LITMIR.BIZ

      MEETING THE INFORMANTS

      It is a commonplace rediscovered every decade or so that individuals see what they see from their own particular perspective, and that perspectives change through time. These disenchanted days we know there are no I-am-a-camera observers, and we also know that even cameras lie. This recognition has not stopped would-be historians from piecing together snippets derived from a range of narratives, perspectives and sensibilities in chronological order, and calling the resulting ribbon patchwork ‘objective history’.

      Making coherent stories out of the fragments we find lying about is a natural human inclination, and socially a necessary one, but when doing history it must be resisted. My own preferred metaphor comes from snorkelling, where at first we are uneasy interlopers, with both the flitting shapes and the social geography vague. Then, after sufficient hours of immersion, we begin to reconstruct in our minds the salient formations—the context—and to be able to follow the opalescent inhabitants as they go about their engrossing affairs—the action. This submerged world is never as clear as the airy world above, but it is the more absorbing for that.

      The historians’ situation is complicated because we have to look through other people’s masks if we are to see anything of the world we want to fathom: that is, we have to read their words instead of using our own eyes. Fortunately for us, some of Governor Phillip’s senior officers entered into agreements with publishers even before they left England: John Hunter, commander of the Sirius; John White, surgeon-general to the entire expedition; and Governor Phillip himself. Judge-Advocate David Collins began his journal partly through a sense of duty and partly for private distraction, but after only a few months he had decided to keep it in a form suitable for later publication. A venturesome publisher also contracted the relatively lowly Watkin Tench, captain-lieutenant of marines, to prepare an account of his experiences in the new colony. Cook’s journals had set the style and established the taste for dramatic doings in exotic places which could be elevated to science by the inclusion of a flow of observations of curiosities encountered along the way: of birds, plants, animals and savages, usually in that order.

      An unvoiced ‘we’ dominates the journals, which admit us to an unfamiliar culture: the close-knit world of serving British naval and marine officers overseas. Habituated to maintaining solidarity against lesser men, subordinates or foreign, they saw their colony-planting endeavour as unitary—‘for England’—and their individual narratives as expressions of a collective enterprise. Patriotism and caste loyalty routinely trumped competitiveness, with borrowings being generously offered and acknowledged; indeed the whole of David Collins’ second volume, published in 1802 six years after he quit the colony, was compiled from the reports of other men.

      Supplementing the formal published accounts are more private narratives. There is a particular charm about journals of private record, both in the freshness of their observations and our illicit pleasure in reading what we shouldn’t. Philip Gidley King, who knew the hazards of a seafarer’s life, wrote the following words at the front of his private journal:

      As I write this journal for my own satisfaction, I do beg & request, that, into whatever hands it may fall, (in case of any accidents happening to me) To give or forward it to the hands of His Excellency Governor Phillip or, in the case of his demise, to Lieut. William Dawes of the Marines, who I instruct to destroy it; if any of the materials can be of service he is perfectly welcome to them.

      These sentiments neatly encapsulate the themes mentioned above. The right to privacy belonging only to the living, King’s instructions were posthumously ignored. Here is an entry from his private diary for 17 August 1788, six months after he was sent to plant a tiny settlement on Norfolk Island:

      Moderate Breezes and very pleasant Weather. Sowed 1 & ½ Rood of Ground with Wheat received by the Supply—opened a cask of Beef & one of Flour, the latter of which had a large Rats nest in it & several dead young ones. This Cask came by the Supply [from Sydney] & wanted 50 lbs of the weight.

      By the end of these few lines we know both King and his situation better.

      Two days later he took himself off on an adventure, away from rats and housekeeping:

      I went up the Cascade which is beautifull but at the same time tremenduous [sic] we had to ascend some perpendicular rocks by going from the branches of one tree to another, when arrived at the Summit, we found a very pleasant levell piece of Ground watered by the Rivulet, which supplies the Cascade & which is large and deep.

      Part exploration, part jaunt, and altogether a glorious day. This time we glimpse not only his situation, but his sensibility.

      Lieutenant William Bradley of the Sirius was twenty-nine years old and married, but like his brother officers was compelled to leave his wife behind in England. Establishing settlements was a masculine affair, at least for officers. Bradley wrote a professional journal enlivened by the occasional personal aside. Even more usefully, he painted a sequence of careful watercolours which provide many of the illustrations for this book.

      Letters are another beguilingly informal source. Writing home must have filled many empty evenings, but it would rise to fever pitch when a ship was due to leave for England or the Cape. Then whole days could pass in writing letters, often in several copies (these men knew the perils attending long sea voyages). Despite shared experiences, the letters which survive are marvellously various in tone. Assistant-Surgeon Worgan from the Sirius had somehow contrived to bring his piano with him (he beguiled his fellow-officers with concerts in ports along the way), so he must have spent time on his music. Given the tough conditions in the new land, he must also have been much occupied by his work. Nonetheless, we see him writing vast letters to his beloved brother Dick, as if, as he wistfully says, he were sitting opposite him by the fire. His love for his distant sibling is as palpable as his loneliness. The eagerness of publishers brought the antipodean colony very close to those left at home—as its editor points out, the compilation known as An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, which appeared in London under John Hunter’s name at the beginning of 1793, described events to the close of 1791, a mere twelve months before. To the exiled colonists, home was very far away. Worgan reported on local affairs, he made a few scientific observations, but his main endeavour was to entertain that ghostly fraternal presence on the other side of the fire with running jokes and racy tales, especially about ‘the savages’.

      Marine-Lieutenant Ralph Clark wrote to his wife Alicia about his dreams (he tenderly recalls her interpreting his dreams as they lay in bed of a morning), his longing for her, and his frequent atrocious toothaches. He did not tell her

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