Arthur Phillip
Arthur Phillip was a British Royal Navy officer who served as the first governor of the Colony of New South Wales.
Phillip was educated at Greenwich Hospital School from June 1751 until December 1753. He then became an apprentice on the whaling ship Fortune. With the outbreak of the Seven Years' War against France, Phillip enlisted in the Royal Navy as captain's servant to Michael Everitt aboard. With Everitt, Phillip also served on and. Phillip was promoted to lieutenant on 7 June 1761, before being put on half-pay at the end of hostilities on 25 April 1763. Seconded to the Portuguese Navy in 1774, he served in the war against Spain. Returning to Royal Navy service in 1778, in 1782 Phillip, in command of, was to capture Spanish colonies in South America, but an armistice was concluded before he reached his destination. In 1784, Phillip was employed by Home Office Under Secretary Evan Nepean, to survey French defences in Europe.
In 1786, Phillip was appointed by Lord Sydney as the commander of the First Fleet, a fleet of 11 ships whose crew were to establish a penal colony and a settlement at Botany Bay, New South Wales. On arriving at Botany Bay, Phillip found the site unsuitable and searched for a more habitable site for a settlement, which he found in Port Jackson – the site of Sydney, Australia, today. Phillip was a far-sighted governor who soon realised that New South Wales would need a civil administration and a system for emancipating convicts. However, his plan to bring skilled tradesmen on the First Fleet's voyage had been rejected. Consequently, he faced immense problems with labour, discipline, and supply. Phillip wanted harmonious relations with the local indigenous peoples, in the belief that everyone in the colony was a British citizen and was protected by the law as such; therefore the indigenous peoples had the same rights as everyone under Phillip's command. Eventually, cultural differences between the two groups of people led to conflict. The arrival of more convicts with the Second and Third Fleets placed new pressures on scarce local resources. By the time Phillip sailed home in December 1792, the colony was taking shape, with official land grants, systematic farming, and a water supply in place.
On 11 December 1792, Phillip left the colony to return to Britain to receive medical treatment for kidney stones. He had planned to return to Australia, but medical advisors recommended he resign from the governorship. His health recovered and he returned to active duty in the Navy in 1796, holding a number of commands in home waters before being put in command of the Hampshire Sea Fencibles. He eventually retired from active naval service in 1805. He spent his final years of retirement in Bath, Somerset, before his death on 31 August 1814. As the first Governor of New South Wales, a number of places in Australia are named after him, including Port Phillip, Phillip Island, Phillip Street in the Sydney central business district, the suburb of Phillip in Canberra and the Governor Phillip Tower building in Sydney, as well as many streets, parks, and schools.
Early life
Arthur Phillip was born on 11 October 1738, in the Parish of All Hallows, in Bread Street, London. He was the son of Jacob Phillip, an immigrant from Frankfurt, who by various accounts was a language teacher, a merchant vessel owner, a merchant captain, or a common seaman. His mother, Elizabeth Breach, was the widow of a common seaman by the name of John Herbert, who had died of disease in Jamaica aboard on 13 August 1732. At the time of Arthur Phillip's birth, his family maintained a modest existence as tenants near Cheapside in the City of London.There are no surviving records of Phillip's early childhood. His father, Jacob, died in 1739, after which the Phillip family would have a low income. Arthur went to sea on a British naval vessel aged nine. On 22 June 1751, he was accepted into the Greenwich Hospital School, a charity school for the sons of indigent seafarers. In accordance with the school's curriculum, his education focused on literacy, arithmetic, and navigational skills, including cartography. His headmaster, Reverend Francis Swinden, observed that in personality, Phillip was "unassuming, reasonable, business-like to the smallest degree in everything he undertakes".
Phillip remained at the Greenwich Hospital School for two and a half years, longer than the average student stay of one year. At the end of 1753, he was granted a seven-year indenture as an apprentice aboard Fortune, a 210-ton whaling vessel commanded by merchant mariner William Readhead. Phillip left the Greenwich Hospital School on 1 December, and spent the next few months aboard the Fortune, awaiting the start of the 1754 whaling season.
Contemporary portraits depict Phillip as shorter than average, with an olive complexion and dark eyes. A long nose and a pronounced lower lip dominated his "smooth pear of a skull" as quoted by Robert Hughes.
Early maritime career
Whaling and merchant expeditions
In April 1754 Fortune headed out to hunt whales near Svalbard in the Barents Sea. As an apprentice Phillip's responsibilities included stripping blubber from whale carcasses and helping to pack it into barrels. Food was scarce, and Fortunes 30 crew members supplemented their diet with bird's eggs, scurvy grass, and, where possible, reindeer. The ship returned to England on 20 July 1754. The whaling crew were paid and replaced with twelve sailors for a winter voyage to the Mediterranean. Phillip remained aboard as Fortune undertook an outward trading voyage to Barcelona and Livorno carrying salt and raisins, returning via Rotterdam with a cargo of grains and citrus. The ship returned to England in April 1755 and sailed immediately for Svalbard for that year's whale hunt. Phillip was still a member of the crew but abandoned his apprenticeship when the ship returned to England on 27 July.Royal Navy and the Seven Years' War
On 16 October 1755, Phillip enlisted in the Royal Navy as captain's servant aboard the 68-gun, commanded by his mother's cousin, Captain Michael Everitt. As a member of Buckinghams crew, Phillip served in home waters until April 1756 and then joined Admiral John Byng's Mediterranean fleet. The Buckingham was Rear-Admiral Temple West's flagship at the Battle of Minorca on 20 May 1756.Phillip moved on 1 August 1757, with Everitt, to the 90-gun, which took part in the Raid on St Malo on 5–12 June 1758. Phillip, again with Captain Everitt, transferred on 28 December 1758 to the 64-gun, which went to the West Indies to serve at the Siege of Havana. On 7 June 1761, Phillip was commissioned as a lieutenant in recognition for his active service. With the coming of peace on 25 April 1763, he was retired on half-pay.
Retirement and the Portuguese Navy
In July 1763, Phillip married Margaret Charlotte Denison, known as Charlott, a widow 16 years his senior, and moved to Glasshayes in Lyndhurst, Hampshire, establishing a farm there. The marriage was unhappy, and the couple separated in 1769 when Phillip returned to the Navy. Margaret Phillip died in August 1792 and is buried at Llanycil, Bala, North Wales with her companion, Mrs Cane. The following year, he was posted as second lieutenant aboard, a newly built 74-gun ship of the line.In 1774, Phillip was seconded to the Portuguese Navy as a captain, serving in the war against Spain. While with the Portuguese Navy, Phillip commanded a 26-gun frigate, Nossa Senhora do Pilar. On that ship, he took a detachment of troops from Rio de Janeiro to Colonia do Sacramento on the Río de la Plata to relieve the garrison there. The voyage also conveyed a consignment of convicts assigned to carry out work at Colonia. During a storm encountered in the course of the voyage, the convicts assisted in working the ship, and on arriving at Colonia, Phillip recommended that they be rewarded for saving the ship by remission of their sentences. A garbled version of this recommendation eventually found its way into the English press in 1786, when Phillip was appointed to lead the expedition to Sydney. Phillip played a leading role in the capture of the Spanish ship San Agustín, on 19 April 1777, off Santa Catarina. The Portuguese Navy commissioned her as the Santo Agostinho, under Phillip's command. The action was reported in the English press:
Madrid, 28 Aug. Letters from Lisbon bring the following Account from Rio Janeiro: That the St. Augustine, of 70 Guns, having been separated from the Squadron of M. Casa Tilly, was attacked by two Portugueze Ships, against which they defended themselves for a Day and a Night, but being next Day surrounded by the Portugueze Fleet, was obliged to surrender.
Recommissioned into Royal Navy
In 1778, with Britain again at war, Phillip was recalled to Royal Navy service and on 9 October was appointed first lieutenant of the 74-gun as part of the Channel fleet. Promoted to commander on 2 September 1779 and given command of the 8-gun fireship HMS Basilisk. With Spain's entry into the conflict, Phillip had a series of private meetings with the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich, sharing his charts and knowledge about the South American coastlines.Phillip was promoted to post-captain on 30 November 1781 and given command of the 20-gun. Ariadne was sent to the Elbe to escort a transport ship carrying a detachment of Hanoverian troops, arriving at the port of Cuxhaven on 28 December, the estuary froze over trapping Ariadne in the harbour. In March 1782, Phillip arrived in England with the Hanoverian troops. In the following months Ariadne got a new lieutenant, Philip Gidley King, whom Phillip took under his wing. Ariadne was used to patrol the Channel where on 30 June, she captured the French frigate Le Robecq.
With a change of government on 27 March 1782, Sandwich retired from the Admiralty, Lord Germain was replaced as Secretary of State for Home and American Affairs by Earl of Shelburne, before 10 July 1782, in another change of government Thomas Townshend replaced him, and assumed responsibility for organising an expedition against Spanish America. Like Sandwich and Germain, he turned to Phillip for planning advice. The plan was for a squadron of three ships of the line and a frigate to mount a raid on Buenos Aires and Monte Video, then to proceed to the coasts of Chile, Peru, and Mexico to maraud, and ultimately to cross the Pacific to join the British Navy's East India squadron for an attack on Manila. On 27 December 1782, Phillip, took charge of the 64-gun. The expedition, consisting of the 70-gun, the 74-gun, Europa, and the 32-gun frigate, sailed on 16 January 1783 under the command of Commodore Robert Kingsmill. Shortly after the ships' departure, an armistice was concluded between Great Britain and Spain. Phillip learnt of this in April when he put in for storm repairs at Rio de Janeiro. Phillip wrote to Townshend from Rio de Janeiro on 25 April 1783, expressing his disappointment that the ending of the American War had robbed him of the opportunity for naval glory in South America.