Conrad Martens “View of Brisbane in 1851” (painted from Bowen Terrace), QAGOMA Collection

This is Part 2 of the history of Captain John Wickham. His time at sea on the three voyages of the Beagle are canvassed in Part 1 which may be found here.

Introduction

On 14 November 1842, Captain John Clements Wickham was appointed Police Magistrate for the District of Moreton Bay (District). He remained in the District until 1860.

His fiat as Police Magistrate was to administer the law in the District in the interests of the Government of New South Wales. Convict Transportation ceased in 1842, diminishing progressively the role of the District Military Commandant . This combination of circumstances was such that, while not in formal command of local government, he held the most senior bureaucratic position in the District thereby wielding extensive – if not near absolute – administrative control over entry to, and activity in, the District.

In 1853, Wickham was appointed as Government Resident, relinquishing his position as Police Magistrate.

For almost two decades, the major decisions about the peace, order and good government of the District fell to Wickham. He was a governor in all but name.

His character, however, was more manager than bureaucrat. As one historian writing of Wickham observed:

He showed much sympathy and understanding and exercised his authority with judgment and a genuine sense of responsibility; he had the confidence of the settlers and was able to contribute much to the early development of Brisbane.

Despite the competent performance of his duties during the formative years of the development of what became the colony of Queensland, Wickham, for the most part, has been written out of history.

Powerful Supporters

During the Third Voyage of the Beagle, of which he was master, Wickham had suffered terribly from illness.

On previous visits to Port Jackson, he had made the acquaintance of the family of Hannibal McArthur, brother of John McArthur of Camden.

Hannibal had married Anna Maria King who was the daughter of Phillip Gidley King, the third Governor of New South Wales. Anna Marie’s brother Phillip Parker King had served with Wickham in South America and would become the first Australian born Admiral in the Royal Navy.

Wickham became engaged to Hannibal and Anna Marie’s daughter Anne, however it was not until four years later, in 1842, they married on his retirement from the sea.

In short, Wickham, by marriage and as one of the most senior naval officers in the Colony of New South Wales, was at the heart of colonial affairs and government.

Early Years

Wickham and Anne arrived on the steamer Shamrock in early January 1843.

Accompanying them was the Reverend John Gregor who had been appointed Chaplain for the District, marking the foundation of the Church of England in the District.

While Moreton Bay had been a penal settlement from September 1824, the District was only opened to “free settlers” in 1842.

Upon arrival Wickham and Anne took up residence  in the run-down Commandant’s Quarters until, in 1843, he purchased Newstead House – at the confluence of the Brisbane River and Breakfast Creek at Newstead – from the Leslie Brothers. They were successful squatters, and also Wickham’s brothers-in-law, having married Anne’s sisters.

Wickham and Anne took up residence at Newstead House along with three Galapagos tortoises called “Tom”, “Dick” and “Harry” (later re-named “Harriet”) which Charles Darwin gave Wickham on his second voyage on the Beagle. Upon Wickham’s 1860 departure from the District, Harriet lived in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, and much later Australia Zoo, for another 150 years. See Part 1 in this series.

Wickham and Anne added substantially to Newstead House, and it came to be considered, if not officially as, Government House.

The 1846 Survey

By 1846 – to further trade in the colony – the Squatter funded District Improvement Fund financed a survey of Moreton Bay carried out by Wickham.

By all accounts, this was carried out with little difficulty and in a short time. Wickham was back doing what he knew best.

A further survey would be carried out in 1867 by his old shipmate from the third voyage of the Beagle, Captain Lort-Stokes, but then funded by the Admiralty.

Wickham’s Stewardship

Captain John Clements Wickham

Wickham’s effective performance as the senior government officer of the District is well evidenced by his management of the arrival of the Fortitude and the migrant ships that followed it.

The salient social issue in the District in the early years was the conflict between squatters, free settlers and “exiles”. The last were convicts from England and other penal colonies who were given “tickets of leave” upon reaching Moreton Bay.

1842 brought the end of transportation and thereby substantial free convict labour. Thus, labour, in particular skilled labour, was needed. This was serviced largely by the exiles.

Ultimately, disquiet amongst the free settlers saw an end to exile migration in 1850, by which time it was estimated about one quarter of the population of the District were exiles.

Contemporaneously, free settlers were arriving by ship with dubious promises of land and success. The squatters resented incursions by the free settlers and exiles.

In November 1849, Rev Dr John Dunmore Lang arrived on the Fortitude carrying some 300 selected immigrant artisans who Lang had promised would be granted land and be the backbone of the new free settler colony. It was the first of three ships chartered by Lang.

Wickham was instructed by the British Colonial Office not to allow the Fortitude to land and that the settlers be given no government assistance or rations. This command was irrational at the end of such an arduous voyage.

The solution struck by Wickham was to allow them to land and dwell over the hill to the north of the town of Brisbane, beyond its boundary. This today, of course, is now Fortitude Valley.

Lang’s second ship, Chastely, then arrived. Wickham made the old Convict Barracks in Queen Street available for the short term.

At the same time, two ships with exiles had been refused entry into Port Jackson and directed to Moreton Bay. One arrived just ahead of the third Lang ship, Lima.

Again, the official position was to render no assistance, but the immigrant settlers and exiles needed to come ashore. Wickham appreciated this reality.

Tensions, however, remained high. There was a meeting on 13 November 1849, where one settler is recorded as proclaiming that:

“he and others had given up such prospects as they had in the Old Country, and removed themselves and their families to this one in the hope and expectation that they would not be contaminated by association with convicts, and he objected to being placed in disadvantageous competition in this new country with the convicted felons of England. Let England keep her convicts, and let us have free, poor, but honest artisans.”

Whatever Wickham did to keep the peace is not well recorded, save that of course the Lang settlers left a lasting positive impact on the development and success on the later State of Queensland.

The above controversy, and the continued New South Wales administration direction to Moreton Bay of the exiles, advanced the cause of separatism at the behest of the free settlers, culminating in the creation in 1859 of the Colony of Queensland.

Dundalli

In 1855, as Government Resident, Wickham was the Chair of the Board of Inquiry into the Native Police investigating the conduct of its commandant.

He was also often the first point of complaint for dealings between the free settlers and the local indigenous groups.

Wickham was well informed and well regarded in respect to his knowledge and dealings with the local indigenous groups. He had great experience from the Beagle voyages working with Patagonian and other South American indigenous peoples.

After 1845, there was an escalation in tensions with the indigenous groups in Southern Queensland. In October 1846, pastoralist Andrew Gregor was killed along with his employee Mary Shannon.

Unease continued. Indigenous elder Dundalli was a leader of the local indigenous groups. In 1855 Dundalii was charged with the murder of Andrew Gregor and the trial was presided over by Justice Roger Therry.

Wickham gave evidence for Dundalii as to the unreliability of the primary witness. Yet immediately after giving evidence he sought and was granted leave ostensibly to see his eldest son depart Sydney for England.

Wickham was not in the District when Dundalii was convicted and hung on 5 January 1856.

It would be reasonable to conclude that Wickham’s giving of evidence in such a circumstance would not be received warmly in some quarters and that a price would be later exacted.

Family

Anne Wickham died in Sydney on 23 June 1852 aged 35.

Wickham and Anne had three children. The eldest, Charles, died on 1 August 1908, having reached the rank of Colonel in the Royal Artillery, serving most of his career on foreign postings, including in the Indian and Afghan conflicts.

On 1 October 1857, Wickham married Ellen Deerling, the daughter of prominent barrister John Deerling of Ipswich.

The couple had two children including Henry Falkland Wickham (you cannot take the sailor far from the sea).

Henry died in 1936 and is buried alongside his wife Elizabeth in Manly Cemetery in Sydney. Ellen passed away in 1896 and is buried at the Bald Hills Cemetery at Bracken Ridge.

Ambition Denied

From 1842 until 1859, Wickham was governor in all but name, which perhaps explains his bitterness at not being appointed as the First Governor of Queensland upon separation in 1859.

Wickham was offered a junior posting which he refused to accept.

It seems that the patronage of Prime Minster Gladstone apropos of first Governor Sir George Bowen was far more important than the service to the infant colony rendered by Wickham.

Bowen did however support the request by Wickham for a pension and compensation for loss of office which was otherwise refused by the newly formed Queensland Government and the request referred to New South Wales which also refused saying it was a Queensland issue. Wickham went bereft.

In early 1860, Wickham left on the Duncan Dunbar with his wife and family and returned to England, never again to set foot in the District he had served for one quarter of his life.

He had given up his rank as Captain in the Royal Navy to come ashore to serve for 17 years during the formative years of growth of the District, providing stability while it progressed towards establishment as a separate colony, but was left disappointed and destitute. In 1864 he died in Biarritz, western France, in strained financial circumstances.

No Memorial

Other than the naming of the two well-known thoroughfares – Wickham Terrace and Wickham Street – no memorial was ever established for Wickham. It was not until 1937 that a visiting grandson funded the erection of a memorial plaque at Newstead House.

Plaque at Newstead House

“Below 40 degrees South there is no law,and below 50 degrees South there is no God.“ 19th Century whalers’ saying

“HMS Beagle in the Galapagos” by John Chancellor. © Dr Gordon Chancellor, reproduced with his kind permission.

Introduction

In the days before GPS Navigation, for a young ocean navigator there was no greater feeling of elation at the end of a rough passage to first see the loom of a lighthouse twenty-five miles distant.

The sighting was both vindication and validation of your judgement, skill, labours and sometimes luck. You, and your crew, were no longer lost in the world. You knew your position on the chart.

With the foregoing in mind, some would make a case that for the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988 the “Endeavour” replica was the wrong ship to build.

The ship equally significant in the establishment of the Australian colonies was the HMS Beagle. Much of the Australian coast was charted by survey of the crew of the “Beagle”. So much allowed the coast to be safely travelled.

John Wickham

And central to the story of the “Beagle” – for Australia –  is not Charles Darwin but the man who later was appointed first Police Magistrate of Moreton Bay, John Wickham.

Before his appointment to Moreton Bay in January 1842, Wickham spent nearly 2 decades charting in Australian and South American waters, and most was aboard the “Beagle”. For the Australian colonies to develop, the coast needed charting to facilitate defence and commerce. Wickham, and John Lort Stokes, his successor as master of the “Beagle”, afforded that.

Even as late as 1983, the Hydrographic Office Chart “Approaches to Moreton Bay” utilised a “Beagle” survey.

The “Beagle”

The “Beagle” completed three great voyages but is generally remembered only for the second being “the Darwin voyage”. 

“Beagle” was a “Cherokee” class sloop of which around one hundred and twenty were built. In many ways it was similar to the “Endeavour” but smaller, lighter and with less freeboard.

These were not good ships, but rather nicknamed “Coffin brigs” because of the tendency to capsize and sink. Yet not one was ever lost to enemy fire.

In modern terms, it was shorter in length than the super maxis that race in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race but weighed ten times as much and carried three times the crew.

In other words, it was hardly  a vessel of choice to spend the best part of fifteen years surveying higher than 40 degrees south latitude.

That is the Southern Ocean, and for every mile of it Wickham was there first on the “Adventure” but mostly on the “Beagle”.

The First Voyage of the “Beagle”

Wickham, aged fourteen, joined the Royal Navy on the 21st of February 1812, served as a mid-shipman and was made Lieutenant in 1819. In 1825 as a Second Lieutenant, he was assigned to the “Adventure” under the command of Phillip Parker King, his later brother in law and Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy.

The “Beagle, in the company of the “Adventure,” set out from England in May 1826 and did not return until October 1830.

In that four year period such vessels carried out a commission to chart the southern parts of South America and in particular Patagonia.

Wickham had chief command of a flotilla consisting of of the “La Liebre” and “La Paz”, two tenders chartered to undertake survey in confined waters of the Chilean Channels.

Until 1903, the Chilean Channels and Drake Passage were the only routes between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, so they were strategically important to the British Navy.

The “Beagle” and the “Adventure” spent over three years in Patagonia.

The charts of the Chilean Channels remain in use today.  The original journals of the voyage are held not by the Royal Navy but its Chilean counterpart.

The Second Voyage of the “Beagle”

In 1831, after having served on the “Adventure”, Wickham was assigned to the “Beagle” under the command of Robert Fitzroy, along with his seagoing compatriot from the “Adventure” and close friend Parker King.

Naturalist Charles Darwin was a supernumerary on this voyage, having paid £500 for a passage for him and his 8 staff.

Fitzroy’s sailing instructions on this voyage had very little to do with the wishes of Darwin. Rather, he was directed to complete a full circumnavigation so as to establish meridians of longitude otherwise essential for accurate navigation.

In simple terms, latitude can be determined by comparing local noon time with the noon time at Greenwich being the prime meridian.

To this end, Fitzroy took aboard the “Beagle”  twenty two chronometers to ensure accuracy and to counter redundancy.

Along the way, Fitzroy surveyed Patagonia, Peru, Galapagos, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, Port Jackson (now Sydney), Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and King George Sound.

The majority of the time was spent completing surveys of Chile, Peru and Patagonia and later Van Diemen’s Land. That task took until late 1836 with a very slow crossing of the Indian Ocean to the Cape Colony and return to England.

The first published book on the Second Voyage comprises four volumes of which only the third is written by Darwin, the first by Parker King and the balance by Fitzroy.

Darwin would later go on to publish his seminal work in November 1859.

For Wickham it was more of the same.

The Third  Voyage of the “Beagle”

On 10 January 1837, Wickham was promoted to master of the “Beagle” and given fresh sailing instructions. His second in command was John Lort Stokes.  In June 1837 the Beagle set off with instructions to chart North West Australia, Arnhem Land and the Cocos Islands.

Along the way the Beagle surveyed and charted much of North West Australia, as well as revisiting surveys of Bass Straight and South West Van Diemen’s Land.

Much of the mineral wealth of Australia is now exported through the waters Wickham and Lort Stokes first surveyed and charted on this voyage.

Wickham remained in command of the “Beagle” until mid 1841, after which he was appointed as the Police Magistrate of the Moreton Bay colony.

Lort Stokes – who after Wickham’s retirement from the sea took command of the “Beagle” – for the next decade surveyed and charted much of the North Australian Coast.

The Sea

What is astonishing about Wickham’s years at sea is that on the “Adventure”, the “La Liebre”, the “La Paz” and later the “Beagle” is that  much of the time-consuming survey work was carried out below 40 degrees South, in the full teeth of the privations of the Southern Ocean.

Yet, on the whole, the ships rarely sustained damage, and illness was generally uncommon except for the Northern Australian surveys where the crew, and indeed Wickham, suffered terribly from the heat, poor rations and long periods at sea.

But there were close calls. Marsden Hordern – in his excellent work “Mariners are Warned” – describes the fourth great struggle with the Southern Ocean of the “Beagle”, and Wickham’s fine judgement:

The coastline of this part of Tasmania trends south-easterly and, even though carrying a heavy press of sail, the Beagle could only steer parallel with the shore on a course east of south. She could not escape to sea. It was fortunate that Wickham had not delayed his decision to run south for a few more hours. Had he done so, the westerly gale might have caught them near Cape Grim, where the coast trends outwards towards West Point, with its off-lying Porpoise Shoal. In that case the Beagle might not have survived her fourth struggle with the Southern Ocean.

All night long the Beagle battled. Toward morning, to their immense relief, the wind moved a little to the north-west, and as day broke the bold outline of South West Cape looming on the port bow, with a huge swell bursting at its foot. The Beagle had clawed free of its cliffs and won her fight by the slimmest margin. After clearing the cape, they altered course eastwards and, with the wind now fair, sailed swiftly on. At noon they passed between Tasman’s Maatsuyker Islands and the precipitous cliffs of the Mewstone – breeding place of the albatross, Stokes’s ‘monarch of the ocean’.

By sunset they were at the entrance to D’Entrecasteaux Channel abreast of Bruny Island, where Helpman was cheered by the sight of Sir John Franklin’s splendid lighthouse – a ‘fine bright revolving light’. The ship rounded Tasman Head and entered Storm Bay in the teeth of a foul wind. Sick of storms, Stokes decided that the bay’s character had not changed since Tasman named it in 1642.

It is one thing for modern day master mariner travelling through Patagonia or the South Tasman Sea – in a modern one hundred thousand tonne plus cruise or commercial ship, viewing from enclosed bridge – to navigate and marvel at the ferocity of a Southern Ocean gale. It is quite another thing to command from an open deck a ninety  foot long two hundred tonne timber hulk, tasked with the safety of the vessel and sixty crew.

Small boat voyagers say that to get caught in one proper Southern Ocean gale is unlucky, but to survive three makes you the luckiest person on earth! Wickham must have survived dozens and not just in summer but at the depths of winter whether at sea or at anchor. His judgement as a seaman, and depth of spirit, to allow of  survival must have been extraordinary. No doubt it equipped him well for the next phase of his life adjudicating legal disputes in the Moreton Bay colony.

So next time you traverse Wickham Terrace or Wickham Street (or attend the Wickham Hotel) in Brisbane, or stand on Wickham Point at Caloundra, take a moment to consider the life of Wickham, not just as a Magistrate – and later government resident – but as an extraordinary seaman and leader of crew in the most hostile conditions.

A case can be made that Wickham left Moreton Bay after his aspiration to be the new Colony’s first governor was quashed by the politics of others. In January 1864 at Biarritz, in South Western France, Wickham passed away in poor circumstances brought about when the colonies of New South Wales and Queensland engaged in a bitter dispute as to which colony was responsible for the payment of his pension.

He was safer at sea. 

In Part Two, in the next edition of Hearsay, John Wickham’s time at the Moreton Bay colony will be addressed.

Post Script – Harriet the Tortoise and Star Trek

For those who consider history as something remote in time, there is something too in the extraordinary story of Harriet, the Galapagos tortoise.

On the second voyage, in 1835, after seeing Wickham ride a Galapagos tortoise, Darwin gave Wickham a gift of three, they then the size of a dinner plates (they grew!). Wickham named them “Tom”, “Dick” and “Harry” but later was obliged to rename the last “Harriet”. He brought them with him to Moreton Bay. When Wickham left Moreton Bay, “Harriet” remained to happily wander the grounds of Newstead House. She must have been looked after well by the locals.

“Harriet”

The Galapagos tortiose enjoys superior longevity. “Harriet” finally passed, at Australia Zoo, in 2006 (no, not a mistake). See this link.

And to jump to film and the year 2262, the Starship “Beagle” was a small Class IV Stardrive Survey Vessel which appeared in Episode 14 of Series 2 of Star Trek which premiered on 15 March 1968.

NOTE: The Author is presently collecting materials so as to undertake a biography of Wickham.