Warning: mkdir() [
function.mkdir]: Permission denied in
/home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line
12
Warning: mkdir() [
function.mkdir]: No such file or directory in
/home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line
12
Warning: fopen(/home/templatecore2cache//*cluesnet.com/3b/3b8e43f2ad898db81fadc31c750c90e0d576ba44.tc2cache) [
function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in
/home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line
130
Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in
/home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line
131
Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in
/home/webs/affiliatelib2/CacheManager.php on line
132
{{Infobox Military Person|name= Arthur Phillip|lived=
11 October 1738 –
31 August 1814, [England, [England(National Portrait Gallery, London)|nickname=|allegiance= [Kingdom of Great Britain|branch= [Royal Navy|awards=|laterwork=[Governors of New South Wales-->
Admiral
Arthur Phillip Royal Navy (
11 October 1738 – 31 August 1814) was a United Kingdom Royal Navy officer and colonial administrator. Phillip was appointed
Governors of New South Wales of New South Wales, the first European colony on the
Australian continent,
Phillip of Australia,Barnard Eldershaw, M. Angus and Robertson 1938 and was the founder of the site which is now the city of
Sydney.
Early life and naval career
Arthur Phillip was born in
Fulham in 1738, the son of Jacob Phillip, a German-born language teacher, and his English wife, Elizabeth Breach, who had remarried after the death of her previous husband, a Royal Navy captain. Phillip was educated at the school of the
Greenwich Hospital and at the age of 13 was apprenticed to the merchant navy.
Phillip joined the Royal Navy at fifteen, and saw action at the outbreak of the
Seven Years' War in the
Mediterranean Sea at the
Battle of Minorca in 1756. In 1762 he was promoted to
Lieutenant, but was placed on half pay when the Seven Years War ended in 1763. During this period he married, and farmed in
Lyndhurst, Hampshire, Hampshire.
In 1774 Phillip joined the Portugal Navy as a captain, serving in the war against Spain. While with the Portuguese Phillip conveyed a fleet of convict ships from Portugal to Brazil, with a very low death rate, and this may have been the reason for the surprise choice of Phillip to lead the expedition to Sydney. In 1778 England was again at war, and Phillip was recalled to active service, and in 1779 obtained his first command, the
Basilisk. He was promoted to captain in 1781, and was given command of the
Europe, but in 1784 he was back on half pay.
Governor of New South Wales
Then, in October 1786, Phillip was appointed captain of
HMS Sirius (1786) and named Governor-designate of
New South Wales, the proposed British penal colony on the east coast of Australia, by Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, the
Home Secretary. His choice may have been strongly influenced by
George Rose, Under-Secretary of the Treasury and a neighbour of Phillip in Hampshire who would have known of Phillip's farming experience.
Phillip had a very difficult time assembling the fleet which was to make the eight-month sea voyage to Australia. Everything a new colony might need had to be taken, since Phillip had no real idea of what he might find when he got there. There were few funds available for equipping the expedition. His suggestion that people with experience in farming, building and crafts be included was rejected. Most of the 772 convicts (of whom only 732 survived the voyage) were petty thieves from the London slums. Phillip was accompanied by a contingent of
Royal Marines and a handful of other officers who were to administer the colony.
The First Fleet, of 11 ships, set sail on 13 May
1787. The leading ship reached
Botany Bay The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay With an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and
Norfolk Island (
1789) - from Project Gutenberg on 18 January
1788. Phillip soon decided that this site, chosen on the recommendation of
Sir Joseph Banks, who had accompanied
James Cook in 1770, was not suitable, since it offered no secure anchorage and had no reliable water source. After some exploration Phillip decided to go on to Port Jackson, and on
26 January the marines and convicts were landed at
Sydney Cove, which Phillip named after
Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney.
Shortly after establishing the settlement at Port Jackson, on
15 February 1788, Phillip sent Lieutenant Philip Gidley King with 8 free men and a number of convicts to establish the second British colony in the Pacific at Norfolk Island. This was partly in response to a perceived threat of losing Norfolk Island to the French and partly to establish an alternative food source for the new colony.
The early days of the settlement were chaotic and difficult. With limited supplies, the cultivation of food was imperative, but the soils around Sydney were poor, the climate was unfamiliar, and moreover very few of the convicts had any knowledge of
agriculture. Farming tools were scarce and the convicts were unwilling farm labourers. The colony was on the verge of outright
starvation for an extended period. The marines, poorly disciplined themselves in many cases, were not interested in convict discipline. Almost at once, therefore, Phillip had to appoint overseers from among the ranks of the convicts to get the others working. This was the beginning of the process of convict emancipation which was to culminate in the reforms of Lachlan Macquarie after 1811.
Phillip showed in other ways that he recognised that New South Wales could not be run simply as a prison camp. Lord Sydney, often criticised as an ineffectual incompetent, had made one fundamental decision about the settlement that was to influence it from the start. Instead of just establishing it as a military prison, he provided for a civil administration, with courts of law. Two convicts, Henry Kable and Susannah Holmes (convict), sought to sue Duncan Sinclair, the captain of
Alexander, for stealing their possessions during the voyage. Convicts in Britain had no right to sue, and Sinclair had boasted that he could not be sued by them. Someone in Government obviously had a quiet word in Kable's ear, as when the court met and Sinclair challenged the prosecution on the ground that the Kables were felons, the court required him to prove it. As all the convict records had been left behind in England, he could not do so, and the court ordered the captain to make restitution. Phillip had said before leaving England: "In a new country there will be no slavery and hence no slaves," and he meant what he said. Nevertheless, Phillip believed in discipline, and floggings and hangings were commonplace, although Philip commuted many death sentences.
Phillip also had to adopt a policy towards the
Eora Australian Aborigine, who lived around the waters of Sydney Harbour. Phillip ordered that they must be well-treated, and that anyone killing Aboriginal people would be hanged. Phillip befriended an Eora man called
Bennelong, and later took him to England. On the beach at
Manly, New South Wales, a misunderstanding arose and Phillip was speared in the shoulder: but he ordered his men not to retaliate. Phillip went some way towards winning the trust of the Eora, although the settlers were at all times treated extremely warily. Soon,
smallpox and other European-introduced epidemics ravaged the Eora population.
The Governor's main problem was with his own military officers, who wanted large grants of land, which Phillip had not been authorised to grant. The officers were expected to grow food, but they considered this beneath them. As a result scurvy broke out, and in October 1788 Phillip had to send
Sirius to Cape Town for supplies, and strict rationing was introduced, with thefts of food punished by hanging.
Stabilising the colony
By 1790 the situation had stabilised. The population of about 2,000 was adequately housed and fresh food was being grown. Phillip assigned a convict, James Ruse, land at
Rose Hill (now
Parramatta) to establish proper farming, and when Ruse succeeded he received the first land grant in the colony. Other convicts followed his example.
Sirius was wrecked in March 1790 at the satellite settlement of
Norfolk Island, depriving Phillip of vital supplies. In June 1790 the Second Fleet (Australia) arrived with hundreds more convicts, most of them too sick to work. .
By December 1790 Phillip was ready to return to England, but the colony had largely been forgotten in London and no instructions reached him, so he carried on. In 1791 he was advised that the government would send out two convoys of convicts annually, plus adequate supplies. But July, when the vessels of the
Third Fleet began to arrive, with 2,000 more convicts, food again ran short, and he had to send a ship to
Calcutta for supplies.
By 1792 the colony was well-established, though Sydney remained an unplanned huddle of wooden huts and tents. The
whaling was established, ships were visiting Sydney to trade, and convicts whose sentences had expired were taking up farming. John Macarthur (wool pioneer) and other officers were importing sheep and beginning to grow wool. The colony was still very short of skilled farmers, craftsmen and tradesmen, and the convicts continued to work as little as possible, even though they were working mainly to grow their own food.
In late 1792 Phillip, whose health was suffering from the poor diet, at last received permission to leave, and on
11 December 1792 he sailed in the ship
Atlantic, taking with him Bennelong and many specimens of plants and animals. The European population of New South Wales at his departure was 4,221, of whom 3,099 were convicts. The early years of the colony had been years of struggle and hardship, but the worst was over, and there were no further famines in New South Wales. Phillip arrived in London in May 1793. He tendered his formal resignation and was granted a pension of £500 a year.
Later life
Phillip's wife, Margaret, had died in 1792. In 1794 he married Isabella Whitehead, and lived for a time at
Bath, Somerset. His health gradually recovered and in 1796 he went back to sea, holding a series of commands and responsible posts in the wars against the French. In January 1799 he became a Rear-Admiral. In 1805, aged 67, he retired from the Navy with the rank of Admiral of the Blue, and spent most of the rest of his life at Bath. He continued to correspond with friends in New South Wales and to promote the colony's interests with government officials. He died in Bath in 1814. , near Bath, Somerset, England. The memorial to the first governor of
New South Wales (Arthur Phillip) is on the right hand wall
Phillip was buried in St Nicholas's Church,
Bathampton. Forgotten for many years, the grave was discovered in 1897 St Nicholas Church, Bathampton, Burial place of Arthur Phillip and the Premier of New South Wales, Henry Parkes, had it restored. A monument to Phillip in Bath Abbey Church was unveiled in 1937. Another was unveiled at St Mildred's Church, Bread St, London, in 1932; that church was destroyed in the London Blitz in 1940, but the principal elements of the monument were re-erected in St Mary-le-Bow at the west end of Watling Street, near Saint Paul's Cathedral, in 1968. Details of move There is a statue of him in the Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney. There is an excellent portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His name is commemorated in Australia by
Port Phillip,
Phillip Island (Victoria),
Phillip Island (Norfolk Island), the
Division of Phillip (1949-1993), the Phillip, Australian Capital Territory in
Canberra, and many streets, parks and schools.
Percival Serle wrote of Phillip in the
Dictionary of Australian Biography: "Steadfast in mind, modest, without self seeking, Phillip had imagination enough to conceive what the settlement might become, and the common sense to realize what at the moment was possible and expedient. When almost everyone was complaining he never himself complained, when all feared disaster he could still hopefully go on with his work. He was sent out to found a convict settlement, he laid the foundations of a great dominion."
Loss of remains
In 2007,
Geoffrey Robertson revealed that Phillip's remains are no longer in St Nicholas Church, Bathampton and have been lost: "...Captain Arthur Phillip is not where the ledger stone says he is: it may be that he is buried somewhere outside, it may simply be that he is simply lost. But he is not where Australians have been led to believe that he now lies." Robertson also believes it was a "disgraceful slur" on Phillip's legacy that he wasn't buried in one of England's great cathedrals and was relegated to a small village church. Robertson is campaigning for a rigorous search for the remains, which he believes should be re-interred in Australia. “The moral of this story is that we can't trust the English, the Church of England, the British, to look after our national treasures. If we're going to treasure them and remember them properly, we have to do it ourselves.”
Gallery
Image:arthur.phillips.memorial.at.bathampton.arp.jpg|The Arthur Phillip memorial on the wall of the
Australia Chapel,
BathamptonImage:Arthur-Phillip P1010024.JPG]
References
See also
- Dangar Island
- Hawkesbury River
- Spectacle Island (Hawkesbury River)
- Milson Island
- Peat Island
- Lion Island, New South Wales
External links
Arthur Phillip - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Admiral Arthur Phillip RN (11 October 1738 – 31 August 1814) was a British naval Admiral and colonial administrator. Phillip was appointed Governor of New South Wales, the first ...
Arthur Phillip
Arthur Phillip. Arthur Philip is a boutique investment and advisory house established in 2002.
Arthur Phillip
Bacchus Strategic Developments Group invest in and provide financial, consulting and development services to the wine industry
P, Phillip, Arthur, Adm, 1738-1814,
Subjects. P / Phillip, Arthur, Adm, 1738-1814 Showing all records. Show records with pictures only. Displaying records 1 to 3 of 3 records 1 PAD3210
Arthur Phillip : Oxford Biography Index entry
The Oxford Biography Index is an authoritative and accurate index of notable people – their names, their dates, and their fields of activity.
Arthur Phillip Esq. Vice Admiral of the Red Squadron | Arthur Phillip ...
PAD3211 Arthur Phillip Esq. Vice Admiral of the Red Squadron PAD3211 Arthur Phillip 1738-1814
Arthur Phillip High School - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arthur Phillip High School (APHS) is a coeducational public high school in Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia. The school was established in 1875 and is the oldest public ...
The Australia Chapel - Arthur Phillip
Captain Arthur Phillip landed in Australia in January 1788 at a site he named as Sydney in honour of Lord Sydney, and he was officially appointed Governor-in ...
Arthur Phillip High School
Includes an internet cafe, location and school maps, newsletter, students work and pages.
Arthur Phillip (1738-1814), Vice-Admiral; first Governor of New South ...
National Portrait Gallery, list of portraits for Arthur Phillip including Arthur Phillip by Francis Wheatley,