Biography of George Raper

The First Fleet Sails

At daybreak on Sunday 13 May 1787, the Sirius and the other ships of the First Fleet weighed anchor and sailed from Portsmouth, with light breezes and pleasant weather. Within a few hours the Sirius passed the white cliffs of Needle Point. Raper’s drawing of Needle Point was the first of a number of images he would make on the voyage.

View of the Island Teneriffe
George Raper (1769—1796)
View of the Island Teneriffe ...
watercolour on paper; 7.4 x 15.2 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC3312/7-10

When the Fleet was clear of England, Phillip gave orders for the convicts to be allowed periods on deck. On the Sirius he divided the day into three watches rather than two, which was much appreciated by the seamen but not by third Lieutenant Maxwell, who had a number of seamen who were not on watch flogged. Phillip severely reprimanded Maxwell and ordered all the officers to his cabin, telling them that any officer who struck a seaman would be punished.

Passing the island of Madeira, the Fleet made good progress to the Salvages, a collection of reefs and rocky islets. By early June the Fleet arrived in the Canary Islands and spent a week at the port of Santa Cruz on the Island of Tenerife. As the Fleet sailed down the coast of Tenerife, Raper drew the spectacular high peak of the island, with its ruffled collar of clouds.

Between 18 and 20 June the Fleet passed the Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of North West Africa, of which Raper made three drawings and a chart. However, wind prevented a landing at Port Praya on the Island of St Jago.

Near Rio de Janeiro

Augustus Earle (1793—1838)
Near Rio de Janeiro c.1822
watercolour; 17.2 x 26 cm
NK12/95

Rio de Janeiro

The next port was even more dramatically scenic than Santa Cruz. The Fleet reached Rio de Janeiro on 7 August and anchored in a harbour graced by forty islands, and surrounded by peaks such as the famous Sugarloaf, with its rainforested slopes. Captain Phillip had many friends in Brazil where he had served with distinction in the Portuguese Navy in the 1770s. Both he and his officers and crew received a warm welcome from the local inhabitants: Philip Gidley King wrote enthusiastically of ‘the Hospitality & attention to every person in our fleet by the inhabitants of this place of all Ranks’. The First Fleet reprovisioned, with plentiful oranges, bananas, vegetables and fresh meat brought onboard. Amidst these comforts and distractions Raper took time to make the sketch on which one of the drawings in the Collection is based, and to prepare his chart of the Rio de Janeiro Harbour.

Entrance of Rio de Janeiro

George Raper (1769—1796)
Entrance of Rio de Janeiro from the Anchorage without the Sugar Loaf
watercolour on paper; 10.5 x 16.2 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC3312/2

While the Fleet was at Rio de Janeiro, Able Seaman John Shortland was transferred from the Friendship, one of the convict transports of the Fleet, to the Sirius. Shortland’s father was also in the Fleet, as a Lieutenant on the Fishburn. John Shortland was the same age and rank as George Raper, and they would later share living quarters—with Master’s Mate William Bryant—during the long and difficult months on Norfolk Island.

Raper had drawn a map that carefully recorded the course of the Sirius from England to Rio de Janeiro. At Rio he began a new map, to show the ship’s course back across the Atlantic and south to Cape Town. Skills in map-making and drawing were some of the accomplishments that Raper needed to demonstrate to be promoted to Midshipman. The close correlation between many of his drawings and charts and those of Lieutenant Bradley suggest that he was under Bradley’s tuition.

Mid-Atlantic, on the Rio to Cape Town leg, the senior officers of the Sirius turned their attention to the young gentlemen awaiting promotion. Vacancies had arisen after the Master, Micah Morton, and one of the Master’s Mates, David Seally, had been sent home ill from Rio de Janeiro. Midshipmen James Cunningham and Daniel Southwell were promoted to Master’s Mates on 29 September 1787, and the next day George Raper and John Ferguson were promoted from Able Seamen to Midshipmen.

 

The Table Land from the Anchorage in the Bay, Cape of Good Hompe

George Raper (1769—1796)
The Table Land from the Anchorage in the Bay, Cape of Good Hope
watercolour on paper; 11.2 x 16.2 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC3312/3

Cape Town

The Dutch Protestant settlement at Cape Town provided quite a contrast after the seductive luxuriance of Rio. The Fleet anchored there for a month from 14 October 1787, taking on supplies—including livestock—for the final plunge across the barely known waters of the Southern Ocean. While at Cape Town, Phillip had news of Jean de Galaup de La Pérouse’s intention to visit New Holland and the site of the intended British settlement.

Two weeks out to sea from Cape Town, Captain Phillip transferred from the Sirius to the Supply and divided the fleet in two. With the Supply and three of the faster ships, Phillip hoped to arrive early enough at Botany Bay to have storehouses and huts built before the arrival of the remaining ships, and the French. The Sirius remained as escort to the slower half of the Fleet, under the command of Captain Hunter.

 

A View of Botany Bay

Thomas Medland engraver (1755—1822)
after Robert Cleveley (1747—1809)
A View of Botany Bay
London: J.Stockdale, 17 June 1789
engraving; plate mark 20 x 25.5 cm
NK3374/2

The Southern Ocean

As the Sirius sailed east, she encountered the full force of the gales of the Southern Ocean. Rain, sleet, large hailstones and huge waves made the decks a cold and deadly place. Breaks in the weather allowed the Sirius’s company to observe some of the strange phenomena of the Southern Hemisphere. On a night early in the new year of 1788, the Sirius sailed through a sea of lights more than a mile wide—‘a luminous appearance or substance [resembling] lights floating on the surface of the water’. The strange lights were fickle: when the crew tried to scoop some up, they collected only dark sea water. On a night soon afterwards, the Aurora Australis put on a spectacular display of constantly changing red, orange, yellow and white streamers. George Raper was indeed seeing the wonders of the world.

In the first week of January 1788, the coast of Van Diemen’s Land was sighted. The landfall was the South-West Cape, in the heart of a wilderness with spectacular mountains and coastal scenery. Raper recorded his view of the coast in a watercolour that shows jagged rocky islands and inland peaks.

Navigating now with the aid of maps made by Captain James Cook, the ships travelled northward past Van Diemen’s Land and on 19 January sighted land at a place named ‘Red Point’ by Captain Cook. A day later they sailed into Botany Bay, to find that the faster part of the Fleet had preceded them by only two days. Raper drew a profile of the entrance to Botany Bay and made a chart of it, though it is unclear whether he did so on this occasion or another. On 24 January, the French arrived.

The Land about Botany Bay

George Raper (1769—1796)
The Land about Botany Bay
watercolour on paper; 6.9 x 16.8 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC3312/4-6

Finding the soil, water and anchorage at Botany Bay unsuitable, Captain Phillip moved the First Fleet north to Port Jackson, arriving there on 26 January 1788. Having finally reached their destination, Raper made drawings of the entrance to Port Jackson and a chart of the harbour.

In the voyage to New South Wales, George Raper, now eighteen, had participated in one of the major achievements of the Royal Navy. As one of the First Fleet diarists wrote:

Thus, under the blessing of God, was happily completed, in eight months and one week, a voyage which, before it was undertaken, the mind hardly dared venture to contemplate, and on which it was impossible to reflect without some apprehension as to its termination. This fortunate completion of it, however, afforded even to ourselves as much matter of surprise as of general satisfaction; for in the above space of time we had sailed five thousand and twenty-one leagues; had touched at the American and African Continents; and had at last rested within a few days sail of the antipodes of our native country, without meeting any accident on a fleet of eleven sail, nine of which were merchantment that had never before sailed in that distant and imperfectly explored ocean.
—David Collins

Sydney, N.S. Wales 1788

John Carmichael (1803—1857)
Sydney, N.S.Wales 1788
Sydney: W. & F. Ford: 1848
etching; 7.7 x 16.6 cm
S3985

 

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