[FIRST FLEET] Manuscript map showing the track of the ship “Scarborough” on its return voyage from Port Jackson in 1788.

Manuscript chart showing the track of a ship [the Scarborough] on a voyage from Port Jackson to Canton [in 1788], on verso of printed map A New Chart of the Southern Coast of Africa, From The Cape of Good Hope To Dalagoa Bay; with the Bank of Cape Agulhas … (1781); 627 x 848 mm (sheet); original central fold, trimmed at edges; well preserved. Housed in a custom clamshell portfolio.

A remarkable and long unrecognised survival, which can now be confidently shown to record the return voyage of the First Fleet ship Scarborough, Capt. John Marshall, which sailed from Port Jackson in early 1788.

INTRODUCTION

The manuscript voyage track has been recorded on the verso of a large 1781-published map of the waters at the entrance to the western reaches of the Indian Ocean. The printed map is precisely the sort of map one would expect to find in a First Fleeter’s rutter, Sayer & Bennett’s A New Chart of the Southern Coast of Africa, From The Cape of Good Hope To Dalagoa Bay; with the Bank of Cape Agulhas, published in 1781.

As a relic of the First Fleet such a map would be a significant discovery in its own right. Indeed, with its up-to-the-minute notes on soundings and currents off the Cape and at the entrance to the Indian Ocean, it would have been a treasured commodity for a ship chartered for New South Wales, especially for one with ambitions of dealing in the Pacific and China. The owners of the Scarborough, like several others, had chartered the vessel to collect a shipment of tea in Canton, but had also given their captain rather secretive orders to make some investigations in the near Pacific on the return home.

It is the manuscript chart on the back of this printed map that is the true revelation, however. Although no ship is specifically named, all of the details clearly relate to the Scarborough, under the command of Capt. John Marshall. After leaving Port Jackson in early May 1788, Marshall rendezvoused with the Charlotte (Capt. Thomas Gilbert) near Lord Howe Island, sailing in convoy to the north-east and making a series of investigations in the chain of islands that now bears the name of the two captains. It has long been acknowledged that both Marshall and Gilbert were surprisingly well-informed about the remote Pacific and were deliberately chasing several known or supposed landfalls, as the present map amply confirms.

The fact that the chart is written on the back of the Sayer & Bennett map is testament to the original author of the manuscript having used every source and reference – and every piece of paper – that came to hand. It is also noteworthy for its confident and accurate depiction of the island chain which still retains Marshall’s name, charting which would have been electrifying news to people in the trade in England. The map, made at a time of tremendous hardships and privation, as scurvy ran rampant among the exhausted crew, also helps put paid to any lingering sense that the sea captains of this period who were not also serving Royal Navy officers were ignorant of precision charting.

FIRST FLEET CARTOGRAPHY

Any extant original map relating to any aspect of the First Fleet is a tremendous rarity: maps relating to the voyages of the First Fleet are among the greatest desiderata of collectors. Moreover, it is rare to come across any material relic of these voyages.

This manuscript is, therefore, an important addition to the relatively slim catalogue of original cartography undertaken by any of the First Fleeters. The fate of many of these maps is unrecorded, although some important examples have always been retained in British collections. A smaller number are known in Australia, notably the maps of William Bradley in his various journals, or some of those by John Hunter, such as the group found in the extra-illustrated copy of Hunter’s 1793 book that once belonged to W.G.C. Kent (SLNSW).

However, many of the originals remain unknown, having gone missing in the aftermath of the general rush to print some of the major First Fleet books and maps; many more still would undoubtedly have gone to the bottom in the wreck of the Sirius in March 1790. These facts all speak to the relative scarcity of maps that have survived from the earliest phase of colonial New South Wales.

THE PRINTED MAP (RECTO)

By the 1780s Sayer & Bennett were still the biggest commercial map-makers in London. Rivalled perhaps only by Alexander Dalrymple, Sayer & Bennett had access to the plates of John Senex and, after the latter’s bankruptcy in 1766, those of Thomas Jefferys.

A version of this map was originally published as part of Sayer and Bennett’s Oriental Pilot in 1778, based on the French original of Après de Mannevillette but updated with information from English East India Company vessels. The 1778-issue is easily recognisable because while it has the two inset charts of Saldanha Bay and Da Lagoa Bay, it lacks the highly attractive View of the Cape of Good Hope in the centre of the plate here.

As stated on the cartouche, this updated version was published on 25 November 1781. This issue is rare indeed, with only a few copies recorded internationally (notably BM; BnF; BNE; LC). The map was then included in Sayer & Bennett’s updated The East-India Pilot or Oriental Navigator issued sometime in 1782.

The connection with this specific edition of The East-India Pilot or Oriental Navigator is also confirmed by the number ‘24’ in manuscript on the verso of the map, as the contents page of the book confirms that the map was indeed no. 24 in the series. The neat manuscript ‘2’ which is also partly excised on the verso was surely part of the album’s original foliation as well.

THE MANUSCRIPT MAP (VERSO)

There can be no doubt that the map was extracted from an atlas or portfolio, perhaps one that was later rebound: if nothing else this would explain the fact that it has been so obviously trimmed on the sides. As a consequence, on the manuscript verso several of the annotations have been cut in half and parts of the manuscript track along the right-hand edge have been lost.

Certainly a surprising omission from the map is the lack of any comment on shipboard events (conditions on board for example, or the familiar comments about seabirds or driftwood or the like) made during the voyage. Rather, the manuscript is strictly about navigation, with the detailed notes confined to observations and variations, apart from one (partially lost) comment about shoals in the southern reaches of the Marshalls.

Indeed, the map is a curious production, the overall impression being quite rough and ready, but the actual details being unexpectedly precise. It is apparent that the compass rose and other details such as the Tropic of Capricorn were initially sketched in, before the voyage track and annotations were added. All of the annotations would appear to be in the same hand but, unusually, in two very different inks. This would tend to confirm that the annotations were made en route, with details added and revisions made in real time, rather than in one single redaction at a later date. A few extra notes, largely marginal calculations of some kind and probably later than the voyage track, have been added in a distinctly different hand.

The track shows the ship making a long deviation to the south-east before tracking back to the north-east to reach Lord Howe Island, then sheeting east to Norfolk Island and veering north towards what would be called the ‘Charlotte’s Bank.’ The first series of landfalls in the Marshalls have then been cut off (although a significant comment on shoals is still largely present) before the ship reappears in the middle of a section completed in a much blacker ink than the sepia-toned ink of the majority of the map.

The ship then sails north-west towards the purported ‘Jardains’ (‘Los Buenos Jardines’ charted by Saavedra in 1528), before jagging back to the east in order to get a clearer run towards Tinian in the Marianas. The track then continues east to ‘Cape Engona’ on ‘Luconia Island’ (the Philippines), past ‘Formosa S. Point’ and coasting the old Portuguese discovery of the ‘Praters’ (more commonly ‘Pratas’) and, lastly, past [Great] Lema Island before petering out near Canton on the Chinese coast. Significantly, apart from the Pratas group, this series of landfalls correspond with the names on another chart included in the 1782-published The East-India Pilot or Oriental Navigator, ‘A Chart of the China Sea, and Philippine Islands… Communicated by Capt. Robert Carr,’ perhaps suggesting that the entire Sayer & Bennett atlas was being carried on board.

THE MAP’S CONNECTION TO THE SCARBOROUGH

Even at first glance it is clear that the map relates to the two important but lesser-known ships in the First Fleet, the Scarborough (Marshall) and the Charlotte (Gilbert). Both had been chartered to bring out parts of the contingent, but both had broader ambitions: namely, scouting trading routes in the Pacific and South China Sea. The ships sailed in tandem for several months and made a series of sightings in the two island groups still named after them.

Their voyages were immediately recognised to be important for the likely future of transports considering making the difficult passage to New South Wales, with the result that both made deals in London to be published: Gilbert separately published his voyage account with Debrett in December 1789 – almost exactly the same time that the pro-Government publisher Stockdale included notes based on Marshall’s voyage as part of the Voyage of Governor Phillip. (Phillip’s book, as is often forgotten but as the title-page makes clear, was based on the work of five main contributors: the journals of Arthur Phillip, John Shortland, John Watts, Henry Lidgbird Ball and John Marshall).

Crucially, based on technical detail and the way names of locations are recorded, the manuscript has an obvious connection not to Gilbert’s account but to the Voyage of Governor Phillip publication, and most specifically to the map published in that book as ‘A Chart of the Track of the Scarborough, on Her Homeward Passage, from Port Jackson, on the Et. Coast of New South Wales, towards China; by Captain John Marshall.’

It is of critical importance to note that the manuscript is not a direct copy of the printed map in the Phillip account; on the contrary, it adds details not recorded on that map and not mentioned in the chapter in the book which is based (very roughly, as it turns out) on Marshall’s journals.

Far from being a chance correlation, the details of the map show that the voyage of the Scarborough is the only possible one to have recorded such a distinctive voyage track. Furthermore, the manuscript adds accurate information not known from any printed source, none of which is anachronous for the date of 1788.

The manuscript map’s connection to the Scarborough can be shown by a series of key points:

1. The only voyage track which even resembles the manuscript map from any early colonial voyages in the region is that of the Scarborough.
2. Even though the Scarborough and the Charlotte sailed in convoy for a long time after they rendezvoused near Lord Howe Island, there are nonetheless significant and telling differences, especially relating to the first week’s sailing out of Port Jackson: in his book, the captain of the Charlotte Thomas Gilbert recorded how they weighed on 6 May and made their way to the Heads, but only left on the morning of 9 May, held up by a storm that had blown up. When they finally sailed the ship tracked just slightly north of due east for the first week until they caught up with the Scarborough at Lord Howe Island around 18 May. This is nothing like the recorded track on the map.
3. In contrast, Marshall on the Scarborough sailed into the teeth of the same gale that had kept Gilbert loitering under Sydney Heads. In heavy seas and strong winds the Scarborough was forced to make a curious trapezoidal track immediately after leaving Port Jackson, initially almost directly south-east and then dramatically to the south-west, before jagging north, once more being blown to the south-east, before finally settling on a roughly north-easterly bearing towards Lord Howe. The latter track, recorded in detail in Phillip’s book, corresponds closely with the distinctive track on the map.
4. There is, similarly, the way in which the ship sailed too far to the west in a gale in mid-July before having to sail back to the southeast for a few days while searching for a landfall in ‘Los Buenos Jardines,’ and the similar retracing of a few days sailing as they were feeling their way towards the strait south of Formosa.
5. It is also significant that while Marshall refers to these islands on the printed map as the ‘Jardines,’ and on the manuscript as the homophone ‘Jardains,’ Gilbert only ever refers to them by the English-language equivalent (the “Gardens, laid down in several charts nearly in this latitude” (Gilbert, p. 50)).
6. There is a clear continuity between the manuscript map and the one printed after Marshall, especially in terms of what new naming is present on both. Chiefly, this relates to the two islands named ‘Smiths I.’ and ‘Clarks Island’ in the northernmost group. On the printed version these were named as, respectively, Button’s Island and Gilbert’s Island. However, the printed map did use both of these names, ultimately attaching them to two much more southerly islands on the printed map.
7. Gilbert did not use either name in his own account of the voyage, and there is no evidence that the names were used by any later mapmakers nor voyagers, meaning that Marshall can be the only source for them.
8. It is well attested that the naming undertaken by both Marshall and Gilbert was confused and often contradictory, so the fact that the names do not align is actually good evidence of an early date of composition. (“… there is little agreement in their accounts on this [ie. naming and priority] and they were in any case together during the passage. Nor is there any clear-cut agreement in their accounts on the names given to the island they saw, after the first discovery, Matthew Island” (Sharp, p. 153)).
9. Marshall, in print, is known to have chopped and changed his names and descriptions so much that even the printed text and the published map do not match. Some of these seem like slips by the printers (‘Woodveil’ Island becomes ‘Woodle’s’ in the latter, for example, while ‘Toulmin’s’ becomes ‘Touching’), but one important sequence of islands on the map is changed dramatically in the text: the map shows a sequence of five islands, running from south to north, as Clark’s, Toulmin’s, Gillespy’s, Allen’s and lastly Smith’s. In the text, most confusingly, these are listed in a completely rearranged sequence, again in order from south to north, as Allen’s, Gillespy’s, Touching’s (sic), Clarke’s (sic) and Smith’s, with the addition of Scarborough’s Island as the most northerly of the sixth (but not shown on the map). This shows that there was still a great deal of confusion on the issue, even by the time Marshall was safely in England.
10. A key passage on the map, now partly lost, reads “Variation 11d [   ] this Shole I [came?] a[   ] of Island had 15 and 30 fa[thoms?] Water Rocky bottom.” This accords beautifully with a matching passage printed over Marshall’s name, describing how on 4 June 1788 Marshall in the Scarborough “altered … course and stretched to the eastward, carrying soundings from fifteen to thirty fathoms water, over a rocky bottom…” (pp. 251-252).
11. The published table of the route of the Scarborough in Phillip has a long series of recorded “variations” which either match or nearly match those on the manuscript (see list below).
12. Hezel’s list of early European ships to traverse the region shows only a handful of other vessels who even coasted the region over the ensuing three or four decades, none of which make anything like the same voyage and none of which appear to have used (or adopted) any of the names in use here (Hezel, pp. 114-115; see also Sharp, pp. 152-194).
13. The most influential near-contemporary map of the region was published almost a decade later in 1798 by Aaron Arrowsmith and it uses, almost exclusively, the alternate naming and mapping of Gilbert, with the result that, as Arrowsmith “relied on Gilbert’s positions, all islands are 1 to 2 degree to the east of their real locations” (Spennemann, p. 66). Marshall’s mapping, that is, soon fell out of use, overtaken by that of Gilbert/Arrowsmith.
14. This is also strong evidence for the identification of the manuscript map with the Scarborough, as the map features the more accurate (slightly more westerly) longitude of Marshall. Similarly, the map features the very northerly positioning of the supposed Jardines.

JOHN MARSHALL AND THE SCARBOROUGH

Marshall (1748-1819) is one of the overlooked figures among the early voyages to New South Wales, despite the fact that he not only commanded one of the First Fleet ships but, uniquely among the early captains, immediately returned on the Second Fleet.

Elizabeth Macarthur, on board the Scarborough as part of the Second Fleet in 1790, described Marshall as “a plain, honest man”, and the known facts of his life certainly agree with this assessment. Like many of the contracted sailors, relatively little is known about him, although David Collins recorded a wonderful story of how Marshall left his dog ‘Hector’ with Mr. Clark (apparently Zachariah Clark, not Ralph) when he sailed in 1788, and how the dog recognised the ship when he returned in the Second Fleet in June 1790, swimming off to it as they came to anchor and refusing to be parted from him again.

Marshall’s detailed manuscript log of the journey out, the published abstract of his account of sailing from New South Wales to Canton published in Phillip’s Voyage (pp. xliii—liii), and the important map included in the book, all prove that above all else he was a serious navigator. Indeed, his abilities were attested to by Gilbert, who commented at one point in his book, “I must pay tribute to the nautical knowledge of this good officer, by observing, that wherever his track and mine coincided, I not only found his voyages useful, but remarkably correct.” (Gilbert, p. 56) A more recent historian has noted that Marshall appeared to have used a “fairly accurate” chronometer (Spennemann, p.11).

Again according to Gilbert, Marshall was among those badly affected by scurvy by the time they were near Saipan, and in fact Marshall’s brother, who was also on board, died of scurvy. Marshall not only survived to make a second voyage in charge of a transport, but went on to a long and adventurous career during the Napoleonic Wars.

ESTABLISHING THE MANUSCRIPT’S HAND

One question that remains unresolved is whether the map is in the hand of Marshall or one of his crew. Details of the crews on the smaller First Fleet ships are often scant. Mollie Gillen, for example, was able to identify only 15 of the crew of the Scarborough, although she speculated that there may have been as many as 20 more on board given the size of the ship, which was, after all, capacious enough to transport a company of Marines and some 200 convicts.

The first point to be made in attempting to answer the question of the map’s authorship is that the hand on the map is not conspicuously like that in the log of the Scarborough en route to New South Wales (as copied for the AJCP). However, it is not known who wrote the log; it was almost certainly not Marshall himself, whose signature at the end appears to have key differences to the hand that made the entries preceding it. By the same token, Marshall’s signature does bear some intriguing similarities to the hand on the map, most visibly in the formation of the capital ‘M’ and several lower case letters including the ‘a’ and ‘r’ but particularly the very vertical ‘s’. Perhaps a more conclusive attribution might be possible through comparison with the hand in the second journal of the latter part of the voyage of the Scarborough, 22 Oct 1788 to 18 Jun 1789 (British Library, Oriental & India Office Collections L/MAR/B/355G), which we have not been able to view. There is a strong likelihood, though, that the journal hand is secretarial.

NOTES ON VARIATION ON THE MANUSCRIPT MAP (those in bold exactly match those in the printed map ‘A Chart of the Track of the Scarborough, on Her Homeward Passage, from Port Jackson …’, in Phillip’s account)

Variation 10.7 E east of Port Jackson

Variation 10.14 E just past Lord Howe Id.

Var [cut off] near Norfolk Island

Variation [cut off] near Charlotte Bank

Variation 11 [cut off] north of Charlotte Bank

Variation 1 [cut off] south of the Marshalls

Variation 11.3 [cut] near “Lord Mulgrave Is”

Variation [cut off] east of Smith’s Id.

Variation 12 [cut off] NW of Smith’s Id.

Variation “as pr Agim” heading NW

Variation 10.10 East ditto

Variation 9.40 E nearing “Jardain’s”

Variation 8.20 E south towards Tinian

Variation 7.14 somewhere near Tinian

Variation 4.00 E sailing west

Variation 3.12 E ditto [this could be the 3.14 noted on the map?]

Variation 1.12 E near Passmore

 

SUMMARY

The appearance on the market of any original First Fleet manuscript is an extremely rare occurrence; in fact it would be fair to say that such material has become virtually unobtainable. This newly discovered manuscript map showing the track of the Scarborough on its voyage from Port Jackson to Canton in 1788 represents an exciting and highly significant addition to the limited corpus of original First Fleet documents. 

 

REFERENCES

Arrowsmith, Aaron. ‘Chart of the Pacific Ocean Drawn from a great number of Printed and MS. Journals. By A. Arrowsmith, Geographer, Charles Street, Soho, London’ (1 October 1798), (https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/74VKMWb74lEb/DR8lbwQB2Amob)

Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (Biblioteca Nacional de España) (online entry for the East-India Pilot: https://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000000793&page=1)

Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (Biblioteca Nacional de España) (online entry for the later issue of the map for Laurie & Whittle: https://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000043679)

Bryan Jr., E.H. Guide to Place Names in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (1971)

Collins, David. An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1798)

Gilbert, Thomas. Voyage from New South Wales to Canton (1789)

Gillen, Mollie. The Founders of Australia (1989)

Hezel, Francis X. Foreign Ships in Micronesia (1979)

Home, Edward. ‘Some Account of New Holland, and the discovery of a Chain of Islands in the Pacific Ocean,’ The Edinburgh Magazine (July 1789), pp. 3—6.

Hunter, John. Historical Journal (1793)

Marshall, John (Capt.). ‘A Journal of the Proceedings on Board the Scarborough. Jno. Marshall Commander from London to new South Wales’ (PRO, BM, ADM 51/4376)

National Library of Australian, catalogue (online entry for the 1778 issue of the Sayer & Bennett map: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-230800479/view)

Phillip, Arthur. Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay (1789)

Sharp, Andrew. The Discovery of the Pacific Islands (1960)

Shirley, Rodney W. Maps in the Atlases of the British Library (2004), p. 1280

Spennemann, Dirk H.R. The First Descriptions of the Southern Marshalls (2004)

Spennemann, Dirk H.R. ‘Historic Ships Associated with the Marshall Islands No. 2. The British merchant vessel Scarborough’ (online)

Tench, Watkin. Complete Account (1793)

Waterhouse, Henry. ‘Journal of a voyage from Port Jackson to the Celebes [now Sulawesi] in the Dutch ship Waaksamheyd’ (SLNSW, MLMSS 6544/3)

Worms, Laurence & Ashley Baynton-Williams. British Map Engravers (2011)