George Raper, first fleet artist.
Groom, Linda
The story behind the story began in 2005 when the National Library
of Australia acquired 56 First Fleet watercolours, the largest group of
First Fleet paintings to come on the market since the 1950s.
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They were uncovered during a routine estate valuation in
England--that of the sixth Earl of Ducie-- and were attributed to George
Raper, a little-known midshipman aboard the Sirius, the flagship of the
First Fleet.
Raper's extraordinary ability to capture the beauty of
Australian birds and plants was matched only by his youthful enthusiasm
for the novelty of what he witnessed.
The paintings struck a chord with National Library visitors, with
people flocking to see them. This was followed by calls for us to
produce a book featuring the stunning images and the rest, they say, is
history--great Australian history. The next step was to begin the search
to uncover the real George Raper, a search that took me across the world
and back again.
Little was known about George Raper, but, during the process of
researching this book, I have been lucky enough to explore his
extraordinary life in more depth and find new source documents.
We knew in 2005 that Raper had been christened in an inner London church and that his father was a merchant. Since then I have found out
more about his boyhood in the City of London and about a possible
patron.
More than a decade before Raper's birth, a young man named
Richard Howe had courted Raper's cousin Elizabeth. There was
apparently a strong attachment on both sides. The match 'foundered
on a matter of fortune' but Richard Howe still remained close to
the extended Raper family. By 1786, he had become Admiral Lord Howe and
First Lord of the Admiralty and, as patrons go, that's about as
good as it gets for an aspiring sea officer. It was probably Lord
Howe's influence that secured Raper a place on the Sirius.
There was, however, a mysterious gap in his record of naval service from 1793 to 1794. Gaps are worrying when you are writing a biography,
but the answer lay in some ships' musters which I came across at
the National Archives in Kew.
Unlike most ships musters, they were in the papers of the British
Treasury not the papers of the Royal Navy. They are the musters of a
captured French ship the Commerce de Marseille--and there was Raper
spelt 'Rapert' or sometimes 'Reper' and listed as
the English lieutenant.
So from these clues, I was able to fill in Raper's missing 18
months.
Raper was present at a landmark event in British naval history--the
Siege of Toulon. Toulon is a French port on the Mediterranean and was a
Royalist stronghold that defied the French revolutionary government. The
officers of the French Navy's ships in Toulon harbour were also
Royalists and elected to join forces with the British. Raper was given
the task of living on board the Commerce de Marseille, the largest of
the defecting French ships. He had to dine each evening with an
aristocratic group of officers whose status as allies of the British was
tenuous.
The siege of Toulon came to a bloody end in December 1793 when the
French government forces captured the city. The Commerce de Marseille,
with Raper on board, hurriedly took on as many refugees as they could
and sailed to safety.
Raper sailed with the Commerce de Marseille around the
Mediterranean, disembarking the refugees wherever they could find a
welcome. Then via Gibraltar to Portsmouth where the ship was taken into
the Royal navy and Raper's life once more became evident through
his naval record of service.
Linda Groom
Curator of Pictures
