Black Anderson: A Story of the South Coast – Part 2c

A long revision of one of the South Coast’s most disreputable historical characters

What was going on at Albany between January 1835 and December 1836

Continued from Part 2b

Cheyne, Albany and the root of James Stirling’s Swan River quest.

 

 

Okay, before we go on to the four Anderson related court-cases of 1835 and 1836, we need to lay the groundwork beneath them as far as the town is concerned.

When we left off at the end of 1834 Cheyne had brought a settler collective from the Buffalo (Henry Townsend), Gem (Gordon & Sinclair), Jolly Rambler (R. H. Maddocks) and James Pattison (et al) together at his cottage for the purposes of petitioning the Colonial Secretary in London. The door to that position, however, had become something of a revolving one. The incumbent Secretary had changed five times since Stirling began campaigning for the colony in December 1826, the latest switch occurring just five months prior, so it’s likely Cheyne’s group didn’t know in particular who they were appealing to. A scenario in keeping with the general state of affairs vis-a-vis the troubled colony.

Cheyne was exasperated on multiple fronts and desperate to get things moving. Already, he was into his fourth year at the Sound and the best chance yet to kick-start the economy was withering before his eyes. The petition begged that Albany be reinstated as a convict depot in order that prisoners carry out essential road works, even though the idea was a breach of the social and economic precept upon which the colony was established. It might have taken a year, at best, if the plan worked, but it was more the impetus to try something than lean back and do nothing at all.

On the surface of things, Cheyne’s tactic had little to no chance of success. However, despite the urgency he was clearly trying to address, it begs the question as to why he thought it might. The answer to that lies in the frustration he felt toward the town’s agricultural prospects, but also with Stirling’s fundamental motivations for commencing the colony and the fact that Albany was not, originally, part of it.

Through these pages we have traced Stirling’s life backwards, essentially from Pinjarra and its consequences, through the newspaper reports, through published correspondence relative to his Swan River years, through general historical commentary and with broader detail and insight provided by his biographers, Malcolm Uren and Pamela Statham-Drew, and by Thomas Peel’s biographer, Alexandra Hasluck. Through the Black Anderson series, we have become alert to Stirling’s potential profit motivations via his links to the Mangles family and East India Company activities between London, Bengal and China. To help address this, more recent academic interest focusing on the abolishment of chattel slavery at the time, along with the nature of Stirling’s wider business interests by way of both personal contacts and strategic thinking, have also been considered.

The image gained of Stirling is one of a confident, determined and hardworking colonial leader rising from a well-schooled, strongly family-oriented childhood, through the ranks of the Navy and associated society to a position of corresponding political standing. A man who during his gubernatorial colonial soiree remained close to his own brothers and sisters as well as his wife’s, and who dedicated himself to an overarching lifetime Naval career. With regard to his role in West Australian history, apart from what Professor Geoffrey Bolton sympathetically described as ‘over-hopeful assessment’, and of course Pinjarra, it turns out it’s hard to see much in Stirling that wasn’t respectable.

Having said that, both his biographies are openly sympathetic. While Uren’s is a 1948 issued truncated, pro-empire appraisal of the difficulties Stirling faced in bringing about the much-loved home of elated post-Second World War Swan River well-to-dos, he is thorough with the material he had to hand and offers his view around the effects of various persons and circumstances. This makes Uren’s a significantly interpretative work whereas Statham-Drew’s is a detailed coverage of his entire life, seeking overall to remain impartial. While Statham-Drew’s 2003 work is issued with an assuring voice and looms physically as a supportive memorial, for the most part it eschews opinion, allowing the unwavering tone and texture of her language to account for the diligence of Stirling’s application. By contrast, these pages aim their studies at an everyman audience. Truth-telling, as we use the term today, being central to our overarching narrative. What we do is follow the threads and discuss what we find, being entirely open to the outcome.

So, to get going, the period we are discussing here (Georgian) was a tumultuous one for Great Britain and Europe at large so we should place it in context with regard to wider world events as well as Stirling and his ambitions. There are three key aspects of the era we need to understand.

1. Breakthrough oceanic exploration introducing direct trade routes from Europe to Asia and the Americas.
2. The emergence of joint stock companies and their expansion and protection through the use of political strategy and armed forces, also in Asia and the Americas.
3. The practice of chattel slavery, as applied to the sugar, cotton and tobacco industries of the West Indies and Atlantic America, and its subsequent disapprobation by British evangelicals.

Culturally, Europe had come through the Middle Ages by the skin of its teeth with Christianity the crux of its identity and enough literature, art and craftmanship to illustrate just how far they had come. The jubilant fervor of the Renaissance refueled not only art, craft and the notion of nobility but drove on the quest for freedom from the burden of poverty to enable such pursuits. Power had always come through war and the wars of post-Medieval times were upon the suppression of smaller scale conquering and low-level gratification (marauding) in favour of larger stationary power bases adorned by grand structures (Centralisation).

The demise of the Western Roman Empire at the hands of destructive wandering tribes, commonly referred to as the Barbarians (led by the Vikings), came to an end with the overpowering of Muslim forces in Spain and revival of Europe under a regime that might be described as competitive Christianity. In other words, Western Civilisation constituted the belief in prosperity through dedication and devotion under Christianity, and whatever way best suited its protagonists to package it. (i.e. Catholic vs. Protestant and all such subdivisions.) Distance-determined factional conditions still applied, which meant wars and conquests still had to be fought left, right and center, but Europe had emerged a Christian force, and God help anyone who sought to deny it.

Tensions between the Muslim and Christian worlds of today are basic to these religious attachments. In their difference Islam and Christianity became the respective social tools of Eastern versus Western empires and remain highly opposed. Over the centuries a solid wall of enmity has been built between them.

Like Islam, the heart of Christian justification was dedication and discipline directed from a central authority, and upon these pillars Europe was able to build its artistic treasures and greatest stone buildings. The cathedrals and palaces of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain are all bounded on some quarter by the ocean. Factional competition kept the quest for ultimate power dangerously alive, but combined these countries set about leading Christianity to lands across the seas where they sought through commerce, or else sheer force, to improve their wealth. Gold, silver and gems being the items of greatest value, but always and increasingly the ever-evolving economies of Western Europe sought goods for exchange. Sugar, spices, tea, tobacco, textiles and slaves deriving most demand. Through this pursuit, gravely emboldened by religious righteousness, Europe’s most organised power structures began to specialise, grouping their make-up into individual institutions based around their monarchies.

It helps to have some understanding of the British classes of the era we are most concerned with her, the Georgian period, as it illustrates how the wealthy families of Stirling’s epoch fed the governing institutions (politics, business, clergy, military and law) with their sons, and how their daughters married amongst them in order to keep the power and wealth as close to home as possible. In those days marrying a first cousin was common among this group. Amongst the nobility, those belonging to the landed gentry were often titled (Earl, Viscount, Baron, etc.), so also belonged to what was called the peerage. You could inherit a title, or you could be granted one if your position (usually in government) warranted it. Peerage titles were therefore measure of a man’s personal and family status.

Modern European capitalism began evolving rapidly from about the year 1500. Tellingly, it coincides with the Reformation, the unhappy separation of Europe into Catholic and Protestant Churches. Subsequent warring, as the formerly feudal societies of medieval Europe gave way to newer regionalised monarchies, occurred alongside significant advancements in oceanic exploration by the Portuguese. During the 1500s, the promise of riches derived from the newly found Americas and long sought after East Indies (Malaysia and Indonesia) attracted ever more attention.

Over this century, the northern European Protestant countries of England and the Netherlands became desirous of foreign trade and sought entry to the arena. Silk and spices, unavailable since the collapse of Constantinople and closure of the Silk Road in the middle 1400s, had become accessible again thanks to Vasco de Gama and realisation of the Indian Ocean route via South Africa. Around the same time, Columbus located the Americas and the Spanish and Portuguese began colonising attempts across the Atlantic. These seismic developments in overseas interests heralded a new era of global economic competition.

Direct trade routes to India, Southeast Asia and China allowed for both bulk loading and direct purchasing of cotton, indigo, nutmeg, pepper, cloves, opium, silk and tea while from the Americas came cotton and tobacco. If not more importantly, the successful transplanting of sugar cane from Madeira and the Canary Islands to the Caribbean and mainland South America started generating huge demand. Facilitated by the practice of chattel slavery and the large-scale trade of captured Africans into the area, European investment was only too eager to get involved.

From the start of the 1600s, through the creation of joint stock companies empowered by royal decree, traders and transporters were able to generate gigantic profits from both the Americas and East Indies. because the right to do business wasn’t always easily granted, this led to competitive hostilities and a three-hundred-year sequence of conflicts between the Spanish, Portuguese, French, English and Dutch.

In short, at this time the European monarchies supported private endeavor through the provision of ships and manpower. Under England’s King Henry VIII the quest to pursue foreign wealth under Royal authority gave rise to an organised and permanent Royal Navy. The first in Europe. From the early 1700s, England’s Asian interests drew back from the spice laden Malaysian and Indonesian archipelagoes toward India and concentration there upon its textile and agricultural bases.

It was the conflict over, and decline of chattel slavery in, the Americas, combined with the exploitation of India during the second half of the 1700s which influenced Stirling into forming the Swan River colony.

 

A bitter rivalry between France and England began in the late 1600s and included the Nine Years’ War and the War of Spanish Succession in the early 1700s. Then in 1740 France sparked the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession: by the time that conflict ended eight years later, France dominated the land and Britain the seas. In 1756 this precarious balance developed into the Seven Years’ War, sometimes called the first true world war, whose main objective was the control of trade. Strategically Britain emerged victorious from the conflict, as she had already annexed Quebec and largely squeezed France out of the spice
trade in India.

Bloomfield, Noelene. “OVERVIEW FRANCE’S QUEST FOR TERRA AUSTRALIS: STRATEGIES, MALADIES AND TRIUMPHS.” The Great Circle, vol. 39, no. 2, 2017, pp. 8–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26381271. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.

 

Combining sea-based commerce with localised industrialisation via the invention of steam-powered machinery and its application to manufacturing, from the 1760s Britain began overtaking its European economic rivals. Britain’s Industrial Revolution was powered by massive coal deposits and rampant private enterprise and was in full swing when Stirling was a boy. It’s vital to grasp this kernel of knowledge as it positions Stirling in time, explaining the modus operandi behind continued expansion of the British Empire across the entirety of his life. By the time Stirling was 40, exactly as he was battling the difficulty of commencing the Swan River Colony, England had become an industrial and mercantile monster. Bullied and bruised by the break-up with North America, its blind objective was to rebuild hegemony and assert it.

England (which had become part of Great Britain in 1707) entered the Reign of Kings named George (I, II, III & IV), from 1714, mastered its pursuit of wealth by building the world’s most powerful navy and commanding it centrally via the administrative elements of its advanced political system. This bringing together of commercial endeavor with military might led to what we now call colonisation, or colonialism. That is, the usurping of weaker localised power structures overseas through the enforced application of rule. The first examples of this were the Protestant Plantations in Ireland. Rule was the operative term, resistance to which, like those who resisted (or tampered with) Christianity, was met with one or more of three options. Rejection, conversion or destruction. As history shows, destruction mostly.

In terms of finance, from the mid 1500s England’s commercial realm began to form Joint Stock Companies, the equivalent of today’s corporations. The job of the company was to make profit, and that was all. Social and political consequences were of no concern. At that time, all the world was an effective free-for-all. Come 1600, with establishment of the London Virginia Company and the East India Company (EIC), British Capitalism gained dramatic momentum. More than 300 years later, the 1829 Swan River project, a joint venture between the centralised power of the British institutions and settler colonists (private interests), had at its core individuals all belonging to the same social grouping.

In Britain, the first thirty years of the 1800s were marked by four key issues, two of them the result of the rise in Evangelical Anglicanism;

1. The quest to quell Napoleon’s Revolutionary France, both in Europe and the Americas.
2. Abolition of chattel slavery across the empire.
3. Movement toward Catholic emancipation.
4. Enaction of the Corn Laws, the artificial pricing of all grains which favoured landowners over the struggling poor, and which made such a significant contribution toward the gathering Irish famines.

Within all this was the question of management of India and its eastern colonies, via The India Board, as well as the Carribean, South Africa (Cape Colony), Mauritius and New South Wales, through the War and Colonial Office. Pressing issues relating to economic performance, employment and social unrest also had to be dealt with. Combined, these constituents dominated a very busy political scene which Stirling stepped into and sought to influence.

As a youth, Stirling held a strong sense of himself and of his privileged surroundings, traits which may also be interpreted as aloof and entitled. Certainly, he held himself in high esteem, practicing the habits of the cultured elite and aspiring toward the heights of Naval achievement. Stirling belonged to the ancient Scotts Stirling clan, only his particular branch, for business reasons, had moved to southern England when he was six years old. Stirling’s mother and father were second cousins, they shared the same surname. The family was attached at a high level to an expanded Royal Navy through his mother’s brother, Charles, and his common grandfather, Walter. On his father’s side, the Stirling’s owned coal fields, canals and were merchants in the linen trade. Earlier generations were involved with the Scottish linen and cotton industries and also the production of tobacco in North America and its importation into Scotland. Thus, historic wider family wealth had been gained during the peak of African enslavement and the mercantile Atlantic triangular trade.

Indeed, James Stirling’s family ties to the North Atlantic slave trade have been the subject of academic interest at University College London, the 1826 founded institution which proudly houses the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.  James Stirling’s paternal family were members of the Glasgow mercantile elite who had invested in the Virginia tobacco industry and later diversified into textiles. The Stirling family were generationally wealthy merchants caught up in the transfer of British business interests out of North America.

Stirling went to Westminster School in London and was appointed to the Royal Navy as a thirteen-year-old by his serving uncle, who in 1804 made the rarified rank of Rear Admiral. James Stirling proved a capable boy sailor come youth officer and then multilingual ship’s captain whose time in service, largely in the Caribbean and Americas, was curtailed by the end of American hostilities and Napolean’s defeat. From 1816, the Navy substantially reduced its operational fleet and though kept on for a spell, Stirling himself was ultimately put ashore. (The number of active officers required after 1816 shrunk by almost 90%). During his time based in the Caribbean, Stirling had been active between Florida and Louisiana and then, later, in Eastern Canada. Having learned to speak fluent Spanish, he was for a time intricately involved in the jostling for South American independence through the revolutionary activities of Simon Bolivar. In the eyes of his commanding officer, Admiral John Harvey, Stirling had proved an ‘intelligent and excellent officer’ who, in 1818, he had promoted to Post Captain.

So, Stirling was no slouch. He had served during war time as commander of HMS Brazen and seen firsthand the effects of indigenous exploitation and dispossession, as well as African enslavement in both North and South America. He was turning 27 when he was retired and added to the Navy’s seniority list which, given continued untroubled service could lead him, as it did his uncle and grandfather, to Admiral status. Ahead of one of those most coveted positions, however, were almost 700 other candidates.

As a superannuated 28-year-old, Captain Stirling was introduced to a clique of Britain’s entrepreneurial world by a fellow inactive Navy man, the well-travelled brother of a busy but affable gentleman living with his bristling young family on an elegant riverside estate not more than five miles from his parent’s leased manor; Henley Park. At this time Stirling became newly inspired. Between the ages of 26 and 30, the vision of his future-self firmed into an amalgam of naval, entrepreneurial, political and family pursuit. Rather than the Atlantic, source of his immediate family’s most pressing business interests, his attention was drawn toward Britain’s colonies and possessions bounded by the Indian Ocean.

Stirling’s father wasn’t political, but his parent’s near neighbour, James Mangles, was. This quality appears to have lured Stirling, especially when he saw a key element of his future-self in the form of Mangles’ daughter. In Surrey, in 1822, aged 31 years, Stirling found himself an appealing military professional of impressive lineage being entertained as potential suitor by a clique of local gentlemen whose swish Surrey lives were the height of 19th century Southern English aspirational living. Like a crackling winter’s fire at home, the warmth of wealth, status and family at this time broadened Stirling’s imagined future into one that encompassed a whole lot more than just commanding ships.

Through this exposure Stirling not only got closer to how the British power structure worked, but closer to its primary operators. The military was enforcement arm of a liberal, entrepreneurially minded government a big part of whose job it was to employ commerce and diplomacy as means of financing and driving colonial development. Government was more than just empire building, but through his Navy experience it was clear in Stirling’s mind that empire was the thing. The trident components of British hegemony (government, military and commerce) acted as a united force, first in the Caribbean and Americas and then in Asia and its Southeast during Stirling’s critical career development period. Just as Stirling was finding his way as an out of service officer, Stamford Raffles (a former East India Company clerk, ten years his senior) was artfully bringing into being the new colony of Singapore.

Raffles example was one of individual pursuit before official sanction. That is, the self-creation of one’s opportunity ahead of official implementation.

Nonetheless, for a little-known individual emerging from just one prong of the power structure, in order to find a way forward Stirling had not only to have an understanding of the other institutions but be recognised within each as well. This is how the very top-ranking military men were crafted. They tended to graduate from the armed forces into senior administrative roles out in the colonies, before returning to their core institution with honors years later.

So, having been laid-off in 1818, the continuously striving James Stirling fashioned his future from the immediate circumstances facing him. These were;

1. A successful though interrupted Navy career aided by high-ranking relatives.
2. A protracted and lengthening spell as an out of service Navy officer.
3. The decline of Stirling family confidence in the Atlantic & European linen trade.
4. The emergence of New South Wales as a colonial investment opportunity.
5. The emergence of Singapore as a fast-growing Indian Ocean trading post.
6. Burgeoning British trade between India, the Spice Islands and China.
7. A brother and a brother-in-law in the East India Company at India.
8. Another brother-in-law as a merchant ship’s captain operating in the Indian Ocean under the banner of a family shipping company (F. & C.E. Mangles)
9. A father-in-law with a successful history in Indian Ocean shipping. (On the back of early EIC licenses, James Mangles had transported goods and convicts through the Indian Ocean for the EIC and British government.)

 

At age 36, when he first posited the Swan River idea, Stirling was told by the War & Colonial Office in London there was no support for an additional Australian entity, at least not along the lines of his proposal. There is no document explaining why the British Government wouldn’t support another Australian penal settlement, the idea was just met with a firm ‘no’. The point being, Stirling’s original proposal, loaded with commercial advantages (particularly in relation to the East India Company), assumed a penal colony, not one based on the idea of free labour.

We need to keep this in mind.

Stirling officially started the Swan River process in December 1826 while the long serving Secretary for War and the Colonies, Henry Bathurst, was in charge. Robert Hay, who played a minor role through-out, was permanent undersecretary to Bathurst at this time and stayed in that role through various changes to come.

Crucially, at the time of Stirling’s arrival in Sydney, Captain Dumont d’Urville was there with his French discovery ship, l’Astrolabe. The French had shown growing interest in Australia since the turn of the century when Britain’s Matthew Flinders and France’s (Napoleon commissioned) Nicolas Baudin famously met at Encounter Bay in the region of Kangaroo Island (South Australia), and here the French were again (now post-Napoleon) a quarter century later scouting about under the guise of an arts and science expedition.

Bathurst had been in high office right through the Napoleonic era, so was acutely suspicious of French motives. Being a traditionalist, he was regarded as having run the Colonial Office along ‘paternalistic lines’ where ‘overseas posting owed much to status, nepotism and family contacts’. Bathurst served as Colonial Secretary for the full fifteen-year term of Robert Jenkinson’s Tory Prime Ministry (Lord Liverpool) between 1812 and 1827, having been in politics since the age of 21. By the time Stirling was motivated to appeal to him regarding formation of a colony at the Swan River, Henry Bathurst was a redoubtable Tory veteran of forty years.

Five months after his initial proposal, Stirling updated it via the office of the NSW Governor, Ralph Darling, in Sydney while he was still there and then, clearly feeling some level of need, on 15th May 1827 in a third push, also from Sydney, put himself forward as governor. At the same time, Darling had granted Stirling 256O acres of NSW land for either helping discover some new territory east of Sydney via an expedition he participated in, or for carrying out the Swan River survey. Perhaps both. I think Stirling truly thought Bathurst would agree to his proposal. Otherwise, he must have felt some level of urgency regarding the Secretary’s willingness or capacity to act.

Both Darling and Stirling will have been abreast of British politics sufficiently to be aware Bathurst would likely step down if Prime Minister Robert Jenkinson lost his place to a more liberal leader. As far as Bathurst was concerned, George Canning was the hidden snag in Jenkinson’s cabinet and someone his traditional, upper sense of preservation couldn’t abide. Canning was not the same breed as Bathurst but was brilliant enough a politician to end up being chosen as succeeding Premier when Jenkinson’s health failed. The question is whether Stirling knew, or sensed, Bathurst’s time was nigh while he was in Sydney during 1826 and 1827?

Bathurst was ‘an old school dog’ whose primary focus as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies was preservation of power and administration from London. He had been an MP since 1783 and held firmly, one might gauge, to personal loyalties derived from inherited privileges. That is: title, education and the guiding of Great Britain through its accelerating technical, political and social change via the application of conservative values. Bathurst was less interested in the development of NSW as a unique entity than he was in maintaining it as a controlled zone solely for British-determined usage, and he didn’t like interferers meddling with his management of that. The point being, just as he could not work under Canning, Bathurst would not have seen Stirling as an entitled individual and therefore will have struggled to pay him any heed.

Contrary to that, however, Stirling had identified two of Bathurst’s core concerns, suppression of the French military and the quest for foreign trade supremacy, as ripe for exploitation.

In the end, Stirling’s third overture was too late anyway. Bathurst quit in April 1827, when Jenkinson finally resigned due to ill health, and George Canning, the liberal, pro-Catholic option, was ushered in as Prime Minister. Regardless of the change, however, after 15 years of Bathurst oversight, the Colonial Office was so tightly bound to government control under Conservative values, very little could be done to favour anything new or different. As result, Stirling’s proposal languished through the incoming Secretary, Frederick Robinson’s, six-month tenure, until it was picked up by the following incumbent, William Huskisson.

To gain some grasp on the wrangling that went on we have to look closely at what was happening at Downing Street and Whitehall. Stirling’s initial move appears strongly associated with both Darling’s and Bathurst’s position on quashing any attempts the French might make to claim the western side of Australia, but the move to put himself forward as governor may have been informed by the looming end of the Jenkinson/Bathurst reign. This is because Jenkinson’s health was noticeably declining, and much discussion will have been going on surrounding a replacement.

At the end of April 1827, when Jenkinson did step down, Frederick J Robinson switched from Chancellor of the Exchequer to Colonial Secretary, but only held the role for five months before being promoted Prime Minister. This happened because Canning unexpectedly passed away. Robinson, who just prior to his promotion was awarded the title Viscount Goderich (a Knighthood), had been seen for some time as a talented ascending civil servant and potential Prime Minister, though was not the toughest of personalities.

Whether Stirling held all or any of this in mind while pushing for his colony from Sydney is a matter of conjecture, but it’s hard to imagine him not going through the permutations as he assessed and reassessed his chances. Particularly in the months leading up to the HMS Success commission. Appealing to Bathurst’s suspicion of French motives was a dominant and steadfast tactic. Regardless of who took over in the Colonial Office, the western coast of Australia lay exposed while the French were active in the area. With Bathurst out, Stirling will have thought his chances significantly improved.

Indeed, on 15th October 1827, just as soon as Robinson had got his feet under the desk as Prime Minister, Sir John Barrow, Undersecretary to the Admiralty, wrote to Robert Horton, then undersecretary to Huskisson, telling him he had read Stirling’s Swan River report and though he found it fallacious, his own view (and therefore the Navy’s) was the Swan should be settled if King George Sound was maintained at the same time. His thought process being two settlements offered better opportunity for successful colonisation of the southwest corner.

Barrow is the dark horse in all of this. Having received submissions from Stirling designed to regain him active service, Barrow was in a position to influence Stirling’s appointment to command HMS Success, and then, almost as a foil to Bathurst’s determined opposition, to offer Naval opinion to the Colonial Office on the strategic importance of covering the western portion of Australia through utilisation of bases on both its west and south facing coasts.

It isn’t clear how well Barrow was personally disposed toward the Stirling and Mangles families. If there was a connection it was likely brought about by Stirling’s beleaguered uncle, Admiral Charles. Barrow joined the Admiralty the same year as Charles Stirling was promoted to it (1804) and remained in position for forty years. He will, therefore, have been fully aware of Rear Admiral Stirling’s difficulties from 1814 (which we will get to a bit later.) In any case, ten months after his letter to Undersecretary Horton, Barrow again wrote to the Colonial Office, this time to Horace Twiss, recommending transfer of the King George Sound military settlement to the Swan River Colony. In his estimation, ‘the sooner the better’. Barrow, in each of his communications, was supportive of a penal colony.

It may be construed, I suppose, that having sanctioned Stirling’s command of HMS Success in 1826 (if he did), and thereby being aware of Stirling’s strategic interest in commencing a west Australian colony, Barrow was committed to supporting it. Barrow was a prolific individual whose impressive legacy is most noted for his, and therefore the Admiralty’s, support for Arctic exploration. His task was to direct naval activities on behalf of the Admiralty and upon government ordinance. Barrow Island off W.A.’s northwest coast is named after him. If someone can categorically show it was Barrow who approved Stirling for the HMS Success command, the extent of his influence in the establishment of Western Australia might be better determined.

Until then, however, the singular and lonely Barrow Island suggests he, like Bathurst, was alert to the French risk and not Stirling’s intent on leading a commercially motivated venture. If he did appoint Stirling to HMS Success, it was not to facilitate any private interests, but in recognition of Stirling’s professional standing and his bringing to the Admiralty’s attention the strategic importance of an outpost located on the western side of Australia.

It’s not clear how friendly Stirling and Robinson were either, but influential association between them and between Robinson and the Mangles family is evident. Like Henry Bathurst, Frederick Robinson came from the Landed Gentry, so the entitlement and financial credentials were in place to allow him to rise. Robinson was eight years older than Stirling and went to Harrow and then Cambridge, but his term as Prime Minister was short lived because, in the end, he wasn’t able for the rigors of the position. Which, to be fair, were pretty tricky for someone of his general agreeableness.

It had been a good thing Robinson first held chief position over the colonies, but time, political pressures and the culture of the Colonial Office as set over the previous 18 years by both Jenkinson and Bathurst, disallowed him from acting on Stirling’s proposals. When William Huskisson stepped in, although a Canning-ite, he too appears to have held fast to Bathurst’s negativity toward the commencement of a colony on Australia’s western face.

Fortunately for Stirling, Huskisson’s tenure ended prematurely as well. Due to political allegiances, Huskisson was forced to resign after just eight months and it was then, critical to the outcome of Stirling’s agitating, Sir George Murray entered the role. Murray, 18 months later, switched positions under Robert Peel’s government, so handed the Colonial Secretary’s position back to Frederick Robinson who re-held the office between November 1830 and April 1833. Ultra critical years for the Swan River Colony and for Stirling’s reporting as founding Governor.

It was to Frederick Robinson, therefore, that Cheyne’s petition was directed. This is something Stirling will not have felt particularly troubled by, though it will have irked him. He had lately returned from England, knighted under Robinson’s recommendation, where he held round after round of talks designed to secure help for the colony, which he was only smally able to achieve, and now here he was six months back on the job and things were looking worse than ever.

W.A.’s Murray River was named after George Murray, as was the county of Murray, one of 26 cadastral divisions the Swan River Colony was originally divided into. Indeed, the Scottish city of Perth was Murray’s birthplace. Stirling’s naming of significant geographic and political features in southwest Western Australia across his time as chief executive reflects the importance of government allegiances well before Naval ones. Tellingly, Twiss, Goderich, Murray, Hay, Wellington, Grey and (Robert) Peel are all recognized while the names Bathurst, Jenkinson /Liverpool and Huskisson aren’t to be found anywhere among the colony’s early political divisions, geographic features or townsite identities.

Thus, despite Bathurst’s firm disapproval, the series of management reorganisations within the Colonial Office between 30th April 1827 and 30th May 1828 served to encourage Stirling, giving him the confidence to keep pressing.

When Frederick Robinson became Prime Minister, he presided over the Cabinet reshuffle which saw William Huskisson take on the role of Colonial Secretary between September 1827 and May 1828. Robinson will have been aware of Stirling’s agitating for a West Australian colony but had so much on his plate he couldn’t get near the subject. This left Huskisson in the position of having to address Stirling’s three submissions via Darling’s Sydney office, which he did by referring back to Bathurst’s stance on the matter. However, as we shall see, in his dismissal Huskisson left the door ajar by implying further negotiation on the potentiality of a western colony was not out of the question.

Huskisson, it can be reckoned, was sympathetic toward Stirling’s cause but found his hands tied by the recent management upheaval and Bathurst’s tenacious legacy of not rushing into anything.

Stirling’s drive for acknowledgement within the walls of political influence had begun well before he made it out to Sydney on HMS Success, so while he may have been a rookie, he wasn’t approaching the Office as a complete unknown. As he had no experience as a civil administrator, Stirling’s approach had to be based on impression, on his being seen as worthy by established officials as well as those on the rise. To have any chance of being taken seriously, Stirling had not only to be active and in the know, he also had to rely, at least to some degree, on luck. At the beginning, his credentials were good but not ideal and with mounting years of professional inactivity behind him, appointment of any kind was becoming increasingly difficult.

During the years 1825 to 1828, Stirling took every opportunity to put himself forward among the movers and shakers of the British administration. Whole-heartedly encouraged by both his immediate family and in-laws, Stirling had close-enough contact with the goings-on at Westminster to figure out his strategy and who to tailor it to when the wind changed. Frederick Robinson, for example, and old James Mangles were from neighbouring Tyne & Wear and Yorkshire respectively, and both recent recruits to the South. The families being well known to each other.

Frederick Robinson later acknowledged Stirling’s efforts by approving him for his own entry to the peerage. While he was still Secretary for the Colonies, it was Robinson (Viscount Goderich) who recommended Stirling for his Knighthood, ironically bestowed in London on 4th April 1833, smack bang in the middle of that unauthorised but necessary return the Governor made in order to save both his colony and career, while Bathurst was belittling the entire Swan River episode through his (retired) writing. The knighthood was entry level, the same as many today are granted for outstanding service or achievement in their field (religion, military, government, business, sport and the arts), but it was a knighthood all the same.

There’s still a distance before we get through all this but it’s very much worth exploring as insight to Stirling’s role in establishing and governing Western Australia helps explain his actions vis-a-vis Albany. Stirling’s Swan River phase amounted to 13 years of vital work, crucial to the future of his marriage, family and career, and he did, eventually, become an Admiral. His attachment to W.A. amounted to one fifth of his life and he worked very hard during it. By comparison, it was the same length of time he spent in active naval service prior to the Swan River initiative.

Stirling’s early naval experience was mostly gained in the America’s at the tail end of what has been called The Sixty Years War which was the battle for supremacy in North-east America. This long period of conflict (1754-1815) involved the Indigenous Americans (Indian), the new European Americans, The French and the English and encompassed The (British/American) War of 1812 and the American War of Independence (the Revolutionary War) between 1775 & 1783. It extended to maritime blockades of French and American ships in the Atlantic and Carribean while Stirling was under the patronage and guidance of his high-ranking uncle. Stirling’s focus on French naval activity in Australian waters during 1826 was excited by that experience and is evident in some of the language he used during the bargaining process.

Stirling was at his hungriest during the latter stages of his Navy lay-off, during the HMS Success commission (which we will get to) and the lead up to the Swan River colony’s approval. Prior to this time, he was in about as much difficulty as a young professional can get without doing anything wrong. At the same time as he found himself darling of the Mangles inhabited Surrey Hills, Stirling also found himself in the throes of attempting to rejuvenate a career truncated by that darned downsizing of the Navy. Additionally, Uncle Admiral Charles Stirling had been implicated in a disreputable practice case, been court martialed and stood down from active service. Stirling himself achieved much during the playing out of that case, including being granted the HMS Success commission, but it appears to have been an embarrassing stain on the Stirling name. That, and insight to how easy it was for Stirling to fraudulently misdescribe the nature of the territory he desperately wanted to sell.

Pressing at this time was the ever-increasing need for Stirling to prove to his in-laws, and himself, he was not already washed up. Indication of the fear felt that Stirling’s career may not progress as hoped was illustrated by old James Mangles offering to build a house for his daughter and her husband on the family estate. Not something the supercilious Stirling will have been comfortable accepting.

So, much to his chagrin, six months after putting himself forward as governor of the proposed colony, Stirling was eventually waved away by Secretary Huskisson, who two months later again confirmed dismissal of the Swan River proposal to Stirling’s local supporter, NSW Governor Ralph Darling, in Sydney. Both rejections were issued by Undersecretary E.G. Stanley.

Though he wasn’t there to open the envelope, it will have been difficult to take in. Years of effort and mounting hope set aside in a single sentence.

 

 

 

 

Sir,                                                                    Downing Street,  29 November, 1827

 I am directed by Mr. Secretary Huskisson to acquaint you, in reply to your letter of the 15th of May last, that, as it is not the intention of His Majesty’s Government to form an Establishment on Swan River, it is not in his power to comply with your wishes in the manner to which you allude.

I am, &c.,

E. G. Stanley.

 

 

.

But Stirling didn’t give up. Huskisson, perhaps merely out of sympathy, implied in those last half-dozen words the idea of a Swan River colony might yet be considered if proposed under an alternate mechanism.

At the time, Colonial Office ideas surrounding Australia and its two penal colonies were in flux due to the Bathurst commissioned Bigge reports of 1822/23. Management of New South Wales was seen as both costly and frustrating, a bugbear to the Office. Under Bigge’s recommendations the call was for both more settlers and more convicts, while local politics was driving local earnings into local development rather than financial return to London. Additionally, New South Wales had suffered drought and exports of wool had waned with it. Also, corruption within the land distribution and division system (including grants), as well as the banking system, had halved cash reserves, the reason why HMS Success carried out to Sydney with it a cargo of currency. On top of that, there was an economic crisis at home.

All round then, when it came to asking for a fully funded new colony, Stirling’s timing was off. Bathurst’s reluctance was primarily economically motivated and his position on it carried into the Huskisson tenure. Any move toward another autonomous Australian penal colony would be seen as wasteful and excessive when a simple outpost, managed from Sydney, was enough to counter any foreign threat. Something Bathurst had already put in place by establishing the King George Sound garrison prior to Stirling’s arrival in Sydney.

In July 1828, when further changes at the Colonial Office occurred, Robert Hay remained as Permanent Undersecretary while Sir George Murray came in to lead, with the lawyer and Shakesperean scholar Horace Twiss behind him as second deputy. Murray was a fellow Scott, known to Stirling’s mother’s side of the family, and MP for Perthshire between 1824 and 1832, while Twiss was also familiar with the Stirling family. Inspired, Stirling immediately wrote to Robert Hay restating the strategic importance of the Swan River along with its most desirable qualities as a settlement. Still gunning for a penal colony, Stirling articulated the suitability of convict labour to the climate and general conditions of the region.

Within a matter of weeks, as yet another dismissal was returned. Desperation set in, and Stirling finally changed tack. Acting on Huskisson’s intimation he tried a completely new approach. In a letter dated 21st August 1828, Stirling came together with an apparent partner, Thomas Moody (senior army officer, high ranking civil servant, geopolitics expert and businessman), and applied for a Proprietary Charter (effectively private ownership under a company name, but still sovereign to the crown). Under this apparatus every expense would be met by the investors. Stirling and Moody cited the American colonies of Pennsylvania and Georgia as precedents.

In one fell swoop, Stirling gave up on the penal colony idea in favour of the polar alternate.

However, in the wake of the American experience Proprietary Chartership was seen as a failed mechanism and Stirling, having been made aware of it by Twiss (who must also have whispered something in his ear vis-a-vis the wisdom of working with Moody) quickly distanced himself from the idea.

At this time, Stirling might have thought the concept lost if he did not have some inside knowledge and think the gesture was what mattered. That, by finding a partner and indicating willingness to go it alone financially, he had established the inevitability of the outcome and the blind reality there was no other candidate to take on the gubernatorial role but himself. And he was right, on the whole the Colonial Office became favourably disposed. The Swan River was now presenting as a low cost, low risk, option whose administration issues might be taken on by superficially qualified volunteers. That is, persons willing to take land grants in lieu of salary.

To that end, in an emboldened and potent show of intent, Stirling took his report on the Swan River, the grossly overstated one he had presented to Darling in Sydney, and had it published in the Hampshire Telegraph. Subsequently taken up by certain London papers, this sparked a degree of public excitement. Additionally, in November, it is likely he, or someone from within his camp, fabricated a rumour the French had dispatched a vessel in order to establish a colony on the western side of Australia. A tactic that led to the Western Chronicle publishing the notion and generation of further razzmatazz vis-à-vis the Swan River idea.

There was another protagonist at work during all this too. One, through private association, who had fallen for Stirling’s radiant pitch and soon enough clambered to gain the upper hand himself. The idea of free-labour colonisation along the Swan River was also put forward by an association of businessmen fronted by 35-year-old Thomas Peel, an heir of (probably exaggerated) means. The official submission didn’t come until mid-November, but discussions were held during October. Unfortunately, Peel, being lustful, naive, lazy and assuming, prematurely concluded his proposal had been fully approved and so commenced down a path of gathering failure.

We include the Stirling/Peel relationship in this discussion as what happened at Pinjarra (literally weeks before Cheyne held his meeting at Albany) is very much reflective of it. Pinjarra is essential to these pages as we look into the actions of Stirling in relation to his attitude toward the Aborigines and into Peel’s behaviour at the Murray River as all around him sank to ruin.

In line with favourable press reaction to Stirling’s Swan River report, when it turned out Peel’s submission had not been approved, the failure was obfuscated by lingering public perception he had been the beneficiary of his cousin Robert Peel’s governmental power wielding. Caricatured by the press, both Peels were dressed down as rorting fat cats. Glaring evidence of the manner in which the Home entities sometimes viewed their imperial executives.

 

 

 

The first cousin of a most prominent but currently dissenting Tory, Robert Peel (future prime minister at the time engaged with instigation of London’s Metropolitan Police Act), Thomas’s large-scale scheme was just as bold in its assertions as Stirling’s report, and equally countered by the Colonial Office too. The reality of the Peel proposal, regardless of all the fallout, is that the decision to commence the colony had been made prior to the issuing of it. We know this because of correspondence dated between 31st October and 13th November directed among various official parties, including John Barrow of the Admiralty and the Colonial Office, regarding Naval preparations for the colony.

Peel’s memorial wasn’t dated until 14th November.

Nonetheless, because of its scale, the Colonial Office may well have bounced around the idea of granting Peel’s proposal parallel to Stirling’s, in the sense Peel and his associates demanded priority of land choice, only the risk of its failure caused them to err on the side of caution. Yes, it was the concept of failure which troubled the Office most. A wise insight interpretative of the gung-ho approach used by both parties, and by the legacy of Bathurst’s tenure over the years which had entertained various schemes proposed for New South Wales and Van Dieman’s Land. Barrow’s use of the term ‘fallacious’ when describing Stirling’s report on the Swan River is indicative of this, even though he was speaking from the Admiralty and in favour of the idea. The Colonial Office was not naive. It was their job to administer the colonies, of which there were dozens world-wide, and it cannot be they did not think the vying of both parties comprised more than its fair share of hyperbole. Professor Bolton’s ‘over-hopeful assessment’ and in today’s terms our verdict of plain fraud.

Instead of established New South Wales, the Peel proposition had opted for the virgin Swan River to accommodate 10 000 emigrants in exchange for four million acres. The sum broke down to 400 acres per head, 200 to go to each settler and 200 to the directors of the company. Based on anticipated arrival costs of 30 Pounds per head, the proposition costed the exchange at 18 pennies (one shilling and six pence) per acre. A standard employed by Bathurst in a previous NSW scheme.

These 18 pennies per acre were the same in value as the Colonial Office declared would be granted to ordinary Swan River settlers for their stock investment; that is chattels. Settlers had to produce receipts for their goods or provide a costed inventory for approval by officials in order to be granted 40 acres for every three Pounds in value they brought to the colony. In addition, people (labour) would be valued at 200 acres per adult. Less for children under ten.

As example, under their own impetus a mature family of five could arrive at the Swan River with chattels to the value of 150 Pounds and be granted 2000 acres plus an additional 1000 acres for the labour. The cost of arrival to be borne by the family.

Under the Peel scheme, the same family of five would be brought out by the company and issued with just 1000 acres regardless of what chattels they brought with them. In addition, the families would have to pay off the cost of their emigration by working for the company. The price to each person being 30 Pounds.

Both parties faced a time-based condition of having to improve their land to the same value again, or else forfeit it altogether. Peel’s settlers will had to give their labour in order to improve the estate’s holdings under the terms of their contract.

Statham-Drew says Peel and Stirling were introduced to each other at least a month ahead of their documented meeting at the Windham Club late in November. This meeting, one imagines, will have motivated Stirling no end. To find a party of investors advanced in their consideration of a sizable emigration scheme to New South Wales was significant enough, but to see their ears prick at mention of the terms as would apply under his West Australian model will have lit a fire inside him. The biggest challenge facing a starter colony was growth, and here was talk of a single scheme that could provide all that was needed. Peel will have been filled with incentive too. The New South Wales opportunity was expensive by comparison and here was Stirling telling him not only would he profit to twice the extent, but the Swan River was also better than any area of New South Wales he had seen.

Stirling sold the Swan River to Peel, lock, stock and barrel. In the end, Peel might have been a quick buyer, but Stirling had first to paint the picture for him. For people in the business of selling, there is no feeling like finding an interested buyer. Every ounce of enthusiasm Stirling held for his grand Swan River plan will have been strapped to the language he used to describe it and both he and Peel will have ended the day charged to the hilt with the promise of success.

Stirling held the upper hand with the Colonial Office on geopolitical grounds, but there was still reluctance. With an independent self-financed emigration scheme attached, surely all resistance would melt. The path was clearing for Stirling. At last, realisation of his goal had come into sight and with it a powerful sense of achievement. Accordingly, his demeanor will have changed from that of an anxious prophet to that of a miner standing guard to the staked entrance of his shaft, a diamond the size of his thumbnail wrapped in his fist.

The Swan River project was a sensation and bound for eminence.

Peel’s approach to the Colonial Office was likely based around a proposal by the Van Diemen’s Land Company, an 1825 initiated private venture which applied for a 500 000-acre grant on the basis they would grow wool for the British textile industry in Tasmania. Emigration schemes could seek favour from colonial executives where large investments were concerned and as Peel’s calculated investment sum figured 300 000 Pounds, its directors had high expectations. Whether it would actually cost that much was another matter.

Perhaps thinking he had lent weight, if not outrightly tipped the balance in favour of commencement of the colony, Peel remained convinced he could manufacture an altogether better outcome for himself through the Swan River venture even though his original partners, who could not agree to the Office’s tempered version of the ten thousand persons for four million acres stipulation, bowed out.

Upon hearing the contents of Peel’s November 14th submission, despite the decision to commence the colony having already been made, but not made public, Stirling met with Horace Twiss to clarify. An impromptu face-to-face meeting he was able to arrange, but which Peel wasn’t. Stirling’s concern was the distribution of land. As far as he was concerned, under no circumstances was Peel to be allowed first choice. Something Twiss and Murray not only agreed to, but perhaps sensing not all was as it seemed as far as Peel was concerned, hardened in favour of Stirling’s own recruits. Those who would follow him.

Another motivation for Stirling to prevent Peel from gaining first choice was the hidden truth only he knew. The only reliable agricultural land he had actually laid eyes on was 28 miles upriver and he wanted that for himself and for his enablers. There was no alternative to that.

Many years earlier Stirling’s sister was put into a school in Bath, in Somerset. Uncle Charles Stirling’s place of residence. The school’s head mistress was Horace Twiss’s mother, and it is believed a relationship between the two families developed. Statham-Drew says Stirling and Twiss knew each other prior to Twiss’s appointment as undersecretary. Alexandra Hasluck paints Horace Twiss as an extremely bright, highly literate, detached but amusing, socially outgoing man of almost theatrical proportions whose career as senior civil servant was supplemented by regular contributions to The Times newspaper.

In the end, Peel got 250 000 acres for bringing out 540 settlers. Based on the 30 pound per head cost calculation, this was generous. However, Peel argued across the remainder of his life he should have been given another 250 000 under the terms of the accord.

Peel and his original associates probably opted for the Swan River because of restrictions in New South Wales placed by Lord Bathurst in 1826. New laws meant free grants couldn’t extend beyond 2560 acres (exactly the amount Darling had rewarded Stirling with for carrying out the Swan River survey), all of it to be contained within what was to become known as N.S.W.’s Nineteen Counties. Any more had to be bought at auction, regardless of arrival costs. This, in fact, was the motivation behind most of those who followed Stirling out to Western Australia.

The Swan River scheme was entirely new, yet to be proven in any regard, but by comparison the terms were generous. Settlers bought in because they thought they could significantly improve their personal wealth over and above what NSW and Van Diemen’s Land were offering, and because Stirling, employing all the sophistry of a modern-day real estate agent, had told them the climate and land was not only superior to anything he’d seen in NSW but just like the benevolent Plains of Lombardy.

 

Thomas Peel was a second son, so not a direct heir, and even though his older brother was bound for the clergy Peel opted not to go into his father’s business. He was clear he wanted to go it alone. His money, bandied about as 20 000 Pounds, was supposed to be his forward paid inheritance, but either never materialised or somewhere along the line vanished. Soloman Levey, his second and silent partner, provided almost everything. Peel’s story is only partially relevant, so we’ll cut the background here, suffice it to say the man’s series of unfortunate events corresponds by way of drama and severity to that of the unreliable small-boat journeyman James Manning.

In essence, Peel attempted to usurp Stirling’s lead position in the running for Swan River’s most productive land, only to fall foul of the Colonial Office’s wariness, along with the lies Stirling and Fraser had told in the first place. Peel wanted first dibs on the Swan River land allocation, ahead of Stirling, but this was denied. Thus, he opted for land south of the Swan and west of the Canning Rivers, that portion now known as Applecross/Ardross/Booragoon and westward of there to Fremantle. It’s hard to imagine, apart from proximity to Perth City itself, any advantage that land would have been over what in the end he got. Both parcels were sandy and infertile, wholly unsuitable to the growing of tobacco and grain, false knowledge Peel had drawn from Stirling’s and Fraser’s assessment and on-sold to his scheme’s subscribers.

The Swan River was not the Italy of Australia. The Swan River was a baking sand plain incapable of supporting agriculture in the same way Albany was incapable. In December 1830, 18 months after settlement commenced on the Swan River, Captain Collet Barker was down in Albany doing his best to keep the isolated garrison in discipline when the Nimrod anchored in the Sound, on its way from Hobart/Launceston to Fremantle with urgent supplies. Captain Harvie telling Barker; ‘they consider in Van Diemen’s Land that the Swan River is a bubble’. Ironic, is it not, that Stirling damned Albany as infertile when batting off competition from Edmund Lockyer after his 1827 HMS Success Swan River survey, only to find his overly hopeful assessment equal to Albany in all but coastal dynamics. It’s cooler in Albany, there are hills and high points, and the coast is a loopy configuration of coves, cliffs, islands and beaches, rather than an endless line of sand dunes separating a crashing shore-break from a dull sandy plain. Either way though, neither could support any form of commercial agriculture.

 

In the course of last year I had an opportunity of visiting the Settlements recently established at King George’s Sound, Melville Island and Raffles Bay, And I cannot Consider any one of those places as in any way Calculated for the Reception of Convicts. As far as the Country had been explored in the Neighbourhood of King George’s Sound, the Soil was such as to defy Cultivation, So that any Establishment there must be supported by Supplies from other Quarters; . . . These inconveniences do not exist at Swan River, and I am not aware that there is any Part of New Holland better adapted for the Purpose of a Penal Settlement than the Country in its Vicinity.

Captain Stirling to Under Secretary Hay.
18 Baker Street, 30th July, 1828.

 

On a macro level, Stirling understood the general positivity surrounding Australia was indicative of two forces: overarching optimism and the desire for land. Disillusion with local opportunity and the idea of owning some land was a powerful draw for British working-class people, while middle-class families who sold up could dream of comparatively extravagant acreages. Certainly, the American experience provided example of success and had been cited in Stirling’s embellished pitch, while contemporaneously NSW was expanding rapidly by way of free settlers. As mentioned, John Thomas Bigge‘s report had called both for more convicts and settlers, and for the strengthening and refinement of a clear social hierarchy.

New South Wales was to evolve as an aristocracy and the convicts were to serve them. Forever. The West, on the other hand, was now to be convict free. Rather than shiver at the prospect of beginning without ‘unfree’ labour of any kind, Stirling seems to have embraced the concept, reckoning that land without purchase (granted) would be enough to incentivise participants to bring their own work force. However they engaged them.

The likes of Cheyne and Spencer represented the early King George Sound settler candidature in that dreamed of New World aristocracy. They all thought the future was theirs. Sherratt and Taylor too. In Perth it was Irwin, Dale, Leake, Habgood, Mackie, Sampson, Barrett-Leonard, et-al. In the post-convict era, testament to the enduring quest for power and status, the leading Perth names were Leake, Shenton, Stone, Lefroy, Lee Steere and Burt. (The six hungry families.)

The optimism driving these antipodean aspirations was that ten-year war-free stretch in Europe, anti-slavery sentiment adversely affecting confidence in the Atlantic triangular trade, and the general consensus emigration was still the way forward for both middle and working-class people still adjusting to the massive demographic upheaval caused by the industrial revolution. ‘Swan River mania’ as seeded by Stirling, was for a time real. Some 300 newspapers countrywide, many of them copying and pasting articles by the majors, found cause to take up the idea of emigration to such an appealing resort as panacea to the social ills of the time, and by December 1828 it had become the subject of popular upbeat commentary. So dire was the mood at home, the grass just had to be greener somewhere else. The hype was not necessarily what Stirling and the Mangles family were looking for, but certainly something they gave rise to.

By the time he was making ready to sail, Stirling and the Swan River were aspirational names invested in by the press as a measure of the desire to reveal further new riches abroad while helping to solve domestic dilemmas. Peel had found himself part of it too, the press taking to him cynically however, as if it were his cousin who had influenced his position. By the time of sailing, coverage of the new Swan River Colony ran to such an extent Stirling had achieved effective celebrity status. Something he appears to have absorbed and added to his fount of elitist self-esteem.

The man really was capable, and now he knew it.

The Colonial Office published notification of the colony’s commencement early in December 1828. For the government, the no-convict edict really was a matter of actual cost aligned with a general administrative disinclination. However, over the two years of his campaigning, despite pressing for a penal colony to the critical end, Stirling had no choice but to consider the possibility his was not to be a convict settlement. Part of his overall thinking, whether penal colony or not, will have entertained the idea of his own private aristocracy. Under a free labour scheme, one never to be challenged by the threat of criminal insurrection.

Alas, again. Over-hopeful assessment.

Despite the stinging loss of the American colonies nearly forty years previous, followed by 12-years of Napoleonic havoc amid that Sixty Year War finally being set to rest in 1815, Britain’s glorious empire, visited and roamed upon by a mass of now unoccupied military types such as Stirling himself, was very much intact. The British Army was still warring in West Africa, South Africa, Burma and India, but by the middle 1820s Britain’s Imperial Century was well underway and the accidental diplomatic concept of splendid isolation had been realised.

In terms of desirability, Australia had fallen front and centre of that empire. Here was the new America, and for the most part uninvested in and still largely unrevealed. In an era where print media had taken giant strides and was selling like hot cakes, inspiring and making famous a great string of explorers and adventurers determined to exploit the colonial opportunity as far as imaginable, an entire generation of bored but striving ex-military officers was exercising its joy, exulting in its glorious victories, and in so doing influencing their middle-class families into looking at the future way down in the Antipodes.

 

The loss of the American colonies in 1783 was a humiliating defeat for
Britain. Not only did she lose valuable territory in North America but
also forfeited the right to continue sending convicts there. This is where
Australia first came into focus. Most young Australians were taught the
the major reason for the founding of the colony at Port Jackson was
because Britain had overflowing jails and needed ‘somewhere far away’
to send her undesirables — and Australia clearly qualified in that regard.
Added to the fact that Britain could no longer send approximately 1000
convicts to North America each year, the sudden demobilisation in 1783
of over 100,000 British soldiers and sailors, who had been fighting in
the American war zone, precipitated a major crime wave, as hordes of
unemployed soldiers and sailors flooded back to Britain, competing for
scarce work, shelter and food.

Bloomfield, Noelene. “OVERVIEW FRANCE’S QUEST FOR TERRA AUSTRALIS: STRATEGIES, MALADIES AND TRIUMPHS.” The Great Circle, vol. 39, no. 2, 2017, pp. 8–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26381271. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.

 

The Swan River initiative proved very well-timed in this regard and Stirling’s willingness to swing from convict-based economy to Proprietary Charter and then to Crown Colony was everything to do with his desire to stay attached to it. First and foremost, the colony was the thing. Its principles of operation secondary.

Since the turn of the 19th Century, the entirety of Stirling’s naval life to that point, eleven new British colonies had been established. It was the heyday of consolidation. Importantly, two of the most recently inducted colonies were the tricky but sensational Singapore, heretofore an East India Company entrepot of ambiguous status, and Van Diemen’s Land, the Australian island separating from NSW and becoming a colony in its own right. Across his formative years in the Royal Navy, Stirling had witnessed nothing but the quest to capture or defend lands upon which Great Britain could maintain or expand her empire. All he had known was conquest and reward, part of it achieved peaceably, as Sir Stamford Raffles had, through creative diplomacy and negotiation.

Western Australia did not have to be beaten into existence. There was no need for violence. As the loss of the American colonies combined with a move away from chattel slavery changed attitudes toward British investment in the Americas and Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and Western seaboard of the Pacific drew increased attention. Cape Colony, Mauritius, India, Malaysia, Singapore and the sea lanes to China looked to be the future. New South Wales, having been built by convict labour, was emerging as a new free investment opportunity. To such eyes, those of the Peel consortium for example, the west facing Swan River, set low on the eastern rim of the benign Indian Ocean, suddenly looked a begging location. Despite unexpected resistance, Stirling’s predetermined task was to coax an agreement to settle that place into being.

And this he did.

Stirling’s elasticity vis-à-vis finance and labour, combined with his exaggeration of the Swan River’s agricultural qualities, is reflective of his intense want for the plan to be realised, but if we think that an overzealous act then how do we consider the behaviour of both Thomas Peel and one of South Australia’s early protagonists, Edward Wakefield? 

All Stirling had done was lie (commit fraud/assess in an overly hopeful way), while Wakefield’s Systematic Colonisation proposal was formulated from his prison cell in 1829 and Peel’s was an exercise in pressing desire and shambolic personal organisation. (Possibly, it was an attempt to overcome gambling losses.) However, whereas Stirling may have homed in on a thirteen-year-old girl as his passage to power and influence, at least he did not abduct her. The measure of Wakefield’s want, or at least the morality attached to it, was significantly more wayward than Stirling’s. Wakefield was jailed for abduction in 1827 while Stirling was making his assault on Downing Street. Stirling in the same year had met Peel (younger by two years) for the first time, probably at The Windham Club in London, the end result of which was Peel ditching his original associates and attaching himself to Stirling’s apparent prowess. Or rather, Peel finding himself abandoned by his partners, attached himself to Stirling on account of having already committed most of what he had to the project.

Perhaps both Peel and Wakefield were envious of the momentum Stirling had gained from his marriage into the Mangles family? Either way, the behaviour of all three exemplifies the lengths aspirational men of that time were prepared to go to in order to realise their dreams. As the old adage goes, ‘never let the truth get in the way of a good story’.

It’s important to contextualise Stirling’s actions as a striving young man, as the more we do, the greater the feel we get for the tone and flavour of the times this haughty but capable careerist was living through. The Playwright Oscar Wilde, not quite born at the time, would have loved the material. Can you imagine the stage play, ‘The Importance of Being James, Edward orThomas‘ ?

 

 

 

So, within three weeks of the Peel & Associates submission (they called it a memorial) Sir George Murray came back to Stirling with the offer of a Crown colony. The British Government would provide funding for an essential political structure and corresponding administration, plus security (soldiers), with Stirling as lead official, on the basis all other costs were met by the settlers. For Peel, the result was collapse of his entrepreneurial association and a significantly modified offering. For Stirling, it was a victory though ultimately an underwhelming one. Nonetheless, after a worrying stint in the career doldrums, he had manufactured for himself an exciting new job and it looked like all the investors he would need were lining up to take advantage.

Congratulations!

So, the Swan River becoming a Crown colony based upon the experiment of ‘free labour’ being secondary to Stirling’s primary goal of bringing a penal colony about with himself as lead official, was the premise upon which Cheyne thought his petition might carry some schtick. To not be regarded as traitorous, anyway. Added to this was the idea Albany, as Stirling had renamed Frederick Town in 1831, had for its first 50 odd months been a penal outpost.

And now wished it still was.

Convicts or no convicts, Stirling first needed to get himself into the game, then needed to pay back his primary supporters for enabling him. It would be naive to think that many of those who signed up to join him at the Swan River were not aware of this. At least to some extent.  Lack of enforced labour was an obvious weakness of the Swan River offer, but to those who got in early generous land grants salved that concern. To which end Cheyne benefitted as much as anyone. (14000 acres.)

This was the so-called ‘free labour’ experiment. Free land instead of unfree labour.

The bountiful land grant facility necessary to win and maintain subscribers to this plan was provided for by the decision to apply the concept of terra nullius; that, as in the case of New South Wales, there was to be no negotiation with the West Australian Aborigines. The land was assumed as automatically acquired and the natives were to be paid no heed.

This approach was fundamentally dispossessive. Australia’s Aborigines had always occupied the land, but with purchase costs plus the cost of free labour, there was no incentive for the settlers. This argument has been developed over the last decade by Professor Jane Lydon of the University of Western Australia, and it makes sense. Instead of shipping ‘unfree’ labour to carry out work on purchased land, paid (or indentured) labour was sent to work land granted for free.

Indeed, Stirling’s entire approach to settling Australia’s west coast at the Swan River, rather than southwest coast at Albany, is being argued to be part of the exodus from the Caribbean and Americas of colonial business interests. Chattel slavery had reached the height of its infamy in those quarters and the practice of it was now utterly out of favour in Britain. So much so laws were being enacted to prevent it.

Through Jane Lydon, the eyes of Australian academia have peered into the Indian Ocean of the time and seen it as new territory where colonists could turn to racism of a different kind in order to acquire land, where unfree labour of the convicted or indentured, or otherwise coerced kind, could toil for their bread in order to build the infrastructure. Stirling couched his approach to colonising Western Australia in terms of geopolitical strategy, the prevention of foreign claims on British Australia, while spreading English language, culture and influence across the East Indies and into the South Seas, when all along it was a plan to ship convicts and develop further business interests between the Mangles family, the East India Company, the British Government and goodness knows how much future traffic between the west coast of Australia and Old Blighty.

Henry Bathurst, one suspects, was wise to this from the beginning.

And it can’t be denied. There is ample example of West Australian settlers who had made money via the triangular slave trade. Both the Stirling and Mangles families were beneficiaries of it, among many others. Patrick Taylor Esq, who these pages have spent a great deal of time upon, was an heir whose entire fortune had been gained from it. British abolishment of chattel slavery, not fully outlawed until 1833, was the greatest restraint placed upon global economics of the entire colonial era and its reverberations manifested in ulterior actions elsewhere in the empire, such as the declaration of Australia as terra nullius and the slow spread of indentured labour from imported servants to as many Aborigines they could extort.

Stirling appears to have had a decent sense of what appealed to investors and was not only timely but shrewd in the manner in which he delivered his ideas. Combined with his entrepreneurial zeal for bringing about approval for the colony in the first place, you could say that Western Australia was started as a business, or at least a semi-state entity heavily reliant upon free enterprise subscribers. Certainly, the project presents as a creative endeavour with gain as its primary motivation, so is about as close to an entirely entrepreneurial pursuit as a crown colony can get. Mangles business interests tied to the East India Company’s operations should not be downplayed, nor should the apparent influence lent to Stirling by old James Mangles business and political connections. Nor the remaining influence of his uncle, Admiral Charles. In this light we begin to see just how different Western Australia was in its inception to New South Wales, as well as inspiration for South Australia.

There is of course a whole lot more to the story and we should take time to consider some of it, particularly in regard to Albany’s position, because it enables us to gauge James Stirling’s behavior and performance during the most energetic and high-profile period of his life.

By the mid 1820’s the British Treasury had come to regard Australia as expensive, even though the economy was developing progressively. New South Wales had commenced as a penal colony, a dumping ground for convicts, and was budgeted as such, but some fifty years later attitudes regarding management of its growth were changing. The Bigge reports, commissioned by Henry Bathurst on the basis Governor Mcquarie was too liberal in his treatment of emancipated convicts and too easy with his expenditure on public works, supported the continuation of Transportation, a crackdown on emancipist freedoms and the evolution of a neatly defined social strata. By Stirling’s time, New South Wales was no longer just a prison, it was a demanding and increasingly expensive exercise in maintaining control from abroad. Nationhood, as far as bathurst was concerned, had at all costs to be kept at bay. The current incumbent, Governor Ralph Darling, bore the brunt of government disgruntlement on this subject. Being influenced by Stirling’s enthusiasm for a Western Australian colony, Darling clearly supported the idea, reasoning justification for its existence would come on security grounds, despite being under critical pressure from London himself.

Stirling, on the other hand, held in mind recent establishment of the Moreton Bay convict precinct (later Brisbane) and the transition of Van Dieman’s Land into its own colony. Further, he was quite aware of the continuing riches being massed through the EIC by the India Office and by the rapidly escalating (underhanded) sale of opium to China, means by which the imbalance of trade caused by Britain’s insatiable tea habit was being addressed. Stirling was informed and had good idea as to the capability of Britain at that time. He belonged to the largest Navy and richest country in the world, a country which had built the largest empire known. For heaven’s sake, it was first decade of the so-called Imperial Century. The empire at its peak. Plus, he was betrothed to a high-level family with extensive business interests intertwined with both. To Stirling, the cost of expanding Australia’s penal colonies westward of Sydney and south of the East Indies was negligible in the scheme of those circumstances. An attitude that bore him the determination to push for his colony and which, ultimately, saw him succeed.

All the same, prudence was an important aspect of British Treasury management and 1825 had been a very worrying year in terms of economics. Government measures to rescue the East India Company from self-ruin in 1773 ultimately had cost them North America and now, half a century later, finding themselves acquiring risky colonial assets at the expense of liquidity again, a serious financial shock had been delivered to the system. The Treasury had told Parliament it was time to pull its head in, and so it did.

Henry Bathurst, that old school dog, was a responsible civil servant, a man of government, not just the colonies. Bathurst understood there were serious cost imperatives at the time and wielded influence long after resigning office. For him, the Swan River was just another speculation opportunity and he held no sympathy toward its proponents. Indeed, some five years after he quit office, exactly as Stirling was back in London campaigning for aid, Bathurst reflected on the Captain’s campaign and reiterated his stance the idea had been dismissed entirely upon economic grounds, only for certain businessmen to persist with an undertaking at their own risk.

 

Moreover, . . . (Lord Bathurst) himself decided that the fears (of French claims to Western Australia) were groundless. Writing in 1833, he said:- “The present settlement at Swan River owes its origin, you may perhaps be aware, to certain false rumours which had reached the Government of the intentions of a foreign power to establish a colony on the west coast of Australia. The design was for a time given up entirely on grounds of public economy, and would not have been resumed but for the offer of a party of gentlemen to embark in an undertaking of this nature at their own risk upon receiving extensive grants of land, and on a certain degree of protection and assistance for a limited period being secured to them by the Government.”

History of West Australia/Chapter 4. (2021, February 18). In Wikisource . Retrieved 13:18, July 15, 2024,from https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.phptitle=History_of_West_Australia/Chapter_4&oldid=10936578

 

Still, as a measure of how acceptable an idea emigration to Australia was, as much as example of how practiced Britain was in terms of international maneuverability, when approval for the Swan River joint venture was finally issued things slipped into gear with consummate ease. The decision to prosecute Stirling’s adjusted proposal was made mid-October (publicised on 4th December) and by the end of April the following year Captain Fremantle in HMS Challenger was off the mouth of the Swan River ready to make land. Stirling and the Parmelia, followed by Captain Irwin and HMS Sulphur, came six weeks later. A month and a half after that private ships began to arrive.

Of course, the fluency of this movement wasn’t manufactured overnight. The Swan River escort was just another instance of British confidence in foreign waters. Nothing at all new and, in fact, an inexpensive breeze of a job. The combining of British private interests with those of her government and its military wings had been formula for colonialism since convictism was introduced to the Virginia Colony in North America as early as 1615. Long punishing wars had been fought in the interim, but it was a time of peace now. Apart from localised pockets in Africa and Asia all was calm and well.

However, the celerity with which Stirling’s opportunity came into being meant there had been nothing but basic planning. It really was a matter of, ‘So you wanted that colony? There you go boys, hop to it’.  On 30th December 1828 Sir George Murray issued Captain Stirling’s Instructions on behalf of the British Government and that was it. The letter was weighty with sentiment, conscious of the onerous responsibility Stirling was taking on, but over in less than a thousand words. The Government was to offer some support, but it was Stirling’s venture and up to he and his setters to make it work.

This is something to think about as it suggests the issue was close to an irritation, even an infraction or misdemeanor on the part of the Office. Something it shouldn’t really have involved itself with and once sanctioned required rapid action in order to expunge it from discussion, to eliminate it as a distraction from other (far) more important matters. Certainly, it looks from this distance, especially through the opinion of Henry Bathurst, as if the office was duped into acceptance, as if it were something of such dubious importance it would really rather not have been forced to contend with it.

Such was the relationship between public and private streams at the height of the Empire. Stirling, representing the highly ambitious nature of risk-taking private enterprise, albeit through military channels, while Bathurst’s haughty contempt reflects the responsibility government bore for the outcome of failure. Temperance of the original Peel proposal a notable consequence of prudence on the part of the Office.

Stirling had agitated, pushed and ultimately succeeded in winning over the Colonial Office, but the clear impression is they were reluctant all along. The convenience of George Murray and Horace Twiss finding themselves in supporting positions can’t be downplayed. Had William Huskisson remained Colonial Secretary, Stirling’s quest may have been bogged down to the extent his private supporters lost confidence. When the decision was made, there was such expedience to its instigation it is almost as if those responsible wanted the matter out of the way as quickly as possible. This hastiness, exacerbated by the application of minimal funding, meant Stirling got to start his colony on terms, in hindsight, he should not have agreed to.

Be careful what you wish for.

Stirling was a senior Navy officer, sure, and used to the kind of reporting that position demanded, but running a colony wasn’t the same. Being a competent administrator did not guarantee day to day smooth running of the settlements. Even the penal colonies suffered intense privations during establishment. Australia was not a short journey away. That tyranny of distance drew a heavy toll. Surely, it is presumptive of an inaugurating authority to ensure their incumbent is adequately prepared. To which extent Stirling and his hurriedly assembled officials were most certainly not. Government prudence did not extend to sympathy for expenditure outlaid by pushy, risk-taking entrepreneurs.

If only Cheyne knew what he was getting himself into.

Ostensibly, Stirling’s campaign had started late in 1826 while he was in Australian waters. From the outset he delivered it with fixed assurance. Once he got back to England as result of that fortuitous internal turbulence at the Office and his continuous efforts, resistance was overcome. The time between the rejection of his initial Swan River proposal by Undersecretary Stanley (29.11.1827) and the green light signaled by Commander Gardiner’s letter to Sir George Murray (21.10.1828), was only 11 months, during which it all came down to that matter of finance.

On the surface of things, it had taken close to two years to push the project through. In the end, the Colonial Office recognised Stirling as of proven pedigree and lead person in the stratagem of ‘a party of gentlemen’ with extensive interests in the East Indies who had within its sphere of influence a body of investors ready to take up the opportunity. The Peel memorial and general air of confidence in Australia’s future were significant contributors, but it was Stirling who was accepted as principal enthusiast and lead figure.

Armed with such confidence, once the decision was made the well-oiled cogs of the Treasury, Admiralty, Army and Colonial Office, along with Stirling’s own readiness, brought everything together in a staggeringly expeditious seven-month final push.

With the right leadership in place, a new (low cost) societally pure West Australian colony brought visions of minimally troubled development to the decision makers and, as importantly, to those somewhat romantically minded investors hoodwinked by Stirling’s absurdly optimistic ‘assessment’. But make no mistake, for Stirling it wasn’t just about winning Government approval and followers, it was about maintaining them too. He was serious and he was committed. There would be no shortage of work or difficulty, the administrative task alone was daunting.

As measure of Stirling’s apparent standing, and through degrees of naivety and fear-of-missing-out, Swan River mania took hold and blew through Britain’s upper social quarters in rapid time, more especially those connected in some way to the families of Stirling and his young wife Ellen Mangles. As result, enough subscribers of last resort transferred in for the colony to not only commence, but by-hook-or-by-crook to survive. George Cheyne being one.

 

The first two-and-a-half years at the Swan River were calamitous, and the very reason Stirling brought his leadership posse down to the South Coast over the summer of 1831/32, and why Fredericks Town, the name given to the military settlement by Lockyer, was at that time rebranded Albany. Everything was on the line. As his request for permission to return to England in order to address the colony’s problems firsthand had been ignored, the trip back to was to occur unofficially and in order to stave off punitive criticism for it, it was essential he was prepared.

The chattel-based system of land grants combined with the lack of productive land available had caused big problems for the Swan River settlers in terms of accepting the actual value of their lots as much as it forced an immediate liquidity crisis when lack of currency prevented them from spending cash on the improvements retention of their grants demanded. The labour question was immediately problematic too as it arrived in the form of indentured servants who were attached to the mostly unusable machinery and fundamentally unproductive land their masters had been assigned. Available labour being inflexible (illiquid) meant its collective use was stifled. Furthermore, the size of the grants allocated meant each individual settler group (household) was, in a relative sense, isolated. Though there was a navigable river, there were neither roads nor tracks between properties.

Edward Wakefield was to later criticise Stirling for setting about what he called ‘the worst form of colonising’. And it was true. Stirling had no idea what he was doing under the free labour principal. How could he, he had only agreed to working things that way three months before leaving. Moreover, because of the number of subscribers he had attracted, riverside land allocations had to be divided into thin ribbons where upwards of 80% of the allocation stretched outwards from the water into largely uncultivatable soil.

The Swan River project was a mess and by 1832 changes in the land grant procedure, the same as had occurred in NSW and Van Diemen’s Land, it was feared would put an end to anyone still thinking the Swan River Colony might be the place to go. Stirling had no choice but to go back to London unannounced and try to renegotiate the terms of the Crown agreement on behalf of the remaining investors. It was the reason why he left in mid 1832 and prime motivation for the Albany think tank in the lead up to it.

Stirling had poo-pooed King George Sound when promoting the Swan River to the Colonial Office, not just because of the poor agricultural land he predicted would lead to a reliance upon imported food, but because the Swan River was central to his Mangles family and East India Company interests. By the time he realised he had no choice but to go, however, with its friendly Aborigines Albany had come to hold the last traces of that untroubled Hibernian dream. The only viable locale, albeit a south facing one, in a colony that had become widely regarded as failed, was now its leading hope, and therefore in position to benefit from whatever East India Company interest could still be brought about.

Stirling had loaded his original Colonial Office proposal with references to the EIC and its enthusiasm for a British settlement in the locality and climes of the Swan River. Something Bathurst checked upon by consulting the India Office only to find the claims not only inflated but the Company was without any plans at all to involve itself there. Perhaps impetus for Barrow’s barbed description of Stirling’s report as ‘fallacious’. Thus, rather than inviting the East India Company to exploit the West Coast using Mangles family ships, Stirling now had to sell the South Coast as something entirely knew.

Que Colonel Hanson. First, however, Stirling had to get some oomph into place.

I would suggest George Cheyne was very quickly identified by Stirling as a man of considerable prowess and was brought to Albany as part of his suite aboard the Sulphur on that famous summer of 1831/32 mission.

This means Cheyne was in on Albany from the moment Stirling realised it was the colony’s only means of promoting optimism, and therefore central to its survival. Feeling as if he were under Stirling’s wing, Cheyne accepted his 14000-acre agricultural grant 40 miles away at Moorilup (though never being convinced by it), then used what funds he had remaining to buy up Lower Kalgan (Candyup, adjacent to Wyndham) and multiple town and Middleton Beach lots on what appears to have been a speculative spree. Stirling had big plans for Albany and Cheyne bought into them heavily.

So heavily one wonders if Cheyne had more on his mind than quick turn arounds? There were only the Morleys, Geakes and Earls in town before he and Grace arrived. It was clear Stirling’s efforts at that time were intended to drive Albany forward and that given the state of affairs at Swan River growth down South was projected to outstrip all other West Australian settlements.  Positioning himself financially was one important thing, the other was positioning himself within the town as its leading citizen. Soon there would be a need for a new Resident Magistrate and the power that came with that position would enable Cheyne to assume a great deal more control.

But of course, that role was never offered to him. In order to bring in more people and money, Stirling recruited Sir Richard Spencer instead. Just as he had sold Peel and then denied him, Stirling did the same to Cheyne. ‘It’s the future’, he told Cheyne. ‘Get in now, get in early. Make the place your own. You’ll be well rewarded. . . ‘

Part of Stirling’s plan for Albany involved creating or recruiting immigration schemes, the evidence for which lies in the 1831/32 setting aside of the Wyndham town acreage, next door to the Candyup lots at Lower Kalgan. Donald Garden put forward the notion Stirling had in fact looked at Oyster Harbour and Candyup with a view to moving Albany town to that quarter but decided Oyster Harbour was too shallow to accommodate shipping. But there was more to this. There was the East India Company convalescence and/or retirement scheme fronted by Colonel Hanson, who was also aboard the Sulphur on that trip, for which Wyndham had been specifically earmarked. While Stirling represented the front end of the Swan River Colony campaign, the Mangles family represented the back end and Stirling had much to do in employing and servicing that side of the bargain.

To this day it is still not clear how Stirling was able to convince Captain William Dance, Commander of HMS Sulphur, to go up to Madras and fetch Colonel Hanson. While Stirling would have considered it an essential colonial voyage, Dance (who was not an agreeable fellow) would have seen it as an abuse of Government/Navy power for which he had to make his own justifications. Dance later fought with Stirling over costs associated with conveying he and his family to Cape Colony, first leg of the 1832 trip back to Britain.

Incidentally, it was Dance’s wife, Helena, who delivered first cut to the felled tree at Perth in the ceremony commemorating foundation of the city on 29th August,1829. It was supposed to be Ellen Mangles, of course, but the story goes she was incapacitated that day by a dose of the trots. Another odd turn of events. . .

In any case, Albany’s Wyndham Retirement Village foundered with the disappearance of the Hanson organised Mercury sailing, a gigantic twist of fate for the South Coast, and Cheyne discovered there were not only no buyers for his prime lots, but all kinds of logistical as well as supply & demand problems associated with running a merchant business. Not only was Albany now suffering from incredibly bad luck, but the Swan River’s dismal reputation had got in the way too.  In addition to Hanson’s EIC derived investment sinking without trace, a sizeable English temperance scheme called the ‘Social Emigrants’ proposed a deal worth around thirty-thousand pounds, and by account was also presented the Wyndham site for settlement, never got past go.

The expected inrush of people and investment at Albany never occurred. Instead, there were two small influxes in the course of eight months, both of which caused severe food shortages. In 1833, Spencer and his retinue more than doubled the population and in 1834 the James Pattison, though a significant increase on the number brought by Spencer, improved the population by two thirds again. For five years afterwards, population size essentially remained unchanged while individuals came and went with frequency.  Settler macro vision met with the micro reality at Albany and the conclusion arrived at on the part of most who came on the Pattison, even though they gave it time and tried, was that development was going to be too slow to warrant an all-in approach.

Thank goodness then for the handful who did commit.

On the experiential front, the main lessons learned at the Swan River were the land being unsuited to agriculture almost everywhere bar upper stretches of the Swan and Canning Rivers, and the cost of first roads and public buildings being diabolically high. Perth had access from the ocean through its river, but only for small boats, and it took four years for the first overland track to be cut from Fremantle to the tail end of Yellagonga’s Beeliar Wetlands. (Perth city.)

At Albany, the Kalgan River became no more than a chain of ponds some 25 miles short of the only reliably identified farmland, country known for its volatility between Aboriginal tribes, so roads and security were a necessity. Also, most of those aboard the James Pattison came without labour; the kind that builds roads anyway. As what happened at the Swan River, indentured farmhands and domestic servants were attached to the granted or purchased site. They were not mobile and not able to be used as a collective.

Albany’s problem was worse than the Swan River’s. Because of the extremely small population Government revenue was so little less than a handful of men wandered the planned streets with a spade and a rake as company.

Lack of labour was the albatross around the colony’s neck. Stirling’s settlers had abandoned the Swan River as Cheyne feared the James Pattison influx would abandon Albany. In addition, Peel’s plan, ill-conceived and thwarted from arrival, was long dead in the Murray River waters, so the expected economic fervency needed to draw competitively priced labour never eventuated. In an attempt to try and do something, while in England the Mangles/Stirling partnership got together sufficiently to persuade the Children’s Friend Society (Ellen’s father was a founding member) to send thirty teenagers out to be indentured as so-called apprentices. More unfree free labour. The next best thing, except they were not grown and had to be housed by individuals upon arrival. It was something, every little thing was adding mud to the dam wall, it’s just that like the farmhands and domestics, the apprentice force was too widely distributed to reflect anything noticeable.

Nothing Stirling was able to do, was able to be done on a scale that would really make the difference. In trying the most he managed to do at Albany was create a power struggle between Cheyne, who was well positioned to act as Senior Official, and Spencer, who having fallen for similar bait, in the same all-or-nothing way, was only ever going to defend his appointed position.

Spencer had bought in to the convict free idyll while Cheyne cared only about how the settlement was to get on its feet. Both agreed they needed more moneyed investors, but it was Cheyne who agitated for labour from the moment he arrived and was to continue with through his petition. Baron Von Hugel’s impression of Cheyne was fair call. Spencer had been recruited as leading official and had bought-in whole heartedly. Cheyne may have seen him as pompous and ridiculous, dressed in his blue and gold uniform and riding that donkey, but Cheyne needed to keep check of his personal resentment too. Something he seems to have found very hard to do.

When Stirling first instigated the Swan River solution from Sydney late in 1826 it was on the assumption it would function the same way as New South Wales. The penal contingent representing the bottom layer of an ample labour source upon which a local economy could establish. Stirling held to this view for as long as he could, for reasons that should already be clear, but was forced to agree to the free labour/land grant model because of that lack of Government willingness to pay for it.

Stirling was shunned by Bathurst and warded off his scheme time and again by wary officials but persisted on grounds of fear until he won. Having won, he then had no choice but to pack up and get going. Not to set up a low-cost defensive position such as that at King George Sound, but one along the exaggerated lines he had fabricated in order to aid his case. Stirling had commissioned his bed, and now had to sail all the way out to the Swan River and lay in whatever it amounted to.

Lack of labour, in conjunction with the misinformation regarding productive land, were the Swan River Colony’s gross disability. The Achille’s Heel of the entire proposition. It’s playing out emphasises Stirling’s back story with regard to how much of a careerist he was and how close to achieving nothing he actually came. Both Uren’s and Statham-Drew’s biographies sympathise with the predicament Stirling and his settlers had got themselves into, but the writing on the wall was large and in very clear print all along. The expense of a funded colony was not to be met. The risk was on the ‘party of gentlemen’. Bathurst was no waking fool. He had seen it a hundred times or more. Stirling was a mid-ranking, middle-class prima-donna military man with illusions of grandeur. Just another fly buzzing about the honey pot that was the Secretary’s powerful position.

Leonard Cohen expressed sentiments in a song from his 1971 album, Songs of Love and Hate, which resonate with Stirling’s predicament some 140 years previous.

The woman in blue is asking for revenge, the man in white (that’s you) says he has no friends, the river’s swollen up with rusty cans and the trees are burning in your promised land. There are no letters in the mailbox and there are no grapes upon your vines. There are no chocolates in your boxes anymore, and there are no diamonds in the mine.

As Stirling commenced the execution of his plan with the snaring of the HMS Success commission to Melville Island and Sydney in 1826, Britain was falling deep into the throes of its first modern economic crisis. The Panic of 1825, a stock market crash which sent 12 London banks and more than 70 others across Britain to the wall, had deepened. During 1826 general business bankruptcies doubled over the previous year. Disastrous for the Stirling family, a brother of James’, Walter, for a time looking as if he were about to go down too. The cause was too rapid expansion resulting from the end of the Napoleonic Wars, particularly through speculation in South American mineral interests. That air of joy and genuine optimism which had come over moneyed Britain as the reality of extended peace and prosperity took hold, had led to banks taking on risky loans which in turn inflated a stock market bubble. Terminology that sounds all too familiar today. Thus, the mood within the Treasury during 1827 and 1828 was sour. When George Murray took over as Colonial Secretary, despite his apparent leanings toward Stirling, the no convict edict behind Huskisson’s rejection was still very much in place.

The cost of another colony, this time in a place that perhaps, with regard to regional security, was an acceptable idea, but had been overlooked for centuries on account of the inhospitable nature of the land, was too hard to find favour for. Other priorities and initiatives in the wake of losing the American colonies, such as the development of Jamaica, India, Singapore and vital business links across the East Indies to the South China Sea, were far more important. Singapore was the star performer and a likely fillip to Stirling’s sense of urgency in the first place.

At this time, the 1824 established Fort Dundas military camp on Melville Island (albeit failing miserably) was seen as central to the India, Malay, East Indies and China trade route. Melville Island being under Australia’s jurisdiction, Stirling saw the 1826 HMS Success commission, bound for Sydney via that place, as means to muscle his way in on the reckoning for Western Australia. Which again begs the question, how did Stirling manage to gain that command?

For someone who had never been to Australia, how was it Stirling was so suddenly an expert adamant there not only had to be a settlement on its western side, but that it had to be at the Swan River with him as lead persona? The answer to that lies in what he had been doing since Napoleon had been defeated, when that much longed-for world peace put his Navy career on indefinite hold.

Stirling was 24 years old when Waterloo occurred, and 27 when the Navy downsized sufficiently to put him and hundreds of other officers like him (Spencer included) into premature retirement. The amount of redundant expenditure associated with this practice being another cause for Treasury alarm when the Panic hit seven years later, and perhaps one of the reasons Stirling considered the Treasury’s denial of his originally proposed penal colony ‘a frightful overreaction’.

Two years into his career hiatus, the year he turned 29, James first met Ellen Mangles, deciding at some near point afterwards that he’d like to take her as his bride. The story goes he spied her at the Mangles family home, just across the grassy undulations from his parents place, near Guildford, Surrey, when she was just 13 years old. Despite her ‘extreme youth’ the marriage took place in September 1823, apparently on her 16th birthday, when James himself was 32.

Shades of indigenous Australian culture there.

As two hundred years later we regard that scenario, I wonder how Ellen felt herself, never having any say in that or other of her primary life decisions? No wonder she was so reticent in her relationship with Mary Bussel aboard the James Pattison. Mary was attractive, single, her husband’s age and clearly an existential threat to her marriage’s reputation.

In the end, like her husband, Ellen worked hard and did her duty. General opinion looks back and congratulates them both on the outcome of the union. Not only did she survive her childbearing (eleven in all), but she also met the professional expectations of her family and husband. Though she only reached the age of 67. Regarded as ‘natural’ and ‘unaffected’, beyond childhood Ellen Mangles entire life was committed to partnership with James Stirling and by general account she saw it through as happily as anyone in similar situation ever did.

 

 

It wasn’t so much Ellen herself that Stirling fell for, though the marriage does appear to have been agreeable throughout, but the wider attraction of the Mangles family at large. The Stirlings and the Mangles lived in Surrey. The Mangles at Woodbridge, the Stirlings more recently at Pirbright, about three miles north-east of there. James Mangles Esq was a wealthy Gentleman who had made his money by way of association with the East India Company. He shipped slaves to the West Indies, contract shipped for the East India Company at Madras and Calcutta, shipped convicts to N.S.W. and Van Dieman’s Land, undertook trading and whaling ventures while at sea, and went into banking. Two of his sons, Frederick and Charles Edward, trading as F. & C. E. Mangles, were then in the business of contract shipping for the East India Company and another brother, Ross-Donnelly, was at Madras himself as a writer (a clerk for the Company) in the process of rising through its ranks all the way to Director. Stirling also had a brother on the EIC inside, at India.

The British East India Company of the time, as we know, was the most powerful business in the world and being so rapacious also well into the process of reducing Northeast India to a fraction of its pre-Empire self.  Apart from transferring its textile industry to the industrialised north of England, over-taxing and forcing Indian peasants into growing opium (instead of rice) so that they could sell it into China, the Company had delivered a devastating famine to Bengal that is still talked about with deep feeling today. (Read; William Dalrymple, The Anarchy.) In the region of ten million Bengalis died as result of the East India Company tampering with the delicate balance of food supply in order to suck money out of the country. Something Britain had also been doing in Ireland since Cromwellian times, ultimately forcing an outcome that would reduce Ireland’s population by almost half over the course of the 1800s. Fair percentage of that number ending up on convict ships that would start arriving at Western Australia from 1851.

Through his marriage into the Mangles family, Stirling became a conduit of East India Company culture as much as the Navy’s, and his performance and behaviour while running the Swan River Colony cannot be measured independent of the other. The put-down at Pinjarra falls very much in line with this. The peasant Irish were being evicted for not paying their rents in rot-infested potato country the same way Indian peasants were hung for not paying East India Company taxes during the reign of Robert Clive, and it was the troublesome Indigenous Binjareb who were to receive the same kind of treatment in Western Australia. There was always the expendable when it came to the pursuit of British power and profit, and Stirling was no different in that regard.

As we concluded in our study of what happened at the Swan River vis-a-vis race relations (through the story of John Henry Monger, the elder), Pinjarra was a pre-determined put down. A strike at the heart of Noongar recalcitrance. Both spurred and spurned by his treatment in Britain during 1833, fired by the desire to force the Swan River Colony into a greater form of economic and social compliance, punishment by death was the message Stirling decided to send the Murray River Aborigines. This so that the Wadjuk took notice, so that the Wardandi might show restraint down at the Vasse, that the Ballardong in the Avon Valley might do the same, so the settlers might feel a little safer overall, and so Thomas Peel might think in his destitute unbuilt estate that Stirling still had some sense of duty toward him. Whether Stirling set out to extract the death toll that he did remains a matter of conjecture, but it seems to me he was so persuaded by the need to do something of a truly compelling nature that murder became acceptable.

Ellen’s brothers, Frederick and Charles-Edward Mangles, inherited business interests from their father. Charles-Edward was still at sea in the service of the EIC when Ellen and Stirling married. He emerged a ship’s captain, master of the Marchioness of Ely between 1823 and 1828, exactly as Stirling was maneuvering for creation of the Swan River Colony.

Previously, James Mangles Snr and his brother John had between them been managing owners (principal shareholders) of nine ships engaged in the trade between India, Southeast Asia and China. Because of exclusive EIC licenses allowing them to operate in the region they also became the second largest convict contractor to the British Government during the height of New South Wales transportation. The convict ship Mangles, though soon after lost to family ownership, was built in Calcutta around 1800 for James & John Mangles. The vessel completing nine convict transportation voyages over the course of its life. Easing of the EIC rules on monopoly weakened the Mangles brother’s stronghold from 1813 and then again from 1833, but it is evident Stirling drew upon Mangles family interests when building his vision of the future.

From 1829 F. & C.E. Mangles were in business as Freelance East India agents themselves, and from 1831 operating in Australian waters. Much had changed from the heyday of their father’s unfettered trading opportunities, but the sons were still connected to powerful business interests and doubtless harboured ambition to exploit the West Australian moment. After-all, one of their father’s former business partners, Thomas Ward, was principal owner of the James Pattison.

Stirling had done well in the Navy, aided in his passage by the patronage of Uncle Charles, but since being superannuated getting back into active service hadn’t been easy. What a godsend the Mangles family proved to be. Or otherwise put, what a wise decision it was to have approached old James Mangles Snr when he did regarding the hand of his youngest daughter.  As far as career decisions go, it looks to be the one which enabled James Stirling the most.

Pamela Statham Drew, whose information gathering and analysis around Stirling’s life and career is thorough, becomes the go-to at this point. Writing the kind of biography Stirling deserves meant Statham-Drew couldn’t speculate on forces not evident in the material she had to hand, but even so while taking time to explain that Stirling had good reason to research Australia’s security and development options (in order to keep impressing upon the Admiralty that he was fit to resume) she isn’t at all sure how he got hold of HMS Success and the Melville Island/Sydney commission. In the end concluding it was probable ‘some strings were pulled’.

Those strings will have been attached via conversations at Woodbridge, the Mangles manor at Guildford, where the subject of Stirling aiding the family business went on. The French had taken an interest in the Pacific Ocean, Southern Australia included, from the early 1800s, so there was a real Government/Navy foothold to be gained there, but the primary goal from the Mangles perspective, one would think, was to ship more convicts to Australia. A western settlement could also benefit from British shipping already in the region, making its way from India through the East Indies to China and back. Furthermore, it was evident a settlement in the Swan River area might be taken advantage of by ailing East India Company operatives anxious to escape equatorial disease and humidity.

Stirling was financially self-supporting but didn’t have anything like the Mangles money or high-level connections. By 1826 he was almost eight years out of work and had spent the last three more-or-less lounging about at his in-laws. His anxiety was building and his motivation double. He had status to consider and was desperate to get back into the Navy’s practicing ranks as much as wanting to fulfill his side of the marriage bargain. The Western Australia idea was a business solution. If the Mangles family helped him back to a viable position, he could direct private contracts their way. The Swan River idea was a bright one down Surrey way, the best opportunity any of them could perceive at the time, and Stirling dived head-long into it.

The timing was very good but not precise. Captain Baudin of the Astrolabe was already at Sydney late in 1826, having just spent time at the Swan River and King George Sound, pleasantly getting to know Mokare’s Menang while also bumping into the South Coast’s first wave of sealers. Those written about so beautifully by Sarah Drummond.

The French presence had worried the British for some time that they may lose Western Australia, or have to fight over it, if they didn’t plant a flag there first. A key premise of the Stirling/Mangles plan, and secretly of d’Urville’s too. Unfortunately for Stirling, as far as the west was concerned King George Sound had already been deemed the place for that to happen. Had he commenced his campaign a year earlier he may have been able to argue for the Swan River to accommodate that garrison and Albany might not have been born for quite some time after that. Nonetheless, with a settlement already in place, albeit down on the South Coast, the idea of a western colony evolving seemed then not only inevitable but near.

With this impression, having been set back twice already, by opting for the Crown colony joint venture Stirling as forced to act more quickly than he ought to.

The colony which was to become Western Australia was a preconceived notion. The HMS Success command the timely vehicle with which to set it in train. Stirling arrived at Sydney knowing exactly what he had to do and he pulled it off with maximum assurance. So persuasive was he, both the botanist Fraser and the Success’s Clerk, Augustus Gilbert, became enchanted under him. The quest was make or break for Stirling. In a way, his own private Waterloo. If he failed to bring the colony about his powers of commercial influence would remain ineffectual, at least as far as the Mangles family were concerned. No colony meant Stirling will have at least got himself back into active service, but he will have been posted to Ceylon first and who knows where afterwards. The colony and its governorship were his ticket, at least temporarily, into civil administration from where he could influence commercial decision making and, after due commitment, allow him to mount a case for advancement to the dizzy heights of the Royal Navy’s elite command.

George Murray and Horace Twiss helped facilitate origination of the colony but were not in positions capable of aiding Stirling’s 1826 reappointment to active Naval service. That decision had come from the Admiralty and had to be signed off by John Barrow.

Once at Sydney, filled with the bullish confidence his reinstatement provided, Stirling had no trouble convincing Governor Darling to allow him to take HMS Success, N.S.W. Botanist Charles Fraser included, on that reconnaissance mission to the Swan River under the express intention of determining its suitability for settlement. In Stirling’s mind there was only ever a plan to induce approval. Both Stirling’s and Fraser’s reports skirted the issues of an unsafe ocean anchorage and the bar preventing shipping from entering the mouth of the Swan River, while embellishing the agricultural suitability of the land they saw to such an extent Darling was starry-eyed by the read. By July the following year Stirling was back in England, additionally armed with Darling’s support, campaigning for immediate establishment of the Swan River Colony. He was supposed to be in India, or at work in the Navy based out of the East Indies Station at Trincomalee (Sri Lanka) but came down with a severe stomach infection. So the story goes. So severe in fact, he had to be invalided on half pay and sent home to recover.

The Swan River dream was just too big for Stirling not to give absolutely everything to it.

Once Stirling had made his Swan River reconnaissance and composed his report, also exaggerating the findings in order to fight off competition from Major Lockyer’s positive assessment of King George Sound, ultimately the conversation was taken up back in England. On one side, at the Colonial Office. On the other, in the drawing room of the Mangles house, Woodbridge. Though convictism was stubbornly denied him, Stirling had positioned himself well and the idea of sealing himself into the equation as inaugurating governor grew. However, as it became clear it was not to be penal colony, Stirling had to sit down with his in-laws and work through things. No convicts meant no lucrative government shipping contracts, something they could double with trade and whaling, as they had done in and out of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.

The Mangles family could invest in the long-term infrastructure of the new colony, its banking for a start, but the shipping side of things would have to rely on private contracts which incurred greater risk and would probably take time to gather. Nonetheless, it appears the family accepted there was still a business opportunity there. Ellen’s future was brought forward after all. It wasn’t what they’d hoped for, but it didn’t particularly matter how the colony was funded and managed, so long as Stirling got to play lead role.

In the end, there wasn’t any money to be made shipping convicts, but it might still deliver over the longer term. The Mangles family did not join the fray by emigrating, except via Ellen’s cousin George, to whom Stirling issued one of the very first sinecures. Besides, through leading the endeavor, Stirling had guaranteed himself the finest hundred-thousand acres he could get his hands on and that was perhaps enough to appease both Stirling and his father-in-law.

Probably, the Mangles family were concerned by the speed with which matters were progressing, and through that surprised at the risk settler families were taking. The Mangles were deeply entrenched in British business, politics and administration so taking that kind of leap was not for them. It was best if they stayed behind and availed of whatever advantages they could as the situation unfolded, sufficiently delighted Stirling was not only back on his feet but leading admirably from the front.

In his mid-thirties and dangerously on the edge of not achieving much at all, it took just 38 months for James Stirling to go from forgotten Naval Captain to Lieutenant Governor of the Swan River Colony, at Perth. Just as Stamford Raffles had done, Stirling took a future place from the realm of his imagination and made it real.

Ambition, capacity, timing, and above all, friends in high places.

Above: James Mangles Snr, apparently known among family and friends as ‘Old Potato Face’, was a successful businessman, local administrator and politician. In 1831 he became Member of Parliament for Guildford. Image: James Mangles the elder, Ellen’s father and main influencer of James Stirling’s interlude as inaugurating Governor of Western Australia. Source: Widely available on the internet, this version from James Mangles Wikitree Entry.