My presentation addresses the histories of three Americans who were conspicuous in the first few decades of colonial Tasmania. Its focus is the colonial career (1808-1827) of an African-American whaler, Richard Hazard, who became prominent in Van Diemen’s Land as a skilled mariner and harpooner in the 1820’s. I shall outline my approach to piecing together Hazard’s two decades in the colony and the ongoing task of tracing his origins and his fate after setting out on a trading venture across the Pacific in 1827.
Chace, a Rhode Islander, was recruited in Hawai’i by Captain Charles Bishop to the crew of the brig Nautilus in 1798 and was a member of the first sealing gang left on Cape Barren Island later that year. Over the next decade, Chace was engaged as a sealer and mariner by almost all the leading colonial entrepreneurs during the peak years of Bass Straitsealing, across the Tasman and to the subantarctic islands including the Antipodes and Macquarie Island. In 1819 he became the colonial ships master for Van Diemen’s Land, playing a part in establishing the penal colony at Sarah Island.
Hathaway was the first United States consul in Hobart, appointed because of its importance to American whaling. His dispatches and regular reports to Washington on American ships in the Derwent (1844-54) are a remarkable data base which provide a wealth of detail on American whaling in this period and its impact on the colony.
A theme in discussing each of these three individuals will be the opportunities – and challenges – of integrating American contemporary sources with the Australian and British colonial material that has informed much of the historiography of this period.
Since retiring from our foreign service in 2017, David has been researching early American contacts with colonial Australia, with several articles published, including in History Compass, Rhode Island History and The Great Circle, and has presented papers to the Australian Historical Association, the Rhode Island Historical Society and the 2016 Hobart Whaling Conference hosted by the Maritime Museum of Tasmania. He is a regular visitor to Tasmania, mainly to investigate the personal histories of several individual Americans who played a part in the first few decades of colonial settlement.
Thalia crew list, showing Richard Hazard as the brig’s commander -, bound for the fisheries, 30 May 1823, Source: State Library and Archives of Tasmania, Naval Department, Register of Ships’ Clearances, with Lists of Crews and Passengers, CUS33/1/3. Reproduced with permission.