of Francis Grose, who has unmercifully exploited the convicts, a great traffic in alcoholic spirits has sprung up, on which there is an enormous profit for the officers concerned.

They have obtained the control of the courts and the management of the lands, public stores, and convict labor.

Hunter realizes that these powers have to be restored to the civil administration, a difficult task, and in John Macarthur he has an opponent who will hardly stop at anything in defending his supposed rights.

Hunter eventually finds himself practically helpless.

A stronger man might have sent the officers home under arrest, but it is not unlikely that if Hunter had attempted to do so he would have only precipitated the rum rebellion that will took place during the administration of William Bligh.

Anonymous letters have even sent to the home authorities, charging Hunter with participation in the very abuses he is striving to prevent.

Hunter, despite his vehement defense of the charges made against him, had been recalled in a dispatch dated November 5, 1799 from the Duke of Portland, one of the three secretaries of state.

Hunter acknowledges this dispatch on April 12, 1800, and leaves for England on September 28, 1800, handing over the government to the Lieutenant-Governor Philip Gidley King.

King, suffering from gout, had returned from Norfolk Island to England in October 1796, and after regaining his health, and resuming his naval career, had been appointed to replace Hunter as the third Governor of New South Wales.

He sets about changing the system of administration, and appoints Major Joseph Foveaux as Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island.

His first task is to attack the misconduct of officers of the New South Wales Corps in their illicit trading in liquor, notably rum.

He tries to discourage the importation of liquor, and begins to construct a brewery.

However, he finds the refusal of convicts to work in their own time for other forms of payment, and the continued illicit local distillation, increasingly difficult to control.

John Macarthur is the largest sheep rearer in the colony by 1801, although he is certainly not the only landowner to have experimented with the breeding of fine-wooled sheep.

As late as July 1800, there is no evidence of any 'prophetic word' from Macarthur about the future of Spanish wool: at that time he was considering selling his entire flock.

George Bass had married Elizabeth Waterhouse at St. James Church, Westminster, on October 8, 1800.

She was the sister of Henry Waterhouse, Bass's former shipmate, and captain of the Reliance.

He had set sail again within three months, and though he writes her affectionate letters, such is his fate that he will not return.

Bass and a syndicate of friends have invested some ten thousand pounds in the copper-sheathed brig Venus, and a cargo of general goods to transport and sell in Port Jackson.

Bass, as the owner-manager, had set sail in early 1801. (Among his influential friends and key business associates in the Antipodes is the principal surgeon of the satellite British colony on Norfolk Island, Thomas Jamison, who will subsequently be appointed Surgeon-General of New South Wales.)

On passing through Bass Strait on his 1801 voyage he recorded it simply as Bass Strait, like any other geographical feature.

It seems, as Flinders' biographer Ernest Scott observed, that Bass's natural modesty meant he felt no need to say "discovered by me" or "named after me".

On arrival, Bass finds the colony awash with goods and he is unable to sell his cargo.

Governor King is operating on a strict program of economy and will not take the goods into the government store, even at a 50% discount.

What King does, though, is contract with Bass to ship salt pork from Tahiti.

Food is scarce in Sydney at this time and prices are being driven up, yet pigs are plentiful in the Society Islands and King can contract with Bass at six pence a pound, where he'd been paying a shilling (twelve pence) previously.

The arrangement suits King's thrift, and is profitable for Bass.

King meanwhile continues to face military arrogance and disobedience from the New South Wales Corps.

He fails to receive support in England when he sends an accused officer, John Macarthur, back to face a court-martial in November 1801.

Macarthur, on his way to England for trial over the duel with Colonel Paterson, had seen his ship put in for repairs in Indonesia, where he meets and offers timely advice to the young and inexperienced British Resident at Amboyna, Sir Robert Farquhar, son of the Physician in Ordinary to the Prince of Wales, Sir Walter Farquhar.

Sir Walter becomes an important patron and friend to Macarthur.

For example, when William Davidson, later Macarthur's business partner in New South Wales, applies for land next to Macarthur's holdings at Parramatta, he will carry with him a letter of introduction announcing his Royal connections as nephew to Sir Walter Farquhar.