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Christopher Palmer - HMS SIRIUS
this story is under review by Membership Team
John Palmer, shipwright, and his wife Sarah of
Portsmouth had two sons, John and Christopher, plus five
daughters. Both sons came to Australia on the First
Fleet. Much has been researched and written about
John, but very little has been documented about
Christopher.
Christopher Palmer was born on 27 July 1767 and baptised
on 27 September 1767 at St Thomas Church, Portsmouth.
On 1 May 1787 Christopher boarded the HMS Sirius
for the voyage of the First Fleet to Australia, He was a
civilian servant to Andrew Miller, the Commissary of
Stores for the colony. Like all other First Fleeters he
arrived in Port Jackson on 26 January 1788. Soon after
he arrived in Port Jackson
Christopher left his employment with Miller and on 30
January was taken on the Sirius as an Able
Seaman. On 10 June he was appointed as Clerk on the
Supply, by ‘preferment’ i.e. someone with influence
had helped him obtain the appointment.
After the sinking of the Sirius at Norfolk Island
in 1790 the Supply was the only ship available to
support the colonies at Port Jackson and Norfolk
Island. The Supply made ten trips between the
two settlements and between April and September 1790
made a trip to Batavia to procure food and stores. On
26 September 1791 the Supply left Port Jackson
and reached Portsmouth on 21 April 1792 before
proceeding to Deptford, arriving on 8 May 1792, where
the crew, including Christopher, was laid off.
On 27 Dec 1792 Christopher joined the HMS Royal
William, a guard ship, as an Able Seaman, later
becoming the Ship’s Clerk. In March 1793 he transferred
to the HMS Queen, a three deck 90 gun second rate
ship of the line, as Clerk.
With Arthur Phillip’s resignation from the governorship
of New South Wales in July 1793, John Hunter applied for
the position in October and in January, 1794, he was
appointed Governor.
HMS Reliance
was commissioned to replace the Sirius and to
take Hunter to Port Jackson. He sought the appointment
of Henry Waterhouse with the rank of Commander to
captain the ship and with power to act in his absence.
Waterhouse was duly appointed and took charge of the
Reliance in July 1794. Earlier, on 23 April, 1794,
Christopher had transferred to the Reliance as
Purser, a position which he held until the Reliance
returned to England in August 1800. At the time of
Christopher’s appointment, the ship was under the
command of Captain Nathanial Portlock. Waterhouse took
up his appointment on the Reliance in July,
1794. Hunter, Waterhouse and Palmer had all been on the
Sirius for the voyage of the First Fleet, Hunter
as Captain, Waterhouse as a midshipman and Christopher
as a servant.
Departing England in February 1795 the Reliance
arrived in Port Jackson on 7 September, 1795. Among her
crew and passengers were Matthew Flinders, midshipman,
George Bass ship’s doctor, John Hunter, the Governor and
Aboriginal Bennelong.
A
year after her arrival at Port Jackson the Reliance
went to the Cape of Good Hope to buy stock for the
colony. As Purser, Christopher would have been
responsible for all negotiations and purchases on behalf
of the ship and the colony. Waterhouse and Lieutenant
William Kent bought twenty-six Spanish merinos after
Commissary John Palmer, Christopher’s brother, had
refused them. John Palmer was returning to England on
the Britannia. The Reliance and the
Britannia had sailed from Port Jackson to the Cape
together. These were the first merino sheep imported
into the colony, and Waterhouse supplied lambs to many
of the settlers including John Macarthur and Samuel
Marsden.
The Reliance also made a number of voyages
between Norfolk Island and Port Jackson and carried out
charting work in New Zealand.
In February 1800 Christopher Palmer assigned the rents
that he was receiving from a farm at Northern Boundary,
near present day Kings School, to Catherine Rourke, a 27
year old convict who had arrived aboard the Sugar
Cane in 1793. The farm had been mortgaged to
Christopher by Daniel Spencer for 35 pounds and had been
forfeited.
Also in February 1800 the Reliance was deemed
unfit for service in the colony and on 26 February,
departed Port Jackson for England, sailing via Cape
Horn. The ship called into Rio de Janeiro and while
there ‘Christopher was taken so ill that his life was
despaired of, so that he was not able to attend to his
duty, and after his return to England in the Reliance he
was, the greatest part of his time, confined to his bed’.
The Reliance arrived in England on 26 August,
1800, having taken over six years from 23 April, 1793,
when she left England until her return. Christopher had
been the Purser for the entire voyage.
Now back in England Christopher was appointed Purser on
the Pandow, a RN Transport Board ship, on 18
June, 1801, and then on 8 July, 1803, he was transferred
to HMS Lowestoft, a new ship under construction.
Obtaining leave from the Admiralty due to ill health, on
6 December, 1803, Christopher departed Spithead,
England, for Port Jackson on the ship, Experiment,
arriving on 24 June, 1804.
On 1 January, 1806, he was granted 100 acres of land in
the district of Mulgrove Place (Upper Half Moon Reach,
Hawkesbury River). The annual rental was 2/- after five
years.
In 1809 he suffered a paralytic stroke that affected one
side of his body and caused him to lose the use of all
of his limbs, confining him to his bed for the last
twelve years of his life. During this time he was
lovingly cared for by his brother, John.
It would appear that in May 1810 he transferred land at
Evan, Castlereagh, to his brother John.
In December 1819 John Palmer received a letter dated 1
December from the Commissioner for Victualling His
Majesty’s Navy in NSW. It contained a copy of a letter
addressed to ‘Christopher Palmer late Purser of His
Majesty’s Ship Reliance’, calling on him for the
payment of a debt due from him to the Crown. It would
seem that if there was a shortfall in the accounts for a
ship then the purser was personally responsible for the
debt. Apparently Christopher incurred the debt when he
was purser on the Reliance. Nineteen years after
he left the ship the Admiralty was pursuing him for the
payment of the debt. Christopher’s explanation to John,
contained in John’s reply is both interesting and
revealing:
‘I
feel it necessary to mention that I have done everything
in my power to learn from my brother what could be the
cause of his being so indebted, and all I can obtain is,
that in the first instance he was obliged to take charge
as Purser from the remains which Captain Portlock handed
over to him without a Survey being taken and which upon
his faith he received being assured by him and Mr
Shenard then acting as Clerk and Steward, that
everything was correct.
‘That on my brother’s arrival in Rio de
Janeiro he was taken so ill that his life was despaired
of, so that he was not able to attend to his duty, and
after his return to England in the Reliance he was, the
greatest part of his time, confined to his Bed, so that
his concerns was entirely left to the care of Mr
Shenard, who was Clerk of the Ship, and who promised my
brother after his arrival in England he would make up
the accounts for him, and led him to believe he would
have a considerable balance bill and he expected would
have been the case from what Mr Shenard had asserted, as
he Mr Shenard had the general overlooking and making out
the Provision accounts.”
Accompanying John’s reply to the Commissioners for
Victualling were letters of support from Mr J Harris
former Surgeon of the 102nd and a Magistrate
and from the Governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane. Christopher
died before this matter could be resolved.
The death notice in the Sydney Gazette and NSW
Advertiser on 7 April 1821 read:
‘Died. – On Tuesday morning last, at
Parramatta, after a long and painful illness, Mr
Christopher Palmer, brother to John Palmer Esq.’
Christopher is buried in the Palmer/Campbell family plot
at St John’s Cemetery, Parramatta.
Sources and References
John Palmer – First Fleeter,
Ian Andrew Palmer, 10 Jan 2013
Where First Fleeters Lie,
Rod Best, Joyce Cowell, 1989
Founders of Australia, A Biographical
Dictionary of the First Fleet,
Michael Flynn, Yvonne Browning, Mollie Gillen,
Library of Australian History, 1989.
The Founders of the
Nation, Chart, July 2011, Fellowship of First
Fleeters.
Wikipedia,
online, HM Ships Supply, Royal William, Queen, Reliance,
Pandour, Lowestoft.
NSW State Records – Colonial Secretaries
Papers,
(1821 - 1822), Debt owing to Admiralty by Christopher
Palmer – Reel 6018, 4/3521 pp 305-311.
Ozships,
online
http://www.blaxland.com/ozships/page.htm
Wikipedia,
online, Henry Waterhouse, John Hunter, Location of Evan
NSW Register of Births, Deaths &
Marriages,
V1821 5035 2B/1821 & V1821 1273 148/1821
National Library of Australia - Trove –
Sydney Gazette & NSW Advertiser, 7 April 1821, Death
Notices
Australian Dictionary of Biography
- Henry Waterhouse – http//adb.anu.edu.au/biography/waterhouse-henry-2775
Compiled and submitted by Don Cornford, 14.05.14.
Email:
djjmcorn@bigpond.com
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