Fort Dundas

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Location of Fort Dundas in Northern Australia

Fort Dundas was a British military settlement on Melville Island on the north Australian coast, founded in 1824 and abandoned in 1829.

history

On August 24, 1824, HMS Tamar left the port of Port Jackson under the command of Captain Gordon Bremer with the order to set up some settlements and military bases on the north coast of Australia. He was accompanied by the brig HMS Lady Nelson and the transport ship Countess of Harcourt , on board were about 100 people, including about half soldiers and about 40 convicts. The first settlers went ashore on September 27, 1824. After almost four weeks, on Trafalgar Day on October 21, 1824, the settlement was officially founded and named Fort Dundas after the then First Lord of the Admiralty , Robert Dundas .

The reason for the settlement and colonization policy in northern Australia was on the one hand the intention to trade and develop with the Malay population, on the other hand the fear of France's claims on the new continent.

After the establishment of the military base, however, it turns out that contacts with the local population, the Tiwi tribe (a tribe of the Aborigines ), were very problematic. The encounters were aggressive to hostile, the Tiwi residents attacked the fortress with up to 100 fighters. As early as July 1827, newspapers wrote about the failure of the idea.

Based on these facts, Major Hartley decided in May 1828 to abandon the settlement and move everything to Fort Wellington . In November 1828, the Secretary of State for Colonies confirmed this decision. Fort Dundas was abandoned in April 1829. In addition to conflicts with the Tiwi tribe, unrest among the convicts, food shortages and unusable equipment in the fortress were also cited as causes.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “THE NEWLY FORMED BRITISH SETTLEMENT ON THE NORTH WEST COAST OF AUSTRALIAN”, in: The Australian (New South Wales, Australia), March 10, 1825, p. 3. (National Library of Australia), online at: trove.nla. gov.au / ...
  2. ↑ a b c d Fort Dundas - Melville Island NT (especially sections Fort Dundas - in brief and The Founding of Fort Dundas September 1824 ), Past Masters project, online at: pastmasters.net/
  3. ↑ Survey and Excavation at Fort Dundas, Melville Island, Northern Territory, 1975 , Historical Introduction (pp. 1f.), Online at: nswaol.library.usyd.edu.au / ...
  4. ↑ Melville Island , short message in: The Asiatic journal and monthly register for British and foreign India, China and Australasia, Volume 24, July 1827, p. 100, online at: books.google.de / ...
  5. ↑ MEMORIAL TO EARLY SETTLEMENTS , in: The Northern Standard (Darwin, NT), December 30, 1938, page 14, online at: trove.nla.gov.au / ...
  6. ↑ John Morris: The Tiwi and the British: an ill-fated outpost , online at: press-files.anu.edu.au ... , p. 256 (and footnote 87 ibid.)

Coordinates: 11 ° 24 ′ 18 ″  S , 130 ° 25 ′ 2 ″  E