Our excited Shipping Reporter discovered another great nautical offering from Douglas Stewart Fine Books, Melbourne - a handwritten letter from Midshipman Newton Fowell , aboard HMS Sirius, off Rio de Janiero , on August 6, 1787, the very day Captain Arthur Phillip arrived with the ll vessels of the First Fleet . It is listed for $150,000.
Written to Fowell's Honoured Father, it seems to include a request for a number of things to be shipped to him :
We are just now off Rio Janeiro [sic] on the Coast of Brazil South America from where a Packet is now under Weigh for Lisbon & have five Minutes time which I would not let slip to let you know I am very well & have great hopes of a Coms. [commission] every Day. I am of course very happy and like the Officers very well. Capt. Philip [sic] has hoisted a broad Pendant [pennant] so I suppose he can here do anything with the Squad [Squadron] he Pleases. I am in want of a few things which I did not find in the Chest the first some Coarse Cloth for Towels & some Table Cloths fit for a Wardroom Mess. Leather for shoes and Cloth for Trousers.
The First Fleet would sail for Cape Town almost a month later, on September 4 , and thence to New South Wales. HMS Supply was the first ship to arrive at Botany Bay on January 18, 1788 ; three others arrived on the following day, and the remaining ships of the squadron, HMS Sirius among them, dropped anchor on January 20.
The bookshop says Fowell , who joined the Royal Navy aboard HMS Ocean when he was 12 , he the subject of a favourable report by Captain Phillip to Lord Nepean , is known to have made several sketches at Sydney Cove, none of which survived.
In a second letter to his father , written from Batavia at the end of July in 1790, Fowell lamented the loss of a number of precious curios and sketches , including a plan of Botany Bay and Port Jackson , and a very valuable collection of birds , in the wreck of the Sirius at Norfolk Island , where Fowell bravely offered to remain aboard the doomed vessel.
After the loss of the Sirius, Fowell, now a Second Lieutenant, was put in charge of a vessel which made a run back to the Sydney penal settlement with supplies.
On the return trip from Java , Fowell, 22, died from fever on August 25,1790.
(Fleet, Sirius, Letter.)
