Scientific voyages to Sydney

While the twentieth-century history of western navies in the Pacific region is dominated by the memory of the Second World War’s epic struggle between the (westernised) Japanese and German versus the British, Dutch, Australian and in particular U.S.

fleets, up until the last decade of the nineteenth century the presence of western navies was often associated with ‘peaceful’ scientific voyages. Building on Enlightenment theories and eighteenthcentury British, Spanish and French expeditions to the Pacific (notably those of Wallis, Bougainville, Cook, La Perouse, Malaspina and d’Entrecasteaux), western navies engaged in important but far less celebrated voyages in the following century.¹¹ In many ways the Pacific was a laboratory for European and U.S. scientists. Not only did most of these scientists travel on naval vessels, but many (such as Robert Fitzroy, Charles Darwin’s captain on HMS Beagle) were career naval officers as well. Just as Tahiti and Hawai’i had appeared as new frontiers to the European explorers of the eighteenth century, so too did Australia, New Zealand and, later, Antarctica serve this role in the nineteenth century. Sydney played a key part in these voyages. Before (and even after) the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the Panama Canal in 1914, and the introduction of steam power, which provided the means to reduce the length of voyages, sailing ships heading to the Pacific from the Northern Hemisphere travelled either around Cape Horn at the tip of South America or the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa. Sydney’s location in the South-west Pacific made it a convenient (indeed essential) stopping-off point for shipping en route to either the North or South Pacific. Here ships could collect fresh water and wood and, most importantly, fresh fruit and vegetables (to combat scurvy) as well as meat. Ships could use skilled shore labour to supplement onboard carpenters when major repairs were necessary—though, like the fruit and vegetables, this proved expensive.

Sydney offered a different type of sustenance in the form of conversation and at least some of the delights of civil society: balls, dinners and, later, the theatre. There were also opportunities for sexual gratification, as the records of crews contracting venereal disease ashore indicate. Alcohol, too, played an important role, with western naval personnel serving as both consumers and (often illegal) vendors.

Sydney was also a place to conduct surveillance. The warm friendship which developed between Nicolas Baudin and Governor King forms only one part of the 1802 Anglo- French encounter in New South Wales. King was sufficiently anxious about French strategic ambitions that he ordered a British warship to take formal possession of Tasmania for Britain.¹² At the same time, Baudin’s officer Francois Peron was recording detailed information about Sydney, which, he later told the French governor of the Ile de France (Mauritius), might aid a future French invasion. Moreover, despite Baudin’s effusive letter to the same governor detailing King’s hospitality and urging similar treatment of any British officers who arrived in Mauritius, Matthew Flinders’ subsequent seven-year imprisonment on the island showed how national rivalry trumped individual friendship or respect for scientific endeavour. In turn, Flinders later bowed to pressure from London to provide strategic information (including a map) which assisted the subsequent British invasion of Mauritius.¹³ Yet the many ironies in Anglo-French naval encounters in and around Australia in the early nineteenth century should not blind us to the underlying theme. Naval officers both within and beyond scientific expeditions saw themselves as gentlemen who operated according to a strict code of professional courtesy. In Baudin’s words, they ‘scrupulously adhered to the laws of honour, loyalty and courtesy that dictate their conduct’.¹⁴ Except when national priorities took precedence—as they often did, especially in wartime—naval officers tried to assist one another as much as possible.

Nevertheless, naval officers followed their hearts as well as their orders. If the scientific expeditions of Britain’s naval rivals were afforded assistance even in (apparent) wartime, those of Britain’s allies received even more favourable treatment in Sydney. Numerous Russian naval officers, travelling on a series of scientific and/or commercial expeditions to Russian America (Alaska) by way of the South Pacific and even Antarctica from 1807 to 1830, commented on the remarkably generous treatment they received from Sydney officials, naval officers and civilians. In part this can be explained by official policy—Governor Macquarie, for example, was under orders from London to treat the visiting Russian courteously. Yet it also reflected individual connections, a shared history and indeed culture. Macquarie had warm memories of official Russian hospitality in Saint Petersburg in 1807 and was keen to return the favour. On the departure of Fleet-Lieutenant Mikhail Lazarev in the Suvorov in 1814, for example, Macquarie sent him a basket of preserves and local oranges to prevent scurvy, and responded to his ship’s last salute with two more guns than were required. In a world where gun salutes were taken very seriously indeed, and an insufficient number could and did spark diplomatic protest, such a gesture was valued as a mark of particular respect.¹⁵

Like Lazarev, many of the visiting Russian naval officers had served in British naval vessels in the Baltic campaigns against Napoleonic France and were thus familiar with and indeed deeply sympathetic to British naval customs. Moreover, this experience enhanced their English-language skills, easing communication in New South Wales.¹⁶ Some Russian and British officers may even have known one another prior to their meeting in Sydney. In turn, new friendships were formed there. ‘Captain’ John Piper, the civilian ‘Naval Officer’ and increasingly prominent Sydney landowner, developed particularly friendly relationships with both Russian and French naval officers.¹⁷ In 1820 Piper remained aboard the departing Vostok (part of Faddei Bellingshausen’s important Antarctic expedition) till the last possible moment before returning to his harbourside home.

Even then the ‘naval’ officers remembered one another: ‘Loud hurrahs followed him towards Eliza Point, where his own little cannon saluted our flag.’¹⁸ Visiting scientific expeditions also brought opportunities for intellectual exchange. Eighteen years after his father, Governor Philip Gidley King, had welcomed Baudin to Sydney, for example, Lieutenant Phillip Parker King generously shared the fruits of his recent Australian surveying voyages with Lieutenant Aleksei Lazarev (younger brother of Mikhail Lazarev of the 1814 Suvorov expedition) and his fellow officers on the Blagonamerennyi.¹⁹ King showed them his new charts, corrected theirs and even gave Lazarev his valuable collection of stuffed Australian birds and insects to take back to Russia.²⁰ In turn, King and other British naval officers enjoyed hearing about the Russians’ own scientific projects. Yet perhaps the most valuable commodity the Russians traded was news, and the Suvorov navigator Aleksei Rossiiskii reported the rapturous response in Sydney to their 1814 news of the initial defeat of Napoleon.²¹

Yet tensions remained concerning possible surveillance conducted by visiting naval vessels. The warmth of the welcome given to the Russians contrasted with the allegedly cool treatment of the French, even in peacetime. Despite being engaged on more strictly scientific missions than the commercially minded Russians, Louis de Freycinet in 1819 and Jules Dumont d’Urville in 1826-1827 were not permitted to land as close to the town of Sydney and were put under official surveillance.²² This may have also been due to the British perception that the Russians, unlike the French, kept things ‘shipshape’: ‘[The Governor] was pleased with our craft, particularly with their neatness, for we had been preceded here by the French corvette L'Uranie, of which our hosts said that great uncleanliness prevailed.’²³ Ironically, these French officers reported mostly friendly treatment in Sydney, and in 1825 Hyacinthe de Bougainville (like Freycinet, a member of a well-known naval family and a veteran of the ill-fated 1802 Baudin expedition) was moved by the warmth of both officials and ordinary citizens in Sydney.²⁴ Still, as with Baudin in Tasmania in 1802, d’Urville’s visit in 1826 prompted the British to hasten settlement of King George Sound in Western Australia and the southern coastline along Bass Strait.²⁵

Similarly, by the time of the visit of the Russian armed transport Amerika to Sydney in 1832, new suspicions about Russian foreign policy and plans in the Pacific led to tension.

Tempers flared over naval protocol—had Fort Macquarie and the visiting ship fired the appropriate number of salutes to each other?²⁶ Once again relations between the British in Sydney and the Russian navy were measured by the number of gun salutes. From this date forward, Russian vessels would be treated with suspicion. In turn, the reduced commercial importance of Russian America (culminating in its sale to the U.S.A in 1867) ended the need for regular Russian voyages, and hence the long and fruitful tradition of Russian stopovers in Sydney.²⁷

Even worse than the wrong number of guns in a salute was no salute at all. In 1839, Sydneysiders’ discovery one morning that two U.S. warships had entered their harbour overnight—both unannounced and undetected—sparked great concern. As U.S. Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes later noted, ‘Had war existed we might, after firing the shipping and reducing the great part of the town to ashes, have effected a retreat before daybreak in perfect safety’.²⁸ Even though the vessels were engaged in a bona fide scientific voyage, their status as warships was not forgotten. American warships created further headaches for Australian ports during the U.S. Civil War. The decision to allow the Confederate commerce raider Shenandoah to re-supply and re-fit in Melbourne in 1865 angered the Union government, which saw this as a violation of British neutrality. In turn, fears of American (and French, Russian and, later, German and Japanese) warships invading Australian ports haunted Australians’ imagination for decades. By 1890 Port Phillip Bay, the gateway to Melbourne, was the most fortified port in the Southern Hemisphere.²⁹

In contrast, scientific expeditions conducted by lesser western naval powers elicited no such concern. In the 1850s the Austro-Hungarian SMS Novara visited Sydney as part of a two-year scientific voyage around the world and was warmly welcomed—and then apparently forgotten.

<< | >>

↑

Source: Aldrich Robert, McKenzie Kirsten (eds.). The Routledge History of Western Empires. Routledge,2014. — 542 p.. 2014

Scientific voyages to Sydney

More on the topic Scientific voyages to Sydney: