Arthur Phillip: The first Governor of New South Wales

The first Governor of New South Wales, which in turn foreshadowed the nation of Australia, Admiral Arthur Phillip was born in London but would find a home in Hampshire on more than one occasion, the last of which would also see him responsible for Hampshire’s coastal defence.

Training began to Admiral Philip at Greenwich’s Royal Hospital School, or Naval Seamen’s College as it was known, from 1751 to 1753, and having served on the whaling ship Fortune, Phillip joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1755 when still a teen. He served in the Mediterranean with Admiral John Byng and was later at the taking of Havana in August 1762, which was wrestled from the Spanish during the Seven Years’ War.

Arthur Phillip's first ship after he joined the Royal Navy, HMS Buckingham.  (Image: National Maritime Museum) Byng gained some notoriety when he was shot on the deck of the Monarque in Portsmouth on March 14, 1757, his crime being his failure to relieve Minorca the year before, which saw it taken by the French. Phillip meanwhile married for the first time in 1763 (until 1769) to Margaret Charlotte Denison who was aged 41 to Phillip’s tender 24 but was handily the widow of a wealthy London merchant. Their five-year marriage would be at least partly spent in Lyndhurst where Phillip became Overseer of the Poor and whiled away his time by farming at Vernals Farm and Glasshayes, which later became the Lyndhurst Park Hotel, most of which was demolished in 2023 for housing. This Lyndhurst sojourn was during a period of effective retirement from the Navy for Phillip which lasted some 13 years.

When the Spanish-Portuguese War of 1776 to 1777 broke out over the European nations’ borders in South America, Phillip served in the Portuguese navy as a captain, sailing to Brazil in 1776. He also served in the Royal Navy against the French in 1778. His big break and unquestioned claim to fame came, however, in 1786 when he was appointed Captain General of the so-called ‘First Fleet’, which took the first British colonists and convicts to Australia, and Governor-Designate of the penal colony of New South Wales which was to be established in what is now Australia. The rationale behind all this stemmed from the loss of the American colonies to which Britain had previously transported convicts, with the botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who’d sailed with Captain James Cook, touting Australia as an alternative.

The founding of Australia by Captain Arthur Phillip. (Image: Algernon Talmage/State Library of New South Wales) Phillip was in command of a fleet of eleven ships, two Royal Navy vessels, three store ships and six convict transports, with more than 1,400 people, a mix of settlers, marines and sailors, civil officers, convicts and stores, bound for the other side of the world, a voyage of over 15,000 miles. The fleet duly left Portsmouth on May 13, 1787, finally arriving at inhospitable Botany Bay on January 18, 1788, after a voyage totalling eight months. It was less than 20 years since Cook had first landed here. Feeling that the site was unsuitable Phillip explored further north and discovered Port Jackson, which he dubbed ‘the finest harbour in the world’, establishing his settlement there instead, and raising the Union flag for the new colony on January 26, 1788, on a site which would later be called Sydney Cove, hence the modern city of Sydney. That day, January 26, continues to be celebrated as Australia Day. This was the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent.

Apparently 1,030 people went ashore including civil officers, marines, wives and children, but also 736 transported convicts, 188 of whom were women. Phillip went on to explore the Hawkesbury River and guided his colony through difficult times, including lack of food, supply difficulties and problems with his officers, yet maintained morale despite all this and presciently predicted its future importance, bigging up its flora and climate. He also adopted an enlightened, conciliatory policy with indigenous peoples. This, plus the way he tried to run what was after all a penal colony, suggests that he was a humane and enlightened fellow for the time. He left in 1792, returning to England the following year badly in need of recuperation and fattening up.

The First Fleet entering Port Jackson on January 26 1788. (Image: E. Le Bihan/State Library of New South Wales) During his time away, Phillip’s first wife had sadly died, but Phillip married for the second time to Isabella Whitehouse in 1794, his spouse until his death 20 years later. Having seen action at sea again in 1796 to 1798, between 1798 and 1803 Phillip rented a house in Lymington on the corner of Ashley Lane to act as his base. He’d been appointed Commander of the Hampshire Sea Fencibles with a brief to defend the Martello fortifications during the French Revolutionary Wars. In conjunction with a pair of trusty captains he recruited a defence force of men, including fishermen, from Lymington, Gosport and Redbridge, who were trained in the use of arms, and ready to put to sea in an emergency should a French invasion be feared.

With peace negotiations afoot in 1801 Phillip was able to disband his Fencibles but was also promoted to Rear-Admiral of the Blue Squadron, these coloured squadrons separating the fleet into three for purposes of command and control. The same year that his Lymington rental ended Phillip became Inspector of the Impress Service (to recruit men for naval service) and headed up a reformed Fencibles, the reason for all this activity probably being the resumption of hostilities with France courtesy of the Napoleonic Wars.

Statue of Arthur Phillip at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney (Image: Greg O'Beirne)

In April 1804 Phillip had been appointed Rear-Admiral of the White Squadron and in 1809 was made vice-admiral but little else is known of his closing years other than the fact that he retired to Bath with Isabella. It was in Bath that he died on August 31, 1814, aged 75 by which time the Napoleonic Wars had less than a year to run. Three months earlier he’d been promoted to Admiral of the Blue Squadron.

Phillip wrote books including ‘The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay’ (1789); I believe a first edition will set you back the princely sum of around £6,500 today. His life has been written by both G. Mackaness (1937) and M.B. Eldershaw (1938), there clearly being a lot of interest in him around the time of the 150th anniversary of the First Fleet and founding of Sydney. For the 200th anniversary of his death in 2014 a delegation visited the UK from Australia and placed a plaque in Lymington close to the house where he lived. Australia Day is a day of celebration for many, but not for everyone, the descendants of indigenous peoples regarding it as the day when their ancestors were displaced.

CHRONOLOGY

1738 – Arthur Phillip born in London (October 11).

1755 – Enlists in the Royal Navy as a midshipman and joins the ill-fated Admiral Byng.

1763 – Marries for the first time to Margaret Denison, setting up home in Lyndhurst.

1776 – Serves in the Portuguese navy during the Spanish-Portuguese War.

1788 – Establishes colony at Port Jackson, which becomes Sydney, Australia (January 26).

1793 – Arrives back in England having left Australia the year before.

1794 – Marries for a second time to Isabella Whitehouse.

1798 – Rents house in Lymington whilst Commander of Hampshire Sea Fencibles.

1814 – Death of Arthur Phillip in Bath (August 31) aged 75.