George Kingston-Boyle Travers Finniss tension adds to discomfort on 'Cygnet' 1836 voyage to South Australia colony

The Cygnet barque, also chartered by the South Australian colonisation commissioners for settlement work, had a passenger list that included prominent lead dealer John Morphett and first harbourmaster captain Thomas Lipson. Passenger Mary Elizabeth Neale had the first Euopean settler baby born in South Australia, a boy christened Nepean Kingston Neale on September 13, 1836, in Nepean Bay, Kangaroo Island. The baby died at Holdfast Bay (Glenelg), on November 18. 

The Cygnet, a 239-ton barque chartered by the South Australian colonisation commissioners, was the setting for inevitable tension between the deputy surveyor general George Strickland Kingston and third-in-charge assistant surveyor Boyle Travers Finniss on the long voyage to the new colony.

The Kingston-Finniss tension stemmed from Finniss, who’d learned his survey skills as a British army officer, applying for the deputy surveyor general position. He was told by Rowland Hill, colonisation commission board secretary, that it had been decided not to fill that position. A few days later Rowland Hill's personal friend, Kingston, was given the job.

The Cygnet, as well as carrying settlers as part of South Australia first fleet, took most of the team to survey the colony. Surveyor general William Light and other members of the survey team would come out of the brig Rapid, owned by the commissioners and skippered by Light.

Conditions on board the Cygnet added to the Kingston-Finniss tension. The vessel was crammed with stores and the luggage of the 84 men, women and children. Conditions were worse below decks. Married couples had little or no privacy; their quarters separated from the single men's berths by canvas screens. With not enough tables for all passengers, many had to eat their meals sitting on their bunks. Water was soon found to be stale and the food inadequate.

Kingston, in charge of personnel, was soon at loggerheads with the ship's captain George Rolls. Finniss concentrated on discrediting his superior. When Kingston attempted to stop a fight between two labourers, he was nearly punched to the ground, Finniss confided in Thomas Gilbert, the colonisation commissioners' colonial storekeeper, that Kingston was less fitted to command a body of men than anyone of the cabin passengers.

After putting in for stores at Rio de Janeiro, the Cygnet was at sea for 175 days and arrived at Napean Bay, Kangaroo island, on September 11, 1836 – a month after the frustrated William Light on the Rapid.  

According to the Cygnet’s charter, the crew had only seven days to discharge the cargo. As no one knew where the capital city site would be, most stores were merely piled on the beach at Nepean Bay. Contact was made with the Kingscote, with information about other ships in the fleet. The Duke of York had been anchored for 44 days, the Lady Mary Pelham and John Pirie also had arrived. Light with the Rapid had waited for a fortnight before leaving to explore around Gulf St Vincent.

Drawing on his military experience, Finniss supervised setting up a camp on the banks of the river named the Cygnet. As pegs for tents didn’t not hold in the sandy soil, the men put up brush shelters from the cold spring winds and frequent rainstorms.  Some sealers on the island drifted into the camp and taught the migrants how to make damper from flour and water. With the weather miserable, the food unpalatable and rum selling at 3 shillings/6 pence a gallon in Kingscote, some new arrivals enlivened their existence with a riotous parties.

Finniss, more critical now of Kingston because "nothing was done to forward the surveys", took long walks across the island searching for good arable land. He found ground covered with dead trees, about the size of mallee, felled by the fires of the sealers or by hurricanes.

With Kingston frequently absent from the settlement, Finniss took command and asked that a more seemly way of life be adopted. He resorted to publicly condemning some men’s actions and became engaged in violent arguments – to the extent of challenging one of the men to a duel. Dr John Woodforde, who had arrived with Light on the Rapid, and destined to become one of the infant colony's most respected medical practitioners, managed to convince Finniss that a written apology would be acceptable.

• Information from “The life of Boyle Travers Finniss (1807-1893)”  by Cleve Charles Manhood BA (Hons) Dip Ed, presented as thesis for degree of master of arts, history department, University of Adelaide, 1966.