1788-1799: The beginnings of a wool industry

1788

Capt. Arthur Phillip, R.N. is commissioned as the first Governor of  New  South  Wales.   He  sets sail  on  May  13th,  1787  from Portsmouth  with  11  vessels.  He arrives  in  N.S.W.  with  717 convicts of whom 180 are women, guarded by 191 marines under  19 officers.

The fleet also carries "no less than 500 hundred animals of different kinds" and lands its stock at Bennalong Point on the 27th January. Among them are a few Indian hair sheep. By the 1st of May there remains in the colony 26 sheep including a ram, 12 ewes belonging to the Government, a ewe and a lamb belonging to Phillip and 11 sheep belonging to the staff.

Note: the Official Year Book of the COmmonwealth of Australia records that there were 29 sheep in the colony in 1788.

1791

Facing dwindling numbers of sheep Governor King imports some additional animals from the Cape of Good Hope on The Gorgon. The total numbers in the colony reach 57

1792

Two rams and 10 ewes of the hairy Bengal breed are imported from Calcutta.  

The explorer Captain George Vancouver loads additional sheep of unspecified breeds  from Spanish ports on the south part of the coast of New Albion (modern California) on The Daedulus after an unsuccessful search for the fabled Strait of Anian, a navigable passage which was thought to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  He sails back across the Pacific via the Colony in New South Wales on his way home to England and disembarks 4 surviving sheep in Port Jackson.

1794

Sheep numbers reach 576 of which approximately 400 are privately owned.

1795

Sheep numbers further increase to 832 of which 688 are privately owned, the majority by Foveaux, Palmer (the Commissary) and Macarthur.

1796

Under the husbandry of Foveaux, Palmer and Macarthur sheep numbers in the colony increase to 1531.

Governor Hunter prepares to send the H.M.S Reliance under the command of Captain Henry Waterhouse to the Cape of Good Hope, accompanied by The Supply under the command of Captain Kent "in order to execute that part of my instructions from His Majesty which relates to the stocking of this colony with live cattle."

The Britannia is chartered to take home to England Lieutenant Governor Phillip King, Colonel Patterson, among others.   King is then Governor of Norfolk Island, but later to replaces Hunter in 1799 as Governor of New South Wales. King suffers from gout and is returning to England to recuperate.

1797

Colonel Robert Jacob Gordon, the commander of the Dutch Garrison at the Cape had originally imported a few of the Spanish sheep , which under his husbandry had increased to 32. He had killed himself in his garden, upset at the loss of the Cape to a British occupation force in 1796, and at the poor showing of his troops. Embittered by his death his widow is planning to return to Europe choosing to take nothing of her husband's with her. 

The Reliance, The Supply and The Britannia arrive together at the Cape. Mrs Gordon gives 3 of the sheep to King and 3 to Colonel Patterson. The remainder are offered to the Commissary, also aboard The Britannia, but he declines to purchase them on behalf of the government. Instead Waterhouse and Kent purchase half of the remainder each, for 4 guineas per head, each being unable to afford to purchase the whole in their own right.

Waterhouse embarks his 13 on The Reliance together with the 3 given to King and Kent embarks his 13 on The Supply. The 3 sheep given to Patterson continue on with him to England on The Britannia.

Captain Waterhouse sails home from the Cape of Good Hope, the "ship almost completely full , having on board 49 head of black cattle, 3 mares and 107 sheep". An inventory for Kent's ship is not available.

Of his voyage Waterhouse  writes: "I believe no ship went to sea so lumbered - the passage to Port Jackson is generally made in 35 to 40 days, this one 78, one of the longest and most disagreeable passages ever made.  We met with one gale of wind the most terrible I ever saw or heard, expecting to go to the bottom every moment. Something more than I can account for preserved us. We arrived safe in Port Jackson with forty head of black cattle, three mares and nearly two thirds of the sheep alive, but like camelions they lived upon air most of the time...three cows, two mares and 24 sheep belonged to myself. Kent in The Supply had lost all his sheep."

Captain Macarthur by decides from his experience that the climate of New South Wales is peculiarly adapted to the increase of fine wool sheep. Seeing an opportunity for himself he offers Waterhouse 15 guineas per head for all of his Spanish sheep, but Waterhouse declines, choosing instead to distribute them.  He supplies Captain Kent, Captain Macarthur, Captain Rowley and Mr Marsden with the rams and ewes and lambs from the ewes without rams to Mr Williamson, Mr Moore and the Government. 

Macarthur thereby procures 3 rams and 5 ewes of Spanish origin.

1799

Two years after the arrival of The Reliance's consignment of animals Macarthur is still not showing any public interest in Spanish wool.