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

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.

Whalemen, Jumpships and Albany’s Old Waterfront Precinct

An important off-cut from the Newhill/Newell project – 2019/20

Above: Albany’s waterfront precinct cut from Albany 30A, King George’s Sound as marked by Philip Chauncy, Assistant Surveyor, 1851. Source: State Records Office of W.A.

AS we have seen from our investigations into 1830s and 1840s Albany, behind the imaginary fascia of the town constructed by the moneyed settlers whose role it was to promote and develop a society in the model of well-to-do Britain, Albany’s pre-eminent locale returned the image of a shabby disreputable waterfront populated by heavy drinking soldiers and mariners, foreign sailors running-off or else frolicking on shore-leave, and an otherwise supportive indigenous element sick and dying while embroiled in seedy prostitution.

This changed and improved to a degree from the 1850s with the expansion caused by appointment of Albany as coaling depot for the intercontinenal passenger steamers, especially those contracted to carry the royal mail, but what needs to be remembered is that based on population statistics and social make-up, Albany as a micrcosm of coastal colonial Australia was one part church and office to nine parts boat and vice. There are so many stories of excess carried out by whalers coming ashore between Geographe Bay and the South Coast over the 1840s in particular, author Tim Blue’s much needed Whale Hunters of the West carries 240 pages of startling insight.

Jimmy’s Harbour – Newhill or Newell? Part 2

Continued from Part 1

Whalemen, rebellion and Albany’s original newspaper;

Jimmy (Ned) Newhill and 1880’s Albany

Above: Edward August Newhill, known among his friends and family as Jimmy, was granted title to the harbour after camping, fishing and hiding deserting whalemen there during the 1880s, but Newhill also led one of the single largest labour revolts in the history of American whaling activity off the Australian coast when he walked off Bartholomew Gosnold at Albany in May, 1883. Image: Undated portrait c. 1920 Source: Lauren Rowe – Rowe family papers

To understand the story of the man who came to be known as Jimmy Newhill, we first have to understand the story of American whaling on and off Albany’s shores across the 1800s, particularly the latter half. This constitutes the bulk of the history, principally the relationship Albany had with the New Bedford whaling firm John Tucker & Co whose four ships, Bartholomew Gosnold, Platina, Canton II and Bertha were stationed off King George Sound between 1877 and 1887. Within this story, however, lies the overlapping one of Princess Royal Harbour becoming coaling depot for the arriving steam age which significantly impacted development of the town around the waterfront. Also, Albany’s first locally produced newspaper came into being toward the end of both the whaling and P&O eras playing an important role in documenting it, along with the drive for the railway, third essential element of the waterfront precinct. Of vital macro importance at this time too were pastoral interests and arrival of the telegraph service from 1877, the combination of which resulted in the settling of the so-called Eastern District which brought with it dire cross-cultural consequences; Albany’s judicial club, headquartered in the newly constructed government buildings looking directly down on the jetty, complicit in its violence. By 1883 the telegraph service allowed the innards of Jimmy Newhill’s story of arrival and remain to play out as it did. And as if that were not enough, the Newhill story ties with Irish poverty and convictism, the effects of which drew the father of Newhill’s locally born bride, Elizabeth Cullinane, from the fringes of West Cork during the aftermath of Ireland’s Great Hunger. Moreover, Elizabeth Cullinane’s registered maternal grandparents were William and Mary Sounness, an 1840’s settler couple rooted to early Albany’s highly influential Scotts fraternity. The Sounness legacy was built along aspiring European lines in the Mount Barker area but there remains the nagging suggestion the Cullinane children were not entirely European, bringing into the picture another cross-cultural relationship and as yet unidentified Menang mother.

Could there be a richer backdrop to local family history than this?

In Search of Ngurabirding-Part 4 (a)

John McKail and George Cheyne: From the Swan River to The Ship Inn, Cape Riche and Eticup In the continuing search for Ngurabirding we complete the background to John Maher’s 1854 arrival at Albany with a look at the activities, enterprises and connections of the disputatious pair John McKail and George …