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.
