Biography of George Raper

 

Australian Aborigine c.1790
Port Jackson Painter fl. 1788–1972
[Australian Aborigine] c.1790
gouache; 30.5 x 24.3 cm
NK144/B

Life at Port Jackson

There is pillicans, and ducks, and different kinds of animals, but the kangaroo is the chief … The she have a fals belly …
—Jacob Nagle, Able Seaman, HMS Sirius

The people of the First Fleet spent their early months in Port Jackson clearing, building, surveying, planting, stealing, flogging and being flogged. Relations with the Australian Aborigines, characterised by mutual incomprehension, gradually worsened. Although Captain Phillip’s attitude to the Australian Aboriginals was relatively enlightened for the time, the Europeans proceeded on an assumption that their right to the land was unquestionable. Inevitably, misunderstandings and violence escalated.

For Raper, his first months in the newly declared territory of New South Wales would have been a time of hard work and hunger, excitement and homesickness. March brought heavy rains, and life in the tents and huts of the muddy settlement must have been miserable. The dreaded scurvy, absent on the voyage from Cape Town, soon re-appeared, and Raper probably supplemented his diet of salt meat and other ship’s provisions with the cabbages from cabbage tree palms, berries and native spinach.

In his letters home Raper would probably have struggled, as others did, to describe the plants and animals that were so different from those of England, so different even from those of South Africa. With no understanding of the role of fire in the Australian bush, the people of the First Fleet apprehensively attributed the burnt bark of gum trees to frequent strikes of ‘the fiercest lightning’. Kangaroos were a matter of amazement with their ‘false bellies’ and ‘heads which they turn right round’. Though the Europeans were intrigued by the astonishing plumage of Australian birds, their descriptions were also shaped by hunger: emus were ‘well flavoured’ but sulphur-crested cockatoos were ‘very indifferent food’.

Rufous Night Heron

John Hunter (1737—1821)
Rufous Night Heron (Nycticorax caledonicus )
plate 9 from Birds and Flowers of New South Wales drawn on the Spot in 1788, '89 & '90
sketchbook of 100 watercolours; 22.8 x 18.5 cm
NK2039/9

In September 1788, the officers and crew of the Sirius were informed that they were to be despatched to the Cape of Good Hope to fetch supplies for the settlement. Though food supplies had been running dangerously low for some time, the failure of the wheat crop planted in the poor soil near Sydney Cove was the immediate trigger for HMS Sirius’s journey.

 

Hunter’s Circumnavigation

The Sirius, with Raper onboard sailed from Port Jackson early in October 1788. Captain Hunter made the controversial decision to take the eastern, rather than the western, route to Cape Town, across the Southern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This decision would be vindicated by the Sirius’s arrival in Cape Town in a record time of ninety-one days.

On the voyage across the Southern Pacific, the growing of madness of Lieutenant Maxwell became evident. One day, Maxwell ordered all sails to be set despite the strong wind. Unable to contradict a Lieutenant, the crew obeyed. The ship heeled over so much that it tipped Captain Hunter out of his bunk. Rushing to the deck dressed in only his shirt, he demanded to know what Maxwell was doing, presumably in a tone that was somewhat stronger than polite inquiry. On receiving Maxwell’s garbled answer about ‘a set of damned rascals’, the Captain ordered another officer to take the watch.

Rounding Cape Horn, the Sirius was accompanied by whales–up to twenty at a time. Some came close enough to wet the men on deck with their spouting. For a month, the ship passed through fields of icebergs, one towering 350 feet above them. Hunter, fascinated, described their colours, from pure white to ‘a beautiful sea-green, or bright verdigrease’. Bradley called them ‘lumps of misery’.

Shipping amongst Icebergs

Pelitjer
Shipping amongst Icebergs 18--
oil on canvas; 31x51 cm
NK11011

During the voyage all the officers and crew, including Raper, suffered from varying degrees of scurvy. A number of the crew died from it. As the Sirius approached Cape Town, half of each watch ‘from scorbutic contractions in their limbs, were not able to go aloft’. When given fresh fruit on arrival, even the least-affected ate the fruit mixed with blood that oozed from their gum. Raper may have used this opportunity to re-supply to purchase new paper and watercolour pigments in Cape Town, since his painting, which seems to have become less frequent in the previous year, resumed in 1789.

After taking on supplies, the Sirius left Cape Town on 20 February 1789. Pursuing a course very similar to the one she had followed fourteen months earlier, the Sirius reached the vicinity of Van Diemen’s Land in mid-April. Here Raper had a close escape from shipwreck. Having been three days without enough clear weather to fix their position by sun or star, Captain Hunter and his officers estimated they were far enough south to clear the tip of Van Diemen’s Land. When the heavy rain finally stopped, they found they were still west of the land, and being driven on to it by a violent onshore wind. For forty-eight hours the Sirius desperately zig-zagged to avoid the capes and rocky islands that Raper had drawn so calmly the year before. In gale-force winds, Captain Hunter had to order more, not less sail, and each wave half buried the ship. Eventually a slight shift in the wind carried the Sirius safely past Tasman’s Head.

Two weeks later the storm-damaged Sirius arrived in Port Jackson delivering flour and other provisions, and saving the settlement from starvation.

Van Diemans Land, New Holland

George Raper (1769—1796)
Van Diemans Land, New Holland
watercolour on paper; 7 x 16.8 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC3312/4-6

 

Repairing the Sirius

Carreening Cove

George Raper (1769—1796)
Carreening Cove
coloured ms. map; 20.3 x 14.4 cm
Map Collection RM3459

In June 1789 the Sirius was moved across Port Jackson to Careening Cove, now known as Mosman Bay, of which Raper made an important chart. Over the next five months the crew worked to repair the damage incurred off the south coast of Tasmania, and leaks that had been discovered in Cape Town. It was probably also around this time that Raper made a number of other paintings that he dated 1789, of Port Jackson scenes and birds, made sketches that he would rework later, and turned sketches from his voyages into finished watercolours. Many of these paintings are now held in the British Museum.

A number of officers in the First Fleet had drawing skills, and Raper’s interest in natural history may well have been the result of his training under Hunter. Similarities in style and subject suggest that Hunter, Bradley and Raper worked on their drawings together, but while Bradley appears only to have produced views and charts, Hunter displayed a great interest in natural history. A comparison of the work of Raper and Hunter shows that Raper quickly became the more accomplished artist.

During this period, the Sirius’s complement of officers began to shrink. Lieutenant Maxwell, declared mad, was relieved of his duties and housed in a hut in the Hospital garden at Sydney Cove with someone to attend him. The Sirius crew, no longer under threat from his madness, followed his behaviour with interest. Seaman Nagle reports that on receiving seventy guineas from England, Maxwell

… got holt of a how [hoe] and buried them singly all over the garden, saying he would have a good crop of guineas the next year. When the docter discovered what he had don, they endeavoured to find them, but the garden being dug, they could not find one third of them.

Even more disturbing was the disappearance of one of the young men of Raper’s circle, Midshipman Francis Hill. In early November 1789, returning by boat from a night at Sydney Cove, he was dropped on the north shore. He walked into the bush, headed for the Sirius at Careening Cove, and was never seen again. The officers and crew of the Sirius searched for him for three days.

Shortly after Hill’s disappearance, the Sirius moved back to Sydney Cove, where repairs to her upper works continued. Captain Phillip was willing to invest such time and effort into her overhaul because, with the departure of the other ships of the First Fleet, the Sirius and the smaller Supply were now his only sure links with Britain. The Sirius was being prepared for a critical dash to China for supplies, with what was intended to be a brief stop at Norfolk Island.

 

Shipwreck on Norfolk Island

There is a reef of sunken rocks …

—John Hunter

 

In February 1790, Governor Phillip had only five months worth of supplies left to feed the settlement at Port Jackson. He decided to send two hundred of the convicts, with marines to guard them, to join those already on Norfolk Island, in the hope that the fertile soil of the island would allow them to support themselves. The Sirius and the Supply would transport them to the island.

Entrance of Port Jackson

George Raper (1769—1796)
Entrance of Port Jackson When Close under the South Head
watercolour on paper; 7.8 x 16.8 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC3312/4-6

On 5 March the two ships left Sydney Cove and reached the heads around dusk. The journals of the ships’ officers record an uneventful passage to Norfolk Island, but seaman Nagle and a Lieutenant Clark of the Marines tell a different story:

Just as we came abreast of the outer South Head it fell calm and the swell was setting us fast on the North Head which, had not a puff of wind filled the Sails, we should have been drove on shore on the North Head, and everybody on board thought of no other but that we should.

The Sirius and Supply reached Norfolk Island on 13 March 1790. Norfolk Island has no natural harbour. Sailing ships had to dodge the wind, using either Cascade Bay on the north side or Sydney Bay on the south, neither of which were easy anchoring places even in favourable weather. When the two ships arrived the wind was south-westerly and the ships chose Cascade Bay. There it was possible to land all the marines and the convicts, by rowing them to a projecting rock and having them jump onto it when the waves and tide permitted. No sooner had the convicts and marines been landed than the wind changed to an easterly and banished any thought of landing supplies in Cascade Bay.

Principal Settlement on Norfolk Island

George Raper (1769—1796)
Principal Settlement on Norfolk Island
1790
watercolour; 23.8 x 33.8 cm
R247

For four days the Sirius and Supply sailed back and forth off the island, waiting for winds that would allow them to approach the shore safely. On the Sirius, Captain Hunter was feeling the pressure:

We had put on shore from the Sirius and the Supply 270 people, and had no opportunity of sending any stores with them, as we were now driven out of sight of the island. I knew the exhausted state of stores there; I was also acquainted with the many difficulties which Lieutenant Ball, commander of the Supply, had met with in the different voyages he had made from Port Jackson to this island, with provisions; and the length of time he had, in some of those voyages, been obliged to cruize, before he could have any access to the shore; so continually does the surf break all round it. These considerations gave me much anxiety and uneasiness.

On 19 March the wind changed, now coming from the south-east. This made landing at Sydney Bay a possibility. First the Supply and then the Sirius anchored in the bay, encouraged by a signal flag from the shore which indicated that the surf was low enough for small boats to land. The crews began unloading provisions into boats. At first, all seemed well. It was a ‘fine pleasant day’ with only a light breeze in the bay. and those seamen not organising the provisions for the boats were fishing from the decks. But Sydney Bay’s two arms of rock could serve as a trap for ships, drawing them towards scattered rocks and a maw of reefs that lie parallel to the shore. Hunter had anchored the Sirius with her bow pointing seawards, ready to dash to the safety of the open sea if the wind or surf rose.

The danger came, however, not from wind or wave but from the unnoticed tide. When they started unloading, the tide had been ebbing for two hours. An ebb tide, which if necessary could be used to pull the ships seaward, gave a margin of safety. This margin was a good one in Sydney Bay, where the tidal flows were strong. According to Bradley and Hunter, they had been given ‘full assurance’ that ebb tides at Norfolk Island lasted for nine hours. This meant that they had a further seven hours to complete the unloading. On 19 March 1790, however, the ebb tide lasted only two hours.

Portrait of Lt. Henry Lidgbird Ball

Unknown
Portrait of Lt. Henry Lidgbird Ball, Commander of Supply
c.1792
ink drawing; oval image 7.8 x 6.5 cm in rectangular frame 14.1 x 12.1 cm
T3376 NK6805

The sudden change of tide was first noticed by Lieutenant Ball, commander of the Supply, who alerted the Sirius. Sending a boat away half-loaded, the Sirius set off immediately on the only seaward course the wind would allow her—diagonally across the bay—following the quicker and more agile Supply. Near the far side of the bay the Supply had to go about, to start zigzagging out of the bay.

As she prepared to go about to avoid the reef on the west arm of the bay, the wind shifted to the south, so that it was blowing the Sirius directly back into the bay. The Sirius attempted to go about, but in mid-turn ‘the wind baffled and baulk’d the ship in stays’ and she had to start the turn again, losing ground towards the shore all the while.

With the wind shift, Captain Hunter had given up hope of tacking safely out of the bay; he decided to aim for a desperate gap between a small island and rocks that formed the eastern arm of the bay. On the second attempt to turn in the direction of the gap, the ship came round, but by now the wind was forcing her to sail straight across the bay, not at the angle that would take her out towards the gap. Drifting rapidly towards the reefs that lined the inner shore of the bay, Hunter tried to turn the ship again, but the Sirius lacked enough momentum to complete the turn. For some moments she was ‘in stays’ again, hovering helplessly with her bow into the wind that continued to push her backwards.

Hunter used his last resort, dropping an anchor, but the wind and tide were implacable, and the Sirius struck a rock about 750 metres from the shore.

Water immediately flowed into the hold, filling it to head height. The first priority now was to save lives. Hunter ordered the masts to be cut away to lighten the ship, hoping that the waves would then push her further towards the shore. His action had the desired effect, and, in what must have been a terrifying ride, the Sirius surfed and bumped her way across the reef, coming to rest in calmer water. It was still only around midday, on a fine and sunny day.

Lieutenant Ball from the Supply, which had narrowly succeeded in sailing out of danger, returned in a longboat to offer assistance. The Sirius crew set about bringing the provisions up on deck, in case an opportunity arose to get them to shore. A line attached to a cask was floated ashore and a hauling arrangement put in place by which the ship’s company was dragged to safety over two days, with not a life lost. For several months after the loss of the Sirius, her crew was able to retrieve stores, guns and any useful thing from the wreck, returning again and again when conditions allowed.

click on image to zoom

click to zoom in on this imageGeorge Raper (1769—1796)
The Melancholy Loss of H.M.S. Sirius off Norfolk Island March 19th 1790
watercolour on paper; 18 x 22.8 cm
Pictorial Collection PIC3312/1

Although the journals of the Sirius’s officers, and even of Seaman Nagle, are tight-lipped on the subject of blame for the wreck, the nature of the tides at Norfolk Island would have been widely discussed after the disaster. In his letter to the Admiralty reporting the wreck, Captain Hunter stressed the wrong information he had received about the timing of the ebb tide. The person who provided this information is not named by Hunter or Bradley, suggesting it was a high ranking officer. On Saturday 20 March, the day after the wreck, Lieutenant Ball told Lieutenant Bradley that

... both Friday & Saturday the Tide set to the W.ward [i.e. flooded] the whole of each Day except about 2 hours, a circumstance he had never met with before at this Island.

Snapper of Norfolk Island
John Hunter (1737—1821)
Snapper of Norfolk Island (Lethrinus chrysostomus)
plate 66 of Birds and Flowers of New South Wales drawn on the Spot in 1788, '89 & '90
sketchbook of 100 watercolours; 22.8 x 18.5 cm
T1224 NK2039/66

Perhaps Lieutenant Ball was apologising. Another possible source of the information about the tide was King, former officer of the Sirius and now Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk. The entry in his diary about the wreck is astonishingly brief:

Very good Landing all the Day … Received every thing from the Supply. At Noon the Sirius having twice missed Stays & being embayed, struck on the outer part of the Reef — Received a Small Quantity of Provisions from her by the boats, but the Surf being much increased along side her & the Wreck of her Masts having staved some of the Boats, no more Could lay along side.

Whether his terseness was defensive, or understandable anger, he may well have felt that Hunter had delivered the problem—the convicts—and then failed to deliver the solution—the supplies.

 

Marooned

George Raper would have begun his eleven months of forced stay on the island in an atmosphere of gloom and tension. He certainly reflected on the wreck, and painted it from more than one angle while on the island. By August, however, he wrote a letter home that showed cheerful good spirits. The one letter by him that is known to have survived, in a copied form among the Banks papers of the British Museum, conveys a generous and optimistic character. He was, for instance, able to refer to the authoritarian and merciless Major Ross, who took over as Lieutenant-Governor from King shortly after the wreck, as ‘our good friend … who spared no pains to make us comfortable in our situation’. By August, Raper was referring to the shipwreck only as ‘our sad and melancholy Catastrophe’.

Norfolk Island

George Raper (1769—1796)
Norfolk Island
coloured ms. map; 15.8 x 9.8 cm
Map Collection RM 3460

A few days after the wreck, the Supply had set sail for Port Jackson, carrying some of the Sirius’s company with her. Captain Hunter had remained on the island as did Lieutenant Bradley. Raper also remained, and with Master’s Mate William Bryant and Midshipman John Shortland, rolled up his shirt sleeves and dug a quarter acre garden. They planted potatoes, French beans, cabbages, lettuces and other vegetables. Like the rest of the people on the island, they also supplemented their dwindling supplies by catching the ‘Mt. Pitt birds’. Raper writes of their food gathering activities in a light-hearted way:

... we were not bad hands at either Birds or Cabbages (the Head of the Palm Tree) and returned from the Woods with our Loads on our Backs with all the Sans Froid imaginable.

Though Raper wrote in an optimistic tone, the journals of Hunter and Bradley make it clear that the settlement was only a few days away from starvation when supplies arrived in August.

 

 

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