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LT HENRY LIDGBIRD BALL (1756 - 1818) COMMANDER
HMAT SUPPLY
- this story is under review by Membership Team
Rear-Admiral
Henry Lidgbird Ball
(1756–1818) was a
Royal Navy officer,
best known as the commander of the
First Fleet's
HMS/HMAT Supply,
for the exploration of environs around
Port Jackson and
Broken Bay, helping
establish the
Norfolk Island penal
settlement, and for discovering and naming
Lord Howe Island.
Henry
Lidgbird Ball was born in 1756 at
Birkenhead,
Cheshire,
England,
to George Ball,
Gentleman, and his wife,
Lucy Stringer.
Henry was baptised on 7
December 1756 in
Holy Cross Church, Woodchurch,
Cheshire, one witness
being John Lidgbird, a
wealthy local property owner.
Ball
joined the Royal Navy when quite young, serving on
various ships:
HMS Venus,
HMS Ramillies,
HMS Raven,
and
HMS Lark.
On 23 April 1778 he was commissioned a
Lieutenant from March
1783 until April 1786 and commanded the cutter
HMS Seaflower
off the northern coast of Ireland.
In 1787,
Lieutenant Ball was placed in command of the
armed tender
HMS/HMAT Supply
as part of the naval escort for the ships of the
First Fleet.
Supply's
armament had been increased in 1786 with the addition of
four twelve-pounder carronades; the crew was augmented
to 55. Additionally, a detachment of 16 marines from the
New South Wales Marine Corps,
under command of
Lieutenant
William Dawes,
was
embarked. The Supply
had orders to create a
penal colony in
Botany Bay,
New South Wales.
With Ball as captain,
Supply
sailed from
Spithead,
Portsmouth, on 13 May
1787 with the fleet commanded by
Commodore
Arthur Phillip. On 3
June 1787, the fleet anchored at
Santa Cruz de
Tenerife, Spain. On 10
June they began their voyage across the Atlantic to
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
taking advantage of favourable
trade winds and ocean
currents. The fleet reached Rio on 5 August and remained
for a month while resupplying. The fleet departed Rio de
Janeiro on 4 September to run before the
westerlies, reaching
Table Bay in South
Africa on 13 October, the last port of call before
Botany Bay. On 25 November, Phillip transferred from
HMS Sirius
to the faster Supply,
and with the fleet's faster ships raced ahead to prepare
for arrival of the rest of his command. However, this
"flying squadron" reached Botany Bay only hours before
the slower members, so no preparatory work was done.
Supply
reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788; the three fastest
transports in the advance group arrived on 19 January;
slower ships, including
Sirius,
arrived on 20 January.
On 14 February Ball on
Supply
sailed with Lieutenant
Philip Gidley King,
who was to establish a
subordinate settlement on
Norfolk Island.
Ball learned the navigational and physical difficulties
in approaching the island which were to affect future
settlement there, but got ashore on 6 March.
On the return voyage he
explored a small island sighted previously, which he
named
Lord Howe's Island
after
Richard Howe,
1st Earl Howe; he also
named
Mount Lidgbird and
Ball's Pyramid
after himself. Ball's sketches, notes and descriptions
of the landscape and fauna of Lord Howe Island and
Ball's Pyramid were published in 1789 as a chapter in
Phillip's book The
Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay.
On 6 May 1788
Supply
left Port Jackson for Lord Howe Island to capture
turtles, to supplement the food stores of the
settlement, but discovered that the turtles were only
present on the island in the summer. Phillip decided on
an expedition to capture a native so as to learn their
language and customs, so on 31 December 1788, Ball and
marine Lieutenant
George Johnston
commanded two boats to
Manly Cove where they
captured
Arabanoo.
Supply
made multiple voyages between the two settlements, Port
Jackson and Norfolk Island, transferring men and
supplies between them. She was also used to explore the
waters and environs around the colonies.
On 5 March 1790 the
Sirius
and Supply
left Sydney Cove to transport 300 convicts and marines
to Norfolk Island, arriving on 13 March. Bad weather
precluded landing personnel and provisions near the
settlement, so the marines and some convicts were landed
at Cascade Bay on the north-east coast. Here they had to
jump individually from a boat to a rock; the jump was
possible only when the tide was half out. By 19 March
the weather had cleared and Ball and
Captain
John Hunter
of
Sirius
started to unload the remaining convicts and provisions
at the settlement on the southern shore. Ball noticed
the current was pushing the ships towards the sunken
rocks and signalled to Hunter before manoeuvring
Supply
away from the danger. Even though the
Sirius
was farther from the rocks than
Supply,
Captain Hunter was unable to save his ship from
foundering. Supply,
with assistance of the men on shore, was able to rescue
every person from the sinking
Sirius.
Sirius
was supposed to continue on to
Canton
(present-day Guangzhou), to pick up supplies, so on 17
April 1790 Supply
sailed with Lieutenant
Philip Gidley King, who
was to continue on to England with the
Governor’s despatches,
to procure provisions from
Batavia, Dutch East Indies.
Ball returned to Port Jackson 18 October, having
chartered the
Waaksamheyd
to bring the rest of supplies,
which arrived 17 December. Ball became very ill with a
fever that had originated in Batavia. In March 1791 he
sought leave to return to England both to recover his
health and to attend to family affairs. Sailing the 25
November 1791 via
Cape Horn, arriving at
Plymouth 21 April 1792,
completing a
circumnavigation
with Supply
and carrying the first
kangaroo to arrive in
England.
Ball was
promoted to
Commander on 28 April
1792 for his achievements in New South Wales. He
returned to duty in December 1794 with his appointment
to
HMS
Flora,
and conveyed the new British ambassador,
Lord Bute, to Spain
before returning from the
Mediterranean in June
1795 when he was posted captain on 9 July. In September
he was appointed to command
HMS
Ariadne,
serving for the next eighteen months in the North Sea
and
The Downs.
In March
1797 Ball was appointed to
HMS Daedalus,
serving initially in home waters, before being
transferred to the East Indies station. Off the West
African coast in early 1798,
Deadalus
with
HMS Hornet,
was involved in the capture of seven vessels. Ball was
off the
Cape Colony when he
encountered the French frigate
Prudente and, in the
action of 9 February 1799,
after an eighty-minute battle, the badly battered French
ship surrendered. The
Daedalus lost two men
killed and 12 wounded in the engagement;
Prudente
suffered 27 killed and 22 wounded.
Ball
commanded three more vessels, first,
HMS
Zealand
1806–1807 and then
HMS
Gibraltar
1808–1810. During this time, in 1808, he unsuccessfully
applied for the Governorship of New South Wales. His
last command was
Christian VII
1812–1813. In 1812 he went onto
half-pay in
semi-retirement.
In the
summer, 1809 he was called as a witness at the
Court-martial of
James, Lord Gambier,
which assessed whether Admiral
Lord Gambier had failed
to support Captain
Lord Cochrane at the
Battle of Basque Roads
in April 1809. Gambier was controversially cleared of
all charges. On 4 June 1814 Ball was promoted to flag
rank as
Rear-Admiral of the Blue.
During
his time in
Colony of New South Wales,
Ball had a relationship with
Sarah Partridge
(also known as
Mary Stokes),
a convict who had been transported by the First Fleet in
the
Lady Penrhyn.
They had a daughter,
Anne Maria Partridge Ball,
born 1789 at Norfolk Island.
She was christened on 22 August 1789 at
Sydney
and travelled to England with her father in 1792 on his
return voyage in
Supply. Her mother
Sarah stayed in New South Wales. No mention of Sarah or
her daughter was made in Ball's will, but Ball's sister
Mary
made "my niece 'Ann Maria'"
her heir in 1820.
On 17 June 1802 Ball married
Charlotte Foster
in
London; she died a year
later. He married again on 19 July 1810, at
Kingston upon Thames,
to Anne Georgianna
Henrietta Johnston, who
was 31 years his junior, she survived him and died in
1864.
He died
on 22 October 1818 at
Mitcham (then in Surrey
and now in
Greater London),
England. He was buried in the churchyard at
St Peter's Church, Petersham,
in the family vault of his wife, Anne Georgianna
Henrietta Johnston.
A plaque
commemorating Ball was added to the Johnston tomb on 20
October 2013 at a service attended by the Australian
High Commissioner
to the United Kingdom. –See
Gravesite Plaques
The
Fellowship of First Fleeters added their Plaque on 22nd
October 2017 in recognition of Henry Ball. The Plaque
was placed on the Churchyard Wall immediately above
Henry’s tomb. –See
Gravesite Plaques
Ball's Pyramid and
Mount Lidgbird on Lord
Howe Island,
Ball Bay, Norfolk
Island, and possibly
Balls Head on
Sydney Harbour are all
named after him.
Ball
appears as a character in
Evelyn Cheesman's
1950 novel Landfall the
Unknown: Lord Howe Island 1788.
Compiled by John Boyd January
2022.
Sources:
-The
Founders of Australia
by Mollie Gillen pages 18,19, 20 &21
- Wikipedia, the free
Encyclopedia
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Parsons, Vivienne (1966).
Ball, Henry Lidgbird (1756–1818)
Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Melbourne University
Press.
ISSN 1833-7538
– via National Centre
of Biography, Australian National University.
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Hutton, Ian (1986).
Lord Howe island: Discovering
Australia's world heritage.
Canberra: Conservation Press.
ISBN 090819840X.
-
Phillip, Arthur (1789).
Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay.
John Stockdale, Piccadilly.
Retrieved 2 January 2022 –
via Project Gutenberg
Australia.
-
Hunter, John (1793).
An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port
Jackson and Norfolk Island.
John Stockdale, Piccadilly – via Project Gutenberg
Australia.
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