This story is certainly going to excite history buffs who are unlikely to have seen this painting by William Light, estimated to have been painted in 1839, judging by the development of Port Adelaide.
HMS Buffalo has a peculiar history, well associated with Governor John Hindmarsh and the first colonial government of the free settlement of South Australia. South Australia’s first Judge, John Jeffcott, failed to get a berth. He had narrowly escaped his creditors, a charge of murder and tragically drowned at Encounter Bay in 1837.
A remarkable story of love, law and tragedy. Caretaker Judge Henry Jickling was a learned eccentric man at the end of his career, and technically blind. James Hawker recounts a story whereby the flabbergasted Judge remonstrated with a dead tree stump that rudely failed to deliver him simple directions!
In 1839, William Light was not well (tuberculosis), and passed away in October 1839. As a career naval man, he would have been delighted at the chance of painting the HMS Buffalo, after so many scrapes with Captain Hindmarsh, the first Governor of the new struggling Colony.
In fact, the 1836 Governor-elect of the new Colony, Sir Charles Napier most definitely recommended Colonel William Light as his replacement prior to the untimely intervention of John Hindmarsh, another twist in the delightful founding story and their 1835 mission to deliver the Steamship Nile to the Pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali.
Two mercenaries who would again enter battle on the shores of South Australia.
The recall of Hindmarsh and the appointment of George Gawler was a little reprieve for Colonel Light who was suffering the advanced stages of tuberculous, passing away with bitter feelings toward his masters back home, in October 1839.
Gawler, a Christian zealot, frowned upon parties, dancing and public disorder. He would not entertain Colonel Light
As the Colony spiralled toward inevitable bankruptcy, Light spent his last months as a private land surveyor, and completed his Brief Journal in which he penned the famous conclusion to the Adelaide City location debacle:
“The reasons that led me to fix Adelaide where it is I do not expect to be generally understood or calmly judged of at present. My enemies, however, by disputing their validity in every particular, have done me the good service of fixing the whole of the responsibility upon me. I am perfectly willing to bear it, and I leave it to posterity and not to them, to decide whether I am entitled to praise or to blame”.
As John Hindmarsh found a new career in Heligoland, so too did the HMS Buffalo, pictured here with a French ensign. A final journey to ferry soldiers to another Colonial hotspot in Canada prior to delivering French and Canadian patriots (convicts) to Van Diemen’s land before meeting its fate and becoming wrecked in 1840.
This would appear to date the painting to sometime in 1839, prior to its final voyages.
Embarked: 82 American Patriots and 58 French-Canadian
Departed Quebec on 28 September 1839
Arrived Van Diemen’s Land on 11 February 1840
Arrived Port Jackson 25 February 1840
Deaths: 1
Commander: James Wood
Regardless of the history (not complete), this is a rare glimpse into a dramatic year of SA Founding history
Let us all drink a toast to the soldier, traveller, artist and Founder of South Australia, Colonel William Light!
Nigel Carney is a South Australian historian and Chair of the William Light Foundation.
An exhaustive effort via phone and email was made to donate this work and other original works of William Light to South Australian institutions, and these efforts failed sadly. This begs the question of how much other founding history relics have been lost due to a lack of interest by the City that William Light founded.