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FF John White R.N.- Surgeon-General ‘Charlotte’(1756-1832)
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John White was a naval surgeon. Having
received his diploma of the Company of Surgeons on 2
August 1781, his naval service took him as far as the
West Indies and India over the next five years.
He was appointed chief surgeon to the First Fleet in
1786 after a recommendation by Sir A.S. Hamond....
Sir A.S. Hamond to Under Secretary Nepean,
Chatham, 16th October 1786
Dear Sir,
Mr. White, the surgeon of the Irresistible, is a
candidate for Botany Bay. He is a young man of much
credit in his profession, and of that sort of
disposition and temper that render him a very proper
person for such an establishment. If no surgeon is yet
appointed, and you will do me the favour to recommend
him to Lord Sydney, I shall think myself much obliged to
you, and shall consider myself bound to Government for
his good behaviour, I am etc., A.S. Hamond. [1]
Surgeon White's Commission
George the Third, etc. to our trusty and
well beloved John White greeting: We do, by these
presents, constitute and appoint you to be Surgeon to
the settlement within our territory called New South
Wales, You are, therefore, carefully and diligently to
discharge the duty of surgeon by doing and performing
all and all manner of things thereunto belonging ; and
you are to observe and follow such orders and directions
from time to time as you shall receive from our Governor
of our said territory for the time being, or any other
your superior officer, according to the rules and
discipline of ward. Given at our Court at St. James's
the twenty fourth day of October 1786, in the twenty
sixth year of our reign, By his Majesty' command, Sydney.
[1]
Convict Ship Charlotte
John White sailed on the
Charlotte.
He served as Surgeon-General to the new colony of New
South Wales during the first years of its existence.
Eight other surgeons served under him -
Dennis Considen,
Thomas Arndell,
William Balmain,
John Turnpenny Altree,
Arthur Bowes Smyth,
James Callam,
Thomas Jamison
and
George Bouchier Worgan.
The First Hospital
On arrival in the colony many convicts
were suffering from illnesses arising from scurvy and
other diseases, although there was no small pox yet
encountered. Soon a 'tent' hospital was established in
what would later become George Street north. This was
replaced by a more permanent building.
From the History of Sydney Hospital by Dr. J. Frederick
Watson on the centenary of the laying of the foundation
stone of the hospital......In
the beginning of February, 1788, the erection of the
first hospital was commenced on the west side of Sydney
Cove, near what are now known as the Commissariat
Stores, George street North; it was completed by twelve
convict carpenters and sixteen hired men from the ships.
An soon as it was finished it was filled, and the
overflow occupied tents around it. Some of the drugs
were found to have perished during the prolonged voyage,
and others were of inferior quality; but it is
interesting to read that the native sarsaparilla proved
to be powerfully anti-scorbutic, and an infusion of wild
myrtle astringent in dysentery, the honour of these
discoveries being claimed by
Dennis
Considen.
[4]
Governor Philip
reported to Lord Sydney in correspondence dated 9 July
1788 that the hospital was a building that would stand
for some years. It was clear of the town and the
situation healthy. [5]A
portable hospital also arrived with the Second Fleet in
1790.
John White's Journal
John White was a keen amateur naturalist
and took an intense interest in the unique flora and
fauna of his new surroundings. He sent many specimens
and drawings to England. When Thomas Watling, convict
and artist, arrived in the colony in October 1792 on the
Royal Admiral
he was assigned to John White and in the next two years
made many drawings for him.
[3]
John White kept a journal on the voyage out, which was
published in London in 1790, as
Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales
with Sixty-five Plates of Nondescript Animals, Birds,
Lizards, Serpents, curious Cones of Trees and other
Natural Productions
The above Journal was written while his
enthusiasm for this unique country was still at its
height. Two years later when the correspondence below
was penned, his passion and excitement had waned......
A Letter Home
In 1791 the following letter written by
John White was published in the Belfast Newsletter.
The letter was written in Sydney on 17 April 1790 and
details of the desperate plight of the colony at that
time emerge from his writings. He couldn't have foreseen
it as he lamented their dire situation, but worse was
yet to come as just three three months later the
Second Fleet
sailed into Sydney Cove with over seven hundred and
fifty convicts many of whom were sick and dying....
His Majesty's ship Sirius, and Supply tender, sailed
from hence the 6th March last, with the Lieutenant
governor, half the marines, and about 200 convicts for
Norfolk Island and landed them safe the 16th. This
division of our numbers the Governor thought necessary,
on account of the low state of our provisions. The ship
stood off and on until the 19th before an opportunity of
landing the provisions and stores offered; then the
Sirius stood in as close as possible to hasten and
facilitate getting the things thought a heavy surf,
which continually rolls in on the beach, but by a
current, or some other unforeseen cause, she was driven
on a reef of hidden rocks and irrecoverably lost. The
ship's bow is in a position which will probably make her
hold together until every thing is got ashore, where all
the officers and men are safe, with a greater store of
provisions than we have here.
Had the Sirius arrived safe, she was immediately to be
sent to China for some relief for us, and on her
dispatch our all depended; but, alas! that hope is no
more, and a new scene of distress and misery opens to
our view.
When the Supply arrived (from Norfolk Island) with the
melancholy tidings, the Governor called all the officers
together to consult and deliberate on what was left to
be done in our present distracted and deplorable
situation. He laid before us the state of the provision
store, which contained only four months flour, and three
of pork, at half allowance, which has been our portion
for some time past, every other species of provision
being long since expended. We therefore determined on
the necessity of reducing our half allowance of those
two articles to such a proportion as will enable us to
drag out a miserable existence for seven months.
Should we have no arrivals in that time, the game will
be up with us, for all the grain of every kind which we
have been able to rise in two years and three months,
would not support us three weeks, which is a very strong
instance of the ingratitude and extreme poverty of the
soil, and country at Large: though great exertions have
been made.
Much cannot now be done; limited in food, and reduced as
the people are, who have not had one ounce of fresh
animal food since first in the country; a country and
place so forbidden and so hateful, as only to merit
execrations and curses; for it has been a source of
expense to the mother country, and of evil and
misfortune to us, without there ever being the smallest
likelihood of its repaying or recompensing either. From
what we have already seen, we may conclude that there is
not a single article in the whole country, that in the
nature of things could prove of the smallest use or
advantage to the mother country or the commercial world.
In the name of Heaven, what has the Ministry been about?
Surely they have quite forgotten or neglected us,
otherwise they would have sent to see what become of us,
and to know how we were likely to succeed. However, they
must soon know from the heavy bills which will be
presented to them, and the misfortunes and losses which
have already happened to us, how necessary it becomes to
relinquish a scheme that in the nature of things can
never answer. It would be wise by the first steps to
withdraw the settlement, at least such as are living or
remove them to some other place. This is so much out of
the world and tract of commerce that it could never
answer. How a business of this kind (the expense of
which must be great) could first be thought of without
sending to examine the country as was Captain Thompson's
errand to the coast of Africa, is to every person here a
matter of great surprise.
M. Perouse and Clanard, the French circumnavigators we
well as us, have been very much surprised at Mr. Cook's
description of Botany Bay. The Supply tender sails
tomorrow for Batavia, in hopes the Dutch may be able to
send in time to save us. Should any accident happen to
her, Lord have mercy upon us! She is a small vessel to
perform so long and unexplored a voyage, but we rely
much on the abilities and active attention of Lieut.
Ball, who commands her.
Lieut. King, Second of the Sirius takes his passage in
her to Batavia, and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope
(in his way to Europe) where he has orders to charter a
ship and send her to us immediately, should no other
ships have passed that place in their way here.
[2].
Death
John White returned to England in
July1795.. He was reluctant to return to New South Wales
and in August 1796, faced with the alternative of doing
so immediately or of resigning his appointment, he chose
to resign. He contemplated publishing a second book and
sent a rough manuscript and many drawings to A. B.
Lambert, a noted botanist, but the project came to
nothing. The manuscript appears to have been lost and
the drawings are possibly those which form the so-called
Watling Collection now preserved in the British Museum
(Natural History).
For three years (1796-99) White served in
various ships. He was surgeon at Sheerness Navy Yard
from December 1799 to September 1803 and at Chatham Yard
from September 1803 until he was superannuated in
January 1820 at the age of 63. He was granted a half-pay
pension of £91 5s. and spent his last years at Brighton
He died at Worthing on 20 February 1832
aged 75 and was buried at St Mary's, Broadwater,where
until recent years a small tablet noted this event.[3]
White left an estate valued at £12,000. He had married
about 1800 and when he died three children of this union
were living: Richard Hamond, a naval lieutenant; Clara
Christiana, who became the second wife of Ralph Bernal,
M.P.; and Augusta Catherine Anne, who married Lieutenant
(later Lieutenant-General) Henry Sandham, R.E. A fourth
child, Andrew Douglass (Douglas), born to White by a
convict, Rachel Turner, in Sydney on 23 September 1793
was brought up in England as a member of the household.
He joined the Royal Engineers, fought at Waterloo, and
in 1823 returned to Sydney to rejoin the mother from
whom he had been parted as an infant and who had married
Thomas Moore,
a prominent settler. He lived for some years at
Parramatta, married in 1835 and died in 1837.
Complied by John Boyd 2020.
The Fellowship of First Fleeters
installed a FFF Plaque on John White’s Grave on 10th
June 1984
Refer FFF Web Site:http://www.fellowshipfirstfleeters.org.au/graves.html
Under
 see
FFF Plaque 35 – Installed 10th
June 1984for
FF JOHN WHITE Surgeon‘Charlotte’(1756-1832)
References
[1]
HR NSW vol.1 part 2, p. 25
[2] Belfast Newsletter 14 January 1791
[3]
Australian Dictionary of Biography - John
White
[4] Sydney Morning Herald 28 October 1911
[5] HRA, Vol 1, part 2, p. 148
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