William Dawes (Governor)

William Dawes (* 1762 in Portsmouth , Hampshire , United Kingdom ; † 1836 in Antigua ) was a naval officer in the Royal Marines , astronomer, engineer and explorer and governor in Sierra Leone and the Seychelles . He was a staunch opponent of slavery . William Dawes was the first European to document an Aboriginal language in writing and to create a corresponding orthography .

Early life

William Dawes was the eldest child of Benjamin Dawes, an employee of the British Military Administration, and Elizabeth, née Sinnatt. He embarked on a military career in his early youth and was promoted to lieutenant on September 2, 1777 at the age of 17 . In 1781 he was wounded in the American War of Independence in the sea ​​battle off the Chesapeake Bay between a British and a French fleet on board the HMS Resolution .

He then served with the Royal Marines and traveled on May 13, 1787 from Portsmouth in England with the First Fleet on the HMS Sirius to the newly established convict colony of Australia . On this voyage he was supposed to make astronomical observations and after his arrival set up an observatory.

Convict Colony Australia

After arriving in Sydney in January 1788, he built the first Australian observatory. The area was called Dawes Point , which is now a suburb of Sydney and houses the southern pylons of the Sydney Harbor Bridge . His assignment was to observe a comet that was believed to be moving across the Southern Hemisphere in 1788 . He made many observations, but the comet he was looking for did not appear.

As an engineer, he created the first artillery positions of the new colony at Sydney Cove , planned and built buildings for farms on behalf of the colonial administration and created roads and allotments in the Sydney and Parramatta area .

Dawes participated in various explorations of the mountains west of Sydney, which lay across the Nepean River and the new pastureland. He made the first attempt by a European to cross the Blue Mountains , measured distances and created the first maps of the convict colony.

Dawes became interested in the life and language of the Aborigines of the Eora tribe and developed a close friendship with the 15-year-old Patyegarang . She stayed in his home and served him as an interpreter, language teacher and servant - possibly she was also his lover. From today's perspective, William Dawes was the first European who not only wrote down an Aboriginal language in list form, but also wrote an orthography and developed language training.

He intended to settle in Australia, wanted to hold a position in colonial administration and farm on the side. In October he was offered a job as an engineer in the colonial administration. Arthur Phillip , the governor of the new colony, expected an apology or withdrawal of a decision regarding the convicts' rights of disposal over their food rations and participation in a punitive expedition before he accepted . Phillip resented him for resisting a punitive expedition that would result in the death of two Aborigines and ten others captured and beheaded in retaliation. Dawes refused to attend and Phillip had him arrested for military disobedience. After talking to the Reverend Richard Johnson, William Dawes decided to take part anyway. The punitive expedition was unsuccessful. Dawes did not apologize and lost Phillip's trust. His request to settle in the convict colony was rejected and he was embarked with the first group of Royal Marines on the HMS Gorgon in December 1791 and transported back to Great Britain.

It is now known that Dawes was the first European reported to have campaigned for Aboriginal human rights.

Although he expressed his intention to return to Australia as a settler several times in Great Britain, his plan was not carried out.

Sierra Leone

In Great Britain he became acquainted with William Wilberforce , a staunch opponent of the slave trade , who shared his justice and religious views and moved him to work with the Evangelical Church or to join. In August 1792 he came to Sierra Leone as Chancellor of the Governor , where a British colony with freed slaves was to be established.

In the first time he was in agreement with the orders and actions of the local governor Thomas Clarkson . However, the settlers disregarded the official orders. They should also be relocated from the areas they occupied. In particular, Dawes had to implement this arrangement on behalf of the colonial administration, which aroused resistance. In addition, Dawes also lost the support of his superior minister, who accused him of causing rebellions among the settlers. Unjustified uproar arose when the settlers assumed that Dawes would steal their guns because they could use them against the colonial administration staff.

Because of these arguments and his stress-related health problems, he returned to Great Britain in March 1794. There he married Judith Rutter from Portsea in Hampshire in 1794 , with whom he had a daughter and two sons.

Despite his difficulties at the time, he was reappointed as governor of Sierra Leone in January 1795. He held this position until March 1796.

From January 1799 to November 1800 he was a math teacher at Christ's Hospital School . During this time he appeared as a witness in the House of Lords , where he reported on his experiences and his assessments in connection with the slave trade. The House of Lords enacted legal regulations for the slave trade in June 1799.

During the first quarter of 1801 he came again as governor to Sierra Leone, where he stayed until February 1803. He then held the post of governor in the Seychelles .

Late life

When Dawes returned to Great Britain in 1804, he settled in Lambeth , a borough of London , and later in Bledlow in Buckinghamshire . From 1804 to 1808 he trained missionaries for the Christian Missionary Society .

William Wilberforce urged Dawes to take initiatives against the slave trade in Antigua. He arrived there in 1813, founded schools for the children of slaves and worked as a correspondent for Christian missionary magazines. In 1826, however, he ran into financial difficulties. His friend Watkin Tench , with whom he had come to Australia on the First Fleet, also supported him in his efforts to obtain financial aid . All requests that he directed to government agencies remained unsuccessful. William Dawes died in Antigua in 1836.

Aftermath

Dawes is described in the literature as a person with exceptional skills and character. It is also regretted that there were rifts between Arthur Phillip and Dawes, as they hardly differed in their basic ideas about the treatment of the Aborigines. Mollie Gillen stated that William Dawes never received appropriate recognition or financial compensation for his valuable work.

In Kate Grenville's novella The Lieutenant , Dawes is portrayed in the central character Daniel Rooke . The novella is based in part on the diaries of William Dawes. Jane Roger's novella Promised Lands also partly casts a picture on the life of Dawes.

Web links

• The 1792 map of New South Wales drawn by William Dawes
• The notebooks of William Dawes on Dharuk (Darug), the language of Sydney (with illustration of the first observatory in Australia)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} William Dawes , on willamdawes.org. Retrieved March 31, 2016.
2. ^ ^{A b} Keith Vincent Smith: A Few Words from William Dawes and George Bass. National Library of Australia, 2008.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Phyllis Mander-Jones: Dawes, William (1762–1836) , on adb.anu.edu.au. Retrieved March 31, 2016.
4. ^ Cassandra Pybus: Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty. Beacon Press, 2006, p. 169.
5. ^ Mollie Gillen : The Founders of Australia: A biographical dictionary of the First Fleet. , Library of Australian History, Sydney 1989, pp. 101-102.