The Melvill Cup

At a time when petroleum was not yet available as a luminant and lubricant, whale oil was a valuable resource. And while a viable whaling industry would not be established in Australian waters for another seven or eight years, the taking of a sperm whale off the NSW coast was a matter of great celebration because it held the promise that, only three years after its establishment, this penal settlement at the far end of the earth might become self-sufficient.

Historians have been unaware of the cup: there is no reference to it in any of the surviving historical records. This issue of ‘A Fine Passage’ tells the story of the Britannia, and for the first time, publishes images of the Melvill Cup.

Opening the Pacific Whale Fishery

The decision taken by the British government in August 1786 to establish a penal colony in the south-west corner of the Pacific, was closely linked to the opening of these waters to British whalers in the aftermath of the American War of Independence.

In February of that year, some of the leading investors in the Southern Whale Fishery (based in the south Atlantic off the coast of South America) – among them the London merchants, Samuel Enderby and John St Barbe – had lobbied the government to reduce the geographic limits of the East India Company’s monopoly, so they could send ships into the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Enabling legislation was passed in June and the first whaler to go east of the Cape of Good Hope was being commissioned in the summer of 1786 as Lord Sydney and his departmental secretary, Evan Nepean, were developing their plans for a penal settlement on the south-east coast of New Holland.

One of the First Fleet transports, the Prince of Wales, was owned by a whaling family and following her return from New South Wales in 1789, she was to undertake three more voyages into the Southern Whale Fishery, one of them (at least) into the Pacific. This suggests that her name was a play on words, and that her owners contracted her to government so she could reconnoitre the whaling grounds of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Camden, Calvert & King, the contractors for the Second Fleet, offered one of their whalers for that voyage, but she was rejected as unsuitable for the purpose. After leaving NSW, all three of the Second Fleet ships sailed to China for a cargo of tea.

The prospect of using whalers for the transportation of convicts was directly raised with the Prime Minister in August 1790, as the government was preparing to commission the Third Fleet. Enderby and St Barbe met Evan Nepean in mid-October, days before the invitation to tender was published, insisting that they could carry out all of the convicts and stores. Nepean told them to wait until tenders were called.

We do not know whether Enderby or St Barbe submitted a bid, but the Third Fleet contract was also won by Camden, Calvert & King, who supplied six of the ships themselves and sub-contracted the other four. Two of their six vessels, the Mary Ann and the Matilda, were whalers, with another three supplied by other merchants. One of these was the Britannia, owned by Samuel Enderby; another was the William & Ann, owned by John St Barbe.

The Britannia, Melvill

The Britannia had been constructed at Bridport on the south coast of England in 1783: she was immediately committed to the West India trade, sailing to and from St Vincent four times over the next three years. In October 1786, she was offered to the shipbroker, William Richards, for the First Fleet, but for some unknown reason was not taken up. The Britannia returned to the West India trade until December 1790, when she was purchased by Enderby and engaged by Camden, Calvert & King for the Third Fleet.

Her master, Thomas Melvill, was a 34 year old Scot from Leith, who had spent his early years in the Greenland fishery. He had already commanded four ships in the Southern Whale Fishery, and this was to be his first voyage beyond the Capes.

The mortality rate among the convicts on the Britannia was 14 percent for the voyage itself, somewhat above the average, but if we count deaths in the three months after landing, it was 21 percent, second worst of the Third Fleet transports. Convict mortality was largely determined by the state of the prisons and hulks from which the ships drew their prisoners – the Britannia took hers from Newgate, where there had been a recent outbreak of typhus. The ship’s journal has not been found, but there is nothing to suggest that Melvill sailed irresponsibly or mistreated the convicts in his care. No complaints were made to the authorities upon arrival, as there were, for example, with the Queen, another of the Third Fleet transports.

The NSW Fishery

The officers and crew of a South Sea whaler were not paid wages, but were entitled to a share (or ‘lay’) of the net profits for the voyage. This was an innovation introduced by the Americans, and in an enterprise where success depended heavily on the physical effort and personal risk of almost every man on board, it is not difficult to understand why profit-sharing quickly became the norm.

The men were paid wages for the voyage down to New South Wales: nine guineas apiece in the case of the Britannia. But once they had unloaded their passengers and cargo, the lay system came into effect. Melvill was to receive a third, the first mate a 26th share, and so on down to the ordinary seamen who would receive 100th. This was a dangerous business: the captain and the two mates served as harpooners, and on one of his earlier voyages, Melvill’s boat had been destroyed by a whale they were pursuing: he had lost several of his men, and spent three hours in the waters of the south Atlantic.

A whaler might carry as many as 120 harpoons, 50 or 60 lances, and a variety of spades, scythes and running hooks. The convicts would have been unaware of all this hardware, but every time they went on deck for exercise, they would have been reminded of the Britannia’s main business by the 25-foot whaleboats stored between the masts.

On the outward voyage, the seamen would have talked about the sperm whales that Enderby’s Emelia had encountered on her pioneering voyage into the Pacific two years earlier: large, placid and plentiful. And long before they had arrived at New South Wales, they were grumbling about having to manage convicts instead of catching fish. On their passage across the Southern Ocean, the Britannia encountered several small pods, but as they sailed up the coast of New South Wales, Melvill saw more sperm whales in one afternoon than he had seen in six years off the coast of Brazil:

We sailed through different shoals of them from 12 o’clock in the day till sunset, all round the horizon, as far as I could see from the mast head. In fact I saw very great prospects in making our fishery upon this coast and establishing a fishery here. Our people was in the highest spirits at so great a sight and I was determined as soon as I got in and got clear of my live lumber, to make all possible dispatch on the fishery on this coast.[1]

They were less than three leagues off the coast, and Melvill proposed to return to sea as soon as he had unloaded the convicts. To his horror, he was informed that Phillip wanted to send the Britannia to Norfolk Island with convicts and stores, and he had no alternative but to take the Governor into his confidence. As he explained in a letter to Enderby:

...[Phillip] took me into a private room, he told me he had read my letters, and that he would render me every service that lay in his power; that next morning he would dispatch every long-boat in the fleet to take our convicts out, and take our stores out immediately, which he did accordingly, and did every thing to dispatch us on the fishery.[2]

Melvill had wanted to keep the whales a secret, but his crew had been excitedly talking about them ever since coming into port, and overnight everyone was caught up in their enthusiasm. Gentlemen wrote home about the commercial prospects of the settlement if a fishery could be established in the waters offshore. The masters of the other whaling ships abandoned plans of sailing for South America, and hastily prepared to go fishing off the NSW coast.

Whaling

On the 24th of October 1791, eleven days after she had arrived in port, the Britannia made her way out of the harbour in company with the William & Ann, and sailed east. As the sun rose the next morning, they could see whales all round the horizon. There was a high sea running, and it was not until that afternoon that they could lower their boats.

When the boats came alongside the whale, four and a half feet of iron would be driven deep into the animal’s flesh. If it held, a second iron attached to a flat piece of wood known as a ‘drug’ (or drag) was then thrust in, with the objective of exhausting the whale as it dived. Once it had surfaced again, they would sink a lance behind the shoulder blade, piercing the diaphragm and, with luck, killing the creature almost immediately. With so many other fish close at hand, the dead whale would be marked by a long pole topped with a pennant and the chase would continue. Melvill wrote:

In less than two hours we had seven whales killed, but unfortunately a heavy gale came on from the south west and took the ship aback with a squall [so] that the ship could only fetch two of them. The rest we was obliged to cut from and make the best of our way on board to save the boats and crew. The William and Ann saved one, and we took the other, and rode by them all night with a heavy gale of wind.[3]

When the weather moderated the next morning, the whales were brought alongside, the flesh was cut away and boiled down in cast iron try pots set in a brick furnace on the upper deck. One small whale yielded only twelve barrels of oil, but they recovered a great deal of ‘head matter’, a waxy substance from a cavity inside the head that produced the finest quality candles and was thus more valuable.[4] They followed the whales for a week, but rough weather prevented them from lowering their boats again, and Melvill returned to harbour to refit the ship and refill his water. Captain John Hunter wrote that the Britannia returned from her cruise on the 10th of November, ‘being the first ship which had ever fished for whales on the coast of New South Wales’.[5] According to Marine Captain Watkin Tench:

...in the fourteen days which he [Melvill] had been out, he had seen more spermaceti whales, than in all his former life: they amounted he said to many thousands, most of them of enormous magnitude; and had he not met with bad weather, he could have killed as many as he pleased.[6]

The First Whale Taken

The news that whales had been caught just off the coast was celebrated by the residents of the colony. Phillip wrote to the Home Secretary that from the reports he had received, ‘I have reason to hope that a whale fishery may be established on this coast’.[7] Philip Gidley King, the Lieutenant Governor in charge of the settlement on Norfolk Island and a friend of Samuel Enderby, wrote to one of his patrons: ‘It is needless to me to point out the great advantages which will accrue to the colony if this fishery succeeds & which I think there is very little doubt of’.[8] And Elizabeth Macarthur, the wife of one of the military officers: ‘. . . the success of these vessels in this fishery will doubtless be the means of establishing a more frequent communication with England’.[9]

One of the marines wrote in his journal that the Britannia was entitled to a bounty of £1,000 for taking the first whale off the NSW coast. There are no other mentions of this in the records, and it seems likely that it was a subscription raised by the whaling merchants of London rather than something initiated by government.[10]

However, after more bad weather and more unsuccessful cruises, the whalers’ enthusiasm began to wane. The Governor’s official secretary, David Collins, wrote in his journal:

Melvill the master of the Britannia, who had been formerly so sanguine in his hopes of a fishery, seemed now to have adopted a different opinion, and hinted to some in the colony, that he did not think he should try the coast any longer.

He wasn’t happy about this:

...the whalers were not out of port at any one time long enough to enable them to speak with any degree of precision either for or against the probability of success.[11]

Collins was reflecting the views of the Governor, who has spent his early years as a seaman in the Greenland Fishery, and was deeply disappointed that the masters were giving up so soon. Camden, Calvert & King’s ships sailed for the coast of Peru in late December, the others making one last attempt before following. For the Britannia, it was to be a profitable voyage, returning to the Thames in August 1793 with 118 tons of whale oil and 1,900 seal skins.

The Melvill Cup

But there is more to this story. Melvill’s descendants are in possession of a silver cup which is engraved with the following words:

The cup is made of sterling silver, confirmed by the hallmark of the lion passant (the second mark from the left in Image 3 below). It measures 207 mm from base to rim, 250 mm to the top of the handles, and 135 mm across the top from rim to rim. On the reverse is a rudimentary armorial shield showing three crescents (Image 2).

Origins of the Cup

At first glance, this appears to be a trophy presented to Captain Melvill in November or December 1791, shortly after his return to Sydney Cove with the whale. But the story is complex.

The maker’s mark (far left in Image 3) indicates that it was produced by the London silversmiths, James and Elizabeth Bland, who first registered their mark in September 1794. The cup was clearly purchased and engraved at some point after that date.

One explanation might be that Melvill purchased the cup with some of the bounty money and had it engraved himself. Support for this might be found in the fact that Phillip’s name is spelled ‘Phillips’, a common mistake at the time, and not one that Phillip would have made. But there is no reason to doubt the inscription which states that it was a gift of the Governor.

Another possible explanation might be that Phillip gave Melvill a certificate and a bill of exchange while he was in the colony, so that he could purchase a cup on his return and have it engraved. There is no evidence to confirm or refute this, and this would also be consistent with the misspelt name.

Yet another interpretation of the evidence might be that the gift was made at some later time when Phillip and Melvill were both in England. Because they were both men of the sea, there were only a few occasions when this might have happened: for a variety of reasons, the most likely time is October 1796.

Melvill had returned to Port Jackson in 1794 in the Speedy, another Enderby whaler, but on this occasion, he gave up on the NSW Fishery after only six days, having encountered ‘a constant and heavy gale’. Once again, he made his way to the coast of South America and returned to England in October of 1796.

Phillip had formally resigned as Governor in July 1793, but he maintained an active interest in the colony, and periodically intervened on behalf of his former officers. We know that he received letters from NSW in September 1796, updating him on events there, and it is likely that he was told by his correspondents that the Speedy (and another whaler named the William) had failed to invest any serious effort in the fishery. Phillip had been annoyed at the abandonment of the NSW Fishery in January 1792, writing to the Home Secretary shortly before his departure for England in December of that year:

...not one of them gave the coast a fair trial, nor can I suppose that they left it solely on account of bad weather and strong currents. The weather on the coast of Brazil is not better than it is on this coast, nor have the whalers there those advantages of harbours which ships employed on this fishery would have; as to the currents, they are pretty much the same on both coasts.[12]

In October 1796, around the time that Melvill returned home in the Speedy, the Duke of Portland (who as Home Secretary was responsible for the management of the colony) wrote to the Transport Board (who commissioned the ships which carried out the convicts and stores), asking whether the whalers taken up by government for NSW might be prevailed upon to fish in the waters nearby. After making inquiries, the Transport Board explained that the whaling merchants were reluctant to do so, and it would be expensive for government to insist.[13]

So another explanation might be that Phillip purchased the cup and had it engraved and presented to Melvill as a way of drawing Enderby’s attention back to the NSW Whale Fishery. On this occasion, at least, he failed.

But in late 1797, Enderby and the other merchants involved in the southern whale fishery petitioned the government for another extension of its geographic limits. This was driven in part by the outbreak of war with Spain, and the risk of capture for British whalers operating off the west coast of Spanish South America.

The approval of the East India Company was obtained and legislation was passed the following year, permitting whalers that were not employed in transporting convicts and stores to Port Jackson to fish off the NSW coast. In 1798, half a dozen ships, including the Britannia, spent time hunting whales in these waters, so that by the end of the decade, it was accepted that with careful planning, the NSW Fishery could pay its way.

This is an intriguing possibility, but for the present, there is insufficient evidence, and the circumstances surrounding the purchase, engraving and presentation of the Melvill Cup must remain a mystery.

Fate of the Britannia

On her return from her first visit to NSW, the Britannia was employed as a naval transport for several years, before returning to the NSW fishery four more times in the years between 1797 and 1806. On the 15th of August 1806, as she was hunting whales in the waters to the north of Lord Howe Island, the Britannia struck the Middleton Shoal and foundered. Two of the boats made their way to Port Jackson; a third, which was carrying the chief mate and several other members of the crew, was separated in a gale and never seen again. The Middleton Shoal would claim several more vessels before it was properly surveyed in the 1850s.

Fate of Thomas Melvill

Shortly after his return, Melvill assumed command of the Speedy, and took her to NSW with stores. He was clearly thinking of settling in the colony since he purchased 90 acres of land on the Parramatta River, but in 1800 he relocated his family to the Cape of Good Hope instead. There were several more voyages, an unsuccessful farming investment in Saldanha Bay on the south-east coast of Africa, and a ship’s chandlery at Cape Town, before an early death in 1814, at the age of 56.

His son John would serve as surveyor-general at the Cape. His daughter Jennett would marry another surveyor, George Evans, when he stopped at the Cape on his way to NSW. They built a house on her father’s land on the banks of the Parramatta, and in 1805, Jennett was described by a gentleman convict who was living on the farm next door as ‘a very pretty young woman, the Daughter of an English Capn Melville at the Cape-Good-hope’.[14] George Evans would distinguish himself in NSW as an explorer, surveyor and artist.

Research

The Melvill Cup was handed down through the South African side of the family: the author located it in December 2021 while researching their genealogy. It was measured, and the photographs in this newsletter were taken in January 2023 by a professional photographer commissioned by the current custodian of the cup, following a request by the author. There are no family stories associated with the cup.

The painting at the head of the newsletter is Thomas Whitcombe, ‘Departure of the Whaler Britannia from Sydney Cove, 1798’, held by the National Library of Australia. This was the same ship which had been commanded by Thomas Melvill on the Third Fleet.

Update

In 2023-24, the Australian Association for Maritime History, published a version of this newsletter as a research note in their journal, The Great Circle.

________________________

[1] Melvill to Enderby, 22 November 1791, Enderby Archive, Mitchell Library, MLA322, pp.519-526.

[2] Melvill to Enderby, ibid.

[3] Melvill to Enderby, ibid.

[4] Melvill to Enderby, ibid; D. Brown, ‘Whaling Voyages Round the World in the Britannia and Speedy Transports, 1791-1796’, SLNSW DLMSQ 36, pp.195, 213-215, 227-229.

[5] John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson. . . and the Voyages, London: John Stockdale, 1793, p.556.

[6] Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, London: 1793, published in Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1979, pp.298-299

[7] Phillip to Grenville, 5 November 1791, Historical Records of Australia (hereafter HRA), 1:1, p.267.

[8] King to the Marquess of Buckingham, 24 October 1791, UK National Archives (hereafter TNA) CO201/6/346a.

[9] Elizabeth Macarthur to her mother, 7 December 1791, in Sibella Macarthur Onslow (ed.), Some Early Records of the Macarthurs of Camden, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1914, p.43.

[10] John Easty, Memorandum of the Transactions of a Voyage from England to Botany Bay, 1787-1793, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1965, p.134.

[11] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales [1798], Sydney: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1975, Vol.1, pp.158-159.

[12] Phillip to Grenville, 11 October 1792, HRA 1:1, p.397.

[13] Transport Board to John King, 25 October 1796, TNA ADM108/19, p.46.

[14] John Grant to his mother, 1-10 January 1805, Papers of John Grant, 1769-1810, National Library of Australia. MS737

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The gift of

His Excellency

Arthur Phillips, Esq.r

Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief

of His Majesty's Territory

of New South Wales

and its Dependencies

to

Thomas Melvill

Commander of the Britannia

For killing a Spermaceti Whale

on the 26th October 1791,

being the first taken on that Coast

since the Colony was Established.

Image 1: The Melvill Cup, showing inscription. © Chris Zweigenthal

Image 2: Reverse of the cup, showing the shield with three crescents. © Chris Zweigenthal

Image 3: Hallmarks on the base of the Melvill Cup. © Chris Zweigenthal