A Surgeon Found

After more than a century, the identity of the unnamed author of a journal held by the State Library of NSW describing a voyage to and from Botany Bay in 1794 has finally been established.

Written by an unnamed surgeon, the journal details the voyage of the ‘Speedy’, Captain Melvill, from 1793 to 1796, as she carried stores to the colony and then went whaling off the coast of South America. It is an invaluable source on whaling at that time, and the author’s observations on scurvy confirm that ships’ surgeons fully understood that fresh fruit and vegetables would cure the disease – the challenge lay in finding substitutes that would survive at sea. His comments on the indigenous peoples of the Sydney region, and the native flora and fauna, are also useful for those studying the early colony.

The author had previously sailed to NSW in the ‘Britannia’ (also captained by Thomas Melvill) as part of the Third Fleet, a voyage that is mentioned several times in the journal but not fully described. Significantly, he reports that there was an outbreak of a ‘putrid fever’ among the convicts in the early stages of that voyage – almost certainly a reference to typhus brought on board from the hulks and prisons – which he says was successfully managed: only one man died. Since the journal of the ‘Britannia’ has not survived, this is of considerable value to historians of the transportation system.

Acquired in 1911 from the booksellers, Angus & Robertson, by the collector, Sir William Dixson, the journal was bequeathed to the library in 1952. Its history prior to 1911 is unknown.

I had discovered the surgeon’s surname and the initial of his first name – ‘D. Brown’ – including it in the endnotes to my newsletter on the Melvill Cup published in April 2023. Noticing this, one of Melvill’s descendants contacted the State Library seeking the source of this attribution, and in April this year the library got in touch with me.

There were two sources. Reverend Richard Johnson, the colony’s chaplain from 1788 to 1800, mentioned ‘Dr Brown’ of the Speedy in a letter to William Wilberforce in August 1794. And I had subsequently stumbled across a 1796 letter from ‘D. Brown’ of this same ship describing the cinchona tree of South America in a book published by the English collector and Linnaean, Aylmer Lambert. [1]

Janelle Collins, a specialist librarian at the State Library, working with Melvill’s curious descendant, has now established his first name (David) and they have learned more about him.

Given his profession and his name, it is likely that he was a Scot. There was a David Brown who was examined by the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh in March 1778 and granted a diploma, and given the lack of other potential candidates, it seems likely that this was the man.

What happened to him over the next 13 years is unknown. His name does not appear in medical directories of the early 1780s, and the next certain evidence of Doctor Brown is his appearance on the Britannia, which he probably joined in December 1790.

It is evident from his journal that he was passionate about natural history, and on his return to England from NSW in late 1796, he was nominated for an associateship with the Linnaean Society by Aylmer Lambert and John White, the surgeon-general of the colony in NSW, who had recently returned home. The nomination was accepted.

Brown subsequently took up a position as surgeon at the Artillery Hospital at Port Royal (adjacent to Kingston) in Jamaica and moved there around 1800. He continued to be actively involved in the collection of exotic plants, experimented with the healing potential of local herbs, and wrote to the Medical and Physical Journal in 1806 ‘on the contagious nature of Yellow Fever’.

When he passed away at Jamaica in late April 1817, he owned five household slaves. The executor of his estate was James Wiles, superintendent of the botanical gardens at Port Royal.

An updated catalogue entry for the journal in the State Library now reads:

‘The author of this manuscript was David Brown, the surgeon of the Britannia, transport and whaler (March 1791-August 1793) and the Speedy, transport and whaler (25 December 1793-19 October 1796) both under the command of Captain Thomas Melville. The voyage in the Britannia is described briefly. She arrived with the Third Fleet in Port Jackson, 14 October 1791 and then after 9 months whaling off the coasts of Chile and Peru, returned to England, August 1793.’

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Since this was first published, Rachel Utting has pointed out that she identified the letter of 'D. Brown' to Lambert in her 2022 PhD thesis at Royal Holloway, 'Collecting Leviathan: The British Southern Whale Fishery and Global Knowledge Production, 1775-1860'.

[1] Johnson to Wilberforce, 6 August 1794, Moore Papers 22/3, p. 16, Lambeth Palace Library, AJCP M677; Brown to Lambert, 5 December 1796 in Aylmer Bourke Lambert, A Description of the Genus Cinchona, London: B. & J. White, 1797, pp. 30-37.