New research on Arthur Phillip’s family history in London reveals the humble origins of the man who would be governor on the other side of the world…

BY Michael FlYnn

Appointed on merityour history

Colonial australia was launched with a public relations campaign in london

championing an unlikely imperial hero, Governor arthur Phillip. its centrepiece was a book published in 1789: The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, beginning with a flourish:

arthur Phillip is one of those officers, who, like Drake, Dampier and Cook, has raised himself by his merit and his services, to distinction and command. His father was Jacob Phillip, a native of Frankfurt, in Germany, who having settled in England, maintained his family and educated his son by teaching the languages. His mother was Elizabeth Breach, who married, for her first husband, Captain Herbert of the navy, a kinsman of lord Pembroke.

the biographical sketch was an early example of government spin. though it admitted that Phillip was a newcomer who had “raised himself” on merit, it applied a genteel airbrushing to his family background. the touch-up disguised the fact that the upwardly mobile “Guv’nor”, had come from a relatively humble family of east london seafarers and tradesmen.

in his 1987 biography Arthur Phillip 1738–1814: His Voyaging, alan Frost demonstrated that Phillip’s father Jacob, far from being a genteel language tutor, was a plain seaman and that the story of Elizabeth Breach marrying a naval captain was completely false.[1] in reality her first husband was John Herbert, an ordinary naval seaman in london in 1728. as a member of the crew of HMS Tartar he died at Jamaica in 1731. He was a plain Jack

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tar on the tartar. Whether Phillip or his publisher was responsible for wildly exaggerating Herbert’s status is not known.

arthur Phillip was baptised in 1738 at all Hallows Church of England, Bread street, in the City of london. the church (demolished in the 1870s) stood on the sE corner of Watling and Bread streets, near st Paul’s Cathedral. John Milton, the poet so loved by the First Fleet chronicler Watkin tench, was baptised in the same tiny parish in 1608.

EastEndErs research in newly scanned and indexed london parish registers shows that Phillip had two younger sisters whose baptism records reflect the Phillip family’s movements during his childhood: ann steele Phillip was born in 1740 at Wellclose square, Whitechapel, then a prosperous place about 1km north east of the tower of london near Wapping. another sister, Eliza Maria was born in 1742 at rotherhithe, a docks area on the surrey side of the thames opposite the isle of Dogs.

so the young arthur’s childhood was spent in Whitechapel, Wapping and rotherhithe before he was sent to the naval school at Greenwich. Merit was important, but connections were everything in Georgian England. on joining the navy Phillip served under a relative, Captain Michael Everitt (1717–1776). Everitt had step-siblings from his mother’s first marriage to Benjamin Breach, who was undoubtedly a relative, possibly Phillip’s great uncle. a successful naval commander, Everitt took Phillip under his wing, acting as his mentor. Phillip remained close to the Everitts, who lived at Fareham in Hampshire. Captain Everitt’s son Michael John Everitt, himself a naval commander, was killed during a naval battle in the West indies in 1779, aged 26. a memorial to him in the church at Fareham read:

smit in the hour of youth’s just opening bloomthe aspiring hero found an early tomb Blush not to weep, but o’er the honoured bierWith virtue and his Country drop a tear.

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Below An image from the Convict Sydney exhibition at Hyde Park Barracks Museum, Sydney, depicting convicts leaving London and arriving at Port Jackson © Wayne Haag

as a naval officer Phillip gravitated back to the city, where he developed a taste for living well. in 1763 he married a rich older widow named Margaret Charlotte Denison at st augustine’s, Watling street. it was familiar territory. the church was at the corner of Watling street and old Change (now new Change) across the road from the east side of st Paul’s Cathedral and its adjacent school and just two blocks from all Hallows, where Phillip had been baptised in 1738. the marriage ended in divorce six years later.

ann steel Phillip seems to have been Phillip’s only sibling to reach adulthood. in 1766 she married William Hughes in st augustine’s. she had only one child, arthur George Hughes (doubtless named in honour of his uncle arthur Phillip) born in 1769 who lived only a few weeks. ann herself died at Clerkenwell in 1780, aged 40.

Phillip’s German immigrant father has remained a shadowy figure. some historians have speculated that he may have been Jewish. there is no direct evidence of this, though several German Jewish families named Phillip or Phillips certainly emigrated to london and Dublin in the early to mid-18th century. the surname was also borne by Christian Germans.

Sturm und drangno certain reference to Jacob Phillip after 1742 has been traced. But newspaper reports mention a man of this name who may be arthur Phillip’s father.[2] in the last week of november 1774 a terrible storm wrecked a number of ships on the coast of eastern England. london newspapers reported that the remains of a large foreign cargo ship supposed to be a “hamburgher” (that is, a ship from Hamburg) had washed up on the shore near Wells-next-the-sea on the north norfolk coast and “it is feared that the people all perished”. the newspapers reported variously that the ship was called the Jacob and Phillip and that it was commanded by a Jacob Phillip. the ship’s name and its year of construction (1770) were still visible on the wreck. Part of the

cargo of timber including oak planks, clapboards and pipe staves had washed up on the norfolk shore.

this schipper, Jacob Phillip, fits the profile of arthur Phillip’s German father perfectly, assuming he was an experienced seaman in his early- to mid-60s who had risen to be a merchant ship captain. in the early 1770s the ship Jacob and Phillip (probably named for two owners called Jacob and Phillip) had made several previous voyages to london from the German port of stettin (now szczecin in what is now Poland). there is no corroborating evidence to confirm the identification of this ship’s captain as arthur Phillip’s father, and it is possible that the newspapers mistakenly reported a garbled version of the ship’s name as the name of the master. But

it should be considered as a possibility. History, like science, is advanced by hypothesis.

On HiS majeSty’S Service in germanyarthur Phillip was no ordinary sea captain. Every now and then glimpses emerge of his role as a highly intelligent British spy fluent in five European languages, naturally

including his father’s German. in april 1782 he was in command of HMS Ariadne docked in the Elbe, the great river traversing western Germany before it enters the north sea below Hamburg.[3] While there he sent a letter to Philip stephens, secretary to the lords of the admiralty on the subject of recruiting German seamen for the British navy in the last desperate months before Britain lost the war with america. He reported that he had discussed the issue with Baron Münchhausen, Privy Councillor to Britain’s George iii in the King’s capacity as Elector of the German state of Hanover. in spite of his background, Phillip was a natural diplomat, always confident in dealing with aristocrats and statesmen. Münchhausen was a relative of a namesake whose fantastic tales and adventures were about to become a literary phenomenon. Phillip’s enquiries had established that George iii had the right to recruit in Hamburg because he had “some dependencies”

“When he had married for the first time in 1763 Arthur

Phillip’s signature was unsophisticated, almost crude.

It would probably be fair to bet London to a brick that he

had an accent to match.”

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in the region. He also wrote of recruiting seamen in the port of Bremen and in other parts of the Electorate of Hanover, adding:

it may not be improper to observe to their lordships that great quantitys [sic] of Plank and timber is brought up in Hanover and sent to Holland in small shoots [a kind of raft].

it could be coincidental, but there is a curious resonance in this remark. Was he thinking of a Phillip family business and that ill-fated voyage from Hamburg with a load of timber?

SHadwell dOcklandSin 1996 Michael scorgie and Peter Hudgson found a reference to Phillip’s widowed mother Mrs Elizabeth Phillip née Breach living at shadwell Dock when the First Fleet sailed in 1787.[4] new light on her family has now emerged from a close re-examination of arthur Phillip’s will. His beneficiaries were a cluster of blood relatives: one first cousin and the children and grandchildren of deceased cousins. all can be traced back to two of Phillip’s aunts, Mary Breach and susanna Breach. the baptism of their sister Elizabeth (Phillip’s mother), which previously eluded researchers, may be identified as that of Elizabeth the daughter of William Breach, a poulterer, and his wife Elizabeth, baptised on 18 February 1708 at st Catherine’s by the tower (also known as st Catherine’s Collegiate Church and spelt st Katharine’s on modern maps).[5] this vanished church and parish were immediately to the east of the tower of london in the area now occupied by st Katharine’s Docks.

Both Phillip’s aunts married shipwrights. one of them, susanna’s husband Charles Pagester, built and repaired ships in Greenland Dock at rotherhithe. in 1753 the young arthur Phillip was apprenticed to a captain of a commercial whaling ship based at this dock and bound for the atlantic whaling grounds around Greenland. Pagester may have been involved in getting his young nephew this first apprenticeship at sea before entering the navy.

arthur Phillip died on 31 august 1814, aged 75, as a rear admiral of the White, in his grand terrace house a few doors from the assembly rooms

in Jane austen’s Bath, and was buried at nearby Bathampton. after his widow’s death in 1823 his estate became the subject of litigation which was still running 30 years after his death. the rev. arthur Phillip lancefield, the grandson of one of the beneficiaries wrote in 1899 that “all her share of the property was lost in the costs of a Chancery suit of the type of ‘Jarndyce v. Jarndyce’” (the endless legal case satirised by Dickens in Bleak House).[6]

When he had married for the first time in 1763 arthur Phillip’s signature was unsophisticated, almost crude. it would probably be fair to bet london to a brick that he had an accent to match. When he married his second wife isabella Whitehead in fashionable st Marylebone Church in West london in 1794 his signature in the register flourishes in a polished, elegant style, as stately as a baroque symphony. His accent had probably made a long voyage from the thames docks as well.

✳ Michael Flynn is a Sydney historian and author of the second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict armada of 1790. He is preparing a revised edition of the Founders of australia: a Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, to be published by the Biographical Database of Australia.

endnotes

[1] alan Frost, Arthur Phillip, 1738-1814: His Voyaging (oxford university Press, 1987).[2]Morning Chronicle 13 Jul 1773, General Evening Post 29 november 1774, Public Advertiser 15 December 1774. [3]The Australian, Wednesday 14 February 1827, p. 4. Mitchell library slnsW, Manuscripts, Bonwick transcripts Box 4 a-B s2 pp. 4514-6.[4] Michael scorgie and Peter Hudgson, “arthur Phillip’s Familial and Political networks”, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 82, Part, 1, June 1996., pp. 23-39.[5] the date on the register is 18 February 1707, new Year’s Day being reckoned from 25 March in England prior to 1753. the family surname is rendered as Brach in the register, a variant spelling more commonly used in the 17th century but which still appeared occasionally. Parish registers in the london Metropolitan archives are now indexed and viewable on ancestry.com.au.[6] Reports of Cases in the Law of Real Property & Conveyancing (Vol 1, 1843 to 1845, published london 1846) p. 411. louis Becke and Walter Jeffery, admiral Phillip: the founding of new south Wales (1899) [the appendix reproduces a letter from the rev. a. P. lancefield, who mistakenly believed his great grandmother was Phillip’s sister: she was actually his cousin].

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