Biography of George Raper

Chart shewing the track of the Waaksamhey'd transport from Port Jackson  in NSW to Batavia in 1792
George S. Allen
Chart shewing the track of the Waaksamhey’d transport from Port Jackson in New South Wales to Batavia in 1792
London: J. Stockdale, 1792
map, 20.1 x 23.2 cm
NK 2456/87

The Voyage Home

The voyage home for Midshipman George Raper began in early February 1791, when the Supply returned to Norfolk Island to collect the remaining officers and crew of the wrecked Sirius. After eleven months enforced stay on the island, with little food and with no ship to carry his hopes of promotion, Raper would have welcomed almost any change in his situation.

After a brief stay in Port Jackson, the Sirius’s company set sail on the hired Dutch vessel, the Waaksamheyd, on 27 March 1791. Although the voyage of the Waaksamheyd is often seen as a mere footnote to the story of the First Fleet, in navigational terms it was an even greater achievement. The Eastern Pacific was at that time largely unknown to the British. To the published charts of the area that contained large and ominous empty spaces, Captain Hunter added relevant information from the accounts of earlier voyages by Captains Carteret and Bougainville, and more recent journeys by Lieutenants Shortland (1788) and Ball (1790). Using his knowledge of the prevailing winds and his assessment of the limitations of the Waaksamheyd, Hunter chose an unconventional route that would pass north of New Guinea, descending again though the northern parts of what is now the Indonesian archipelago.

The Waaksamheyd took much longer than expected to reach Batavia (now called Jakarta). Carrying provisions for only four months, the journey took six. The slow voyage was in part due to Hunter’s justifiably cautious navigation, but was also due to the ship herself. Seaman Nagle records a conversation, early in the voyage, on the subject of the speed of the ship:

Finding our vessel a dull sailor, our captain asked the Dutch capt’n how she sailed. He made answer, "O, she go eight nots."

"O," said our captain, "That is very well for a merchant vessel."

"O yes," said the Dutch captain, "But when she g’dat, it must blow damd hard."

During the six-month voyage Raper would have observed Captain Hunter’s handling of the difficult Dutch Captain, Detmar Smith, and would have learnt much of the diplomacy and restraint that were the unwritten requirements of Naval commanding officers. The presence of two captains on one ship is a recipe for tension at any time. On this voyage, however, a number of factors heightened the tension considerably. Although Smith was in charge of the ship, Hunter was the representative of the government that had hired her. The British officers were, in addition, the only people onboard who had the navigational skills to take the ship north of New Guinea.

Engraving from a drawing by Governor Hunter
[An engraving from a drawing by Governor Hunter of an encounter between the crew of the Waaksamheyd transport ship and the natives of an island near Mindanao]
Plate 76 of An historical journal of the transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island
London: John Stockdale, 1793 FRM F153

Although Hunter naturally wished to complete the voyage in the shortest time compatible with safety, the basis of the contract with the Dutch captain—one pound sterling per ton per month—gave Smith no incentive for a fast voyage. Smith and Hunter were forced to work and live in the close confines of the ship, an uncomfortable proximity for representatives of competing colonial powers. Added to this uneasy dependency was the distaste of the British gentlemen for a man they saw as ‘savage’ and ‘barbarous’.

In August 1791 the tensions came to a head at Hummock Island (now Balut Island) off Mindanao. Arriving in need of water and provisions, the Waaksamheyd was initially met with much courtesy by the Raja of the islands, who had been appointed the Dutch East India Company’s representative in the area. The Raja was welcomed onboard with great ceremony and undertook to sell to the ship the food the crew desperately needed to sustain it to the next port–rice, in large quantities. The Raja also suggested that the Waaksamheyd sail to the town on the east side of Hummock Island, to load the supplies. After his departure a suspicious Captain Smith sent a longboat to examine the channel to the town.

When the Raja returned the next day, he brought only a few pounds of rice, two armed guard ships and men who swarmed over the Waaksamheyd’s decks, trading with the seamen. Angry at the Raja’s failure to keep his word about the rice, Captain Smith told Captain Hunter he would hold the Raja hostage. Captain Hunter instead proposed threatening to report the Raja’s behaviour to the Dutch East India Company; or at least a postponement of confrontation until the crew of the Waaksamheyd could prepare itself. There was a heated argument in English between Hunter and Smith in front of the Malay-speaking Raja. At this stage the longboat returned, reporting to Captain Smith that the channel to the town was full of sunken rocks and the anchorage at the town was vulnerable to attack. Captain Smith’s Malay mistress, invisible in the journals of the English officers but mentioned by Seaman Nagle, told Smith she had overheard plans to kill all the Europeans on the Waaksamheyd. Hunter appears to have known nothing of the reports from the longboats or the mistress, and continued to argue for a conciliatory approach.

Salt Water Eel

John Hunter (1737—1821)
Salt Water Eel — Norfolk Island (Elopsopis cyclorhinus)
plate 68 from Birds and Flowers of New South Wales drawn on the Spot in 1788, '89 & '90
sketchbook of 100 watercolours; 22.3 x 18.3 cm
T1224 NK2039/68

Smith ordered cutlasses from below and the appearance of these triggered general mayhem. More of the Raja’s men boarded, brandishing daggers, and Captain Hunter was obliged to draw his sword to defend the hated Captain Smith. The British seamen took up handspikes and blocks of wood, and the junior officers, probably including Raper, fired small arms. An undignified retreat by the Raja and his men followed. No-one on board the Waaksamheyd was injured.

Hunter’s verdict on the incident condemns Smith’s actions and makes clear his distaste at having to defend the Dutchman and fire upon the Raja, who had the ‘certain graceful ease and affability’ that would have placed him, in Hunter’s eyes, in the category of a gentleman. Though on board during the incident with the Raja and other skirmishes in which a number of junior officers are named as being in charge of a boat or landing party, Raper is not mentioned in any of the diaries of his fellow travellers.

The voyage of the Waaksamheyd, like Raper’s earlier voyages in the Sirius , brought exotic and beautiful sights as well as times of action and danger. The Waaksamheyd wove a delicate path in clear warm seas among richly vegetated islands and coral reefs. Between New Britain and New Ireland in May 1791, the officers and crew watched in awe as they sailed past an active volcano, probably Tavurvur, which was hurling columns of black smoke high into the air.

Perhaps the most curious sighting of all occurred as the Waaksamheyd neared Java on 24 September 1791. The weather changed suddenly. From over the land, dark clouds streamed towards the Waaksamheyd on a rising wind; whirlpools formed around the ship. The whirlpools turned to mast-high waterspouts, which flitted across the ocean with foaming skirts. The ship fired two shots at the closest waterspouts—to no effect—and the storm passed over without damage.

Batavia in't Verschiet
Batavia in’t Verschiet
in Francois Valentijn, Oud en nieuw Oost-Indien
Dortrecht: Joannes van Braam, 1724-1726
RBq MISC 234 / RB f919.2 VAL

The Waaksamheyd arrived in Batavia on 27 September 1791 and spent nearly a month there, and at the nearby island of Onrust, taking on supplies. Captain Hunter also negotiated the purchase of the Waaksamheyd, and had the pleasure of leaving Captain Smith and his crew behind in Batavia.

The Waaksamheyd, however, could not leave behind the Batavia fever, which was probably malaria. As the ship crossed the Indian Ocean, Captain Hunter’s diary began to beat out a sad refrain

At this time Terence Burne, seaman, died …

On the 14th November, Robert Henderson, seaman, died ...

On the 11th of December died Edward Moore, seaman …

Raper must have been affected by the fever, for Seaman Nagle writes that ‘when we left [Batavia], we had not a well man on board’.

The Waaksamheyd reached Cape Town on 22 November 1791. She had been delayed just outside Cape Town by several days of high winds, and had had to sacrifice most of her anchors in desperate manoeuvres to avoid being driven onto the reef near Robbin’s (now Robben) Island. Because of her lack of anchors she sailed into Cape Town flying the distress signal and was met with an overwhelming response. Three ships of the Royal Navy—the Providence, Assistant and Pitt— sent all their boats, bearing anchors and cables, and boats also arrived from British and American whaling ships in the harbour. Raper and his shipmates had finally returned to a world in which the reefs were charted, rice could be purchased with currency rather than cutlasses, and professional seafarers offered each other help in distress. It is likely that Raper painted the watercolour The Table Land from the Anchorage in the Bay Cape of Good Hope while the Waaksamheyd was in port.

Plan of Table Bay
George Raper (1769–1796)
Plan of Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope
coloured ms. map; 19.8 x 16.8 cm
Map RM 3457

It seems appropriate that the last painting in the George Raper Collection should represent a point in time where two threads of Australian history meet, run parallel for a while, and then diverge. One thread leads back to Australia: on the Providence, also anchored at Cape Town was Captain Bligh, bound for the Society Islands. Bligh’s future governorship of New South Wales was to be another critical period in Australian history.

The other thread ran to England with Raper and his companions. Arriving in Portsmouth on 22 April 1792 after an uneventful passage through the Atlantic, the ship’s company was not permitted to step ashore until the court-martial for the loss of the Sirius was completed. The verdict was honourable acquittal. The twenty-two year old Raper was presumably then reunited with his family. Raper was promoted to Second Lieutenant on the Speedy in June 1793 and First Lieutenant on the Cumberland in December 1795. He was given command of the Expedition on 20 July 1796.

In 1795, prompted perhaps by recurring bouts of fever, he made his will. He died onboard the Expedition, of unknown causes, the following year. In his will he instructed that his papers should be ‘put in my Painting Case and delivered to my dearest and beloved mother’. It is almost certain that the papers willed to his mother were the ones kept through the generations by the Raper family, now forming the George Raper Collection at the National Library and allowing Australians a glimpse at, and an understanding of, one man’s view of a voyage that changed Australian history.

George Raper's signature
 
Previous Previous