Abstract
This book is the welcome and meticulously researched biography of William Dawes, the first professional astronomer resident in Australia. Dawes came to Sydney on the First Fleet, a convoy of 11 vessels that arrived in January 1788 after a voyage of 8 months to establish a convict colony. He had been appointed by the Board of Longitude to make determinations of latitude and longitude using astronomical instruments provided, including Kendall’s K1 chronometer that had been used by James Cook. Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, had strongly supported Dawes’ appointment.
Dawes established an observatory at what is now known as Dawes Point, on the southern ramparts of where Sydney Harbour Bridge now stands. Unfortunately, the astronomical record of Dawes’ observations is now lost. Correspondence from Dawes to Maskelyne is the principal record of the astronomical work undertaken. Dawes stayed in Sydney for 4 years, during which time Governor Phillip gave him a number of other tasks including surveying, establishing a defensive artillery battery on Dawes Point and joining several expeditions to the unexplored interior west of Sydney. These tasks curtailed the astronomical work he was originally assigned, and for this and other reasons relations between Dawes and Governor Phillip soured.
The astronomical notebooks of William Dawes were returned to England when Dawes went home in December 1791 and Maskelyne asked the astronomer William Wales to further analyse the data. But Wales died in 1798 before completing the task and the notebooks were then lost. The astronomical record of Dawes’ achievements in astronomy are therefore exceedingly sparse. De Grijs and Jacob have produced a carefully researched monograph with many citations and illustrations but were clearly frustrated by the lack of material on which to base their account.
The first two chapters cover the voyage of the First Fleet from England and the first four years in Sydney. They are based on previously published academic papers by the authors, and the narrative reads more like a doctoral dissertation than an engaging biography, given the careful analysis of every poorly known fact available in the scanty literature. There are technical accounts of the accuracy of the longitude and latitude determinations, the results of a gravity survey based on pendulum swing timing and a lengthy discussion of the precise location of Dawes’ makeshift observatory on the Dawes Point promontory at Sydney Cove. These are all technical discussions which make the early chapters quite difficult to read. Many readers will be wanting to learn more about Dawes as a man, about life in a convict colony and relations between the settlers, convicts and Aboriginal peoples in the neighbourhood.
These deficiencies are thankfully absent in Chapter 3 and following. Here we learn of Dawes as a linguist who developed a close and possibly amorous relationship with a teenage Aboriginal girl, Patyegerang, who taught Dawes the rudiments of the local Aboriginal language. Three of Dawes’ notebooks are extant and are available on-line.
We also learn of Dawes’ fervently held religious beliefs, which meant he was loathe to attack or harm the Aboriginal people. He at first refused Governor Phillip’s request that he join a party to kill ten Aboriginals as retribution for an attack that led to the death of one of the settlers. It is the breakdown of relations with the Governor that probably resulted in Dawes’ request to stay on in the NSW colony being declined and his being sent home to England after 4 years. Thus ended the tenure of Australia’s first resident astronomer, with very little of astronomical value to show for his labours.
The remaining chapters of the biography cover two further episodes of Dawes’ life. Less than a year after returning to England, he was appointed as governor of Sierra Leone in West Africa, a colony established to accept liberated slaves returning from North America. He served as governor in three terms from 1792 to 1803, and returned on a fourth occasion in 1808 as a Commissioner to investigate the settlements in West Africa for the British crown. Dawes’ strong abolitionist stance against the practice of slavery came to the fore during this time.
The next episode of his life was his time in Antigua in the West Indies, where he was sent by the Church Missionary Society. He went there with his second wife Grace and spent the years from 1811 to his death in 1836 in Antigua, where he established Sunday schools for the native population. Several thousand students were enrolled in these schools, for which Dawes used both Church of England and Methodist teachers, a practice which enraged the CMS leaders and resulted in the eventual closure of the schools by 1829. Dawes stayed on for several more years in declining health and in financial stress. He died in 1836 not having achieved much and embittered by the personal attacks on his integrity.
Dawes’ papers and possessions were shipped from Antigua in 1871 but were all lost when the vessel was shipwrecked in a great Caribbean hurricane, further leading to the paucity of information on Dawes’ life. Given the relatively few documented sources which the authors had available, it is remarkable that they were able to bring the biographical project to a successful conclusion, describing the life of a talented but constrained individual with a strong religious and social conscience. Dawes’ talents for astronomy, surveying, languages and as a teacher were hardly allowed to flourish given his numerous personality conflicts with superiors and his ample dose of bad luck.
