Pen Portraits from The Port – Issue 61
Posted by a Contributor in February's MagazineLocal author Daniel Gray salutes the forgotten heroes of Leith’s past: John Hunter 1737-1821. As a teenager, John Hunter became shipwrecked when his Dad’s vessel ran aground off the coast of Norway. Worse was to come for this young Leither; on returning, he was sent to live in Norfolk. Despite these hardships, Hunter went on to become a prolific explorer and the Governor of New South Wales.
From the mid-1750s, Hunter progressed through the navy with the speed of a particularly nasty strain of Chlamydia. For over two decades, he fought naval battles lost and won, including in the American War of Independence. In 1780, Hunter was promoted to the position of lieutenant, and then seven years later appointed stand-in captain on the HMS Sirius. This meant he would assume the top job if the skipper died or deserted, making Hunter an early version of a substitute goalkeeper sitting on the bench desperately willing an opposition centre-forward to clatter the number one.
Hunter did eventually take charge, exploring new territories of Botany Bay such as Iron Cove and Five Dock, though admittedly these do sound more like modern urban regeneration housing developments in Granton. This expedition was important as it produced the first meeting between British occupiers and the local indigenous Wangal Clan. Hunter was having breakfast when the encounter occurred; and having bits of fried egg stuck in his beard can only have helped relations.
In 1795, Hunter became Governor of New South Wales. Perhaps through his failure to force people to address him as ‘Guv’ in a cockney accent, the wandering Leither found it difficult to control the population. This can’t have been helped by the fact that 60% of them were transported British criminals and that, brilliantly, rum had replaced cash as the main currency. In reality, it was the military that dominated the wild and unchartered lands of Hunter’s new domain, and in 1800 he was removed from post and sent back to Britain.
Hunter’s influence on Australia, however, was to be lasting. On arrival home, he was forced to write a pamphlet defending his rule. This called for reforms that were eventually enacted in New South Wales, including the introduction of trial by jury and the establishment of a police force. Further, Hunter’s watercolour sketches of animals – he was the first European to draw the platypus and the wombat – were to become as treasured later artistically as they had been in his time zoologically.
John Hunter saw out his final decades in Hackney, London. Leith always drew him back, though; he bought a house for his sister here and visited regularly, the boomerang boy who saw the world.
Next time: John Gladstone, merchant and MP (author reserves the right to change the ‘heroes’ part)