King Georges Sound – The View From Mount Clarence . Com

James Stirling and the beautiful killing of King George’s Sound

Above: Having won command of HMS Success ten months earlier, 35-year-old Captain James Stirling arrived at the burgeoning colonial city of Sydney. It was late November 1826, and he held within him an overwhelming desire. After completing a substantial delivery of cash (20 000 Pounds Sterling) to the Governor, General Ralph Darling, his orders were to sail for the Trincomalee Naval Base at Ceylon, where he and Success were to be stationed. However, Stirling took it upon himself to convince General Darling to grant him an expedition to Australia’s western seaboard so he could witness first-hand the attributes of a location he argued was an essential point of settlement. Though Darling had already dispatched an army contingent and convict detail to the vicinity, Stirling remonstrated, insisting it was in the wrong place, and the heretofore overlooked Swan River must, at the very least, undergo survey. Though twenty years his senior, Darling bent to the younger man’s exhortations. Thus, in March 1827, James Stirling spent twelve fine autumnal days exploring the Swan and surrounding coastal waters, running his eyes over a warm sunlit landscape upon which all he had imagined seemed not only possible, but inevitable. At the height of his persuasive powers, Stirling’s intentions included addressing the threat posed by the newly established garrison at King George’s Sound. There could be no competing entity. Stirling’s plans for the Swan River Colony, a commercial venture intended to revitalise the family’s shrinking fortune, gained over previous generations through the slave-driven tobacco and cotton industries of the North Atlantic, were worth more to him at this time than his interrupted Naval career. And he would not cease until the colony was brought about with himself as inaugurating Governor. Image: AI generated Romantical image of 36-year-old Captain James Stirling standing at the wheel of HMS Success during March 1827, based on his 1833/34 portrait with the Swan River Cup made in London when he was in his mid 40s.

John Bailey Pavey, also known as John/Jack Williams, John Andrews and John Williams Andrews was a mariner, sealer, whaler and Plantagenet pioneer. A key figure of Albany’s original criminal fringe he was a man of considerable, and dangerous, prowess. Pavey resided at or near Albany between 1834 and his death in 1882.

With Thanks

Following is a verbatim copy of Jock Beer’s 2009 family research project John Bailey Pavey. This work lifted the lid on Albany’s ‘second wave’ sealing fraternity of the mid 1830s. It pre-dates John Robertson’s outstanding Sealed Souls narrative and compilation by more than 10 years. I have sung about Beer’s work for some time and it remains an absolutely essential element of the building literature surrounding the role of Albany’s mariner brigade subsequent to departure of the NSW military contingent and set-up of the new free settlement from April 1831. Robertson’s Sealed Souls is a compendium of the entire sealing era (both waves) as it related to the coast between Albany and Cape Arid and makes gigantic contribution to our overall understanding of what occurred during that 40-plus year period, where-as Beer’s John Bailey Pavey is entirely focussed on the life and times of this one particular character. Pavey arrived into Albany waters with a number of other sealers including the equally notorious Robert Gamble and Black Anderson, allowing Beer to throw invaluable light on associations between all three. As John Bailey Pavey forms an integral part of the research underpinning the current Black Anderson series here at The View. . . and is not available for purchase, Jock has given pemission for the work to be copied and presented here. A hard copy of John Bailey Pavey by Campbell (Jock) Beer is lodged with Albany Library’s ‘Albany History Collection‘. What follows below is an unedited, word-for-word, copy.

Tag: King Georges Sound

And he sailed in a ship called Success. . .

James Stirling and the beautiful killing of King George’s Sound

John Bailey Pavey (1797-1882) by Campbell (Jock) Beer

With Thanks

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