BY JAMES BACKHOUSE WALKER. 77 



discontented, occasionally mutinous. At times, instead 



of guarding the stores from depredation, tliey connived 



at the prisoners plundering them. An occasion of this King to 



sort, when a soldier was proved to have been accomplice Ho^art, 1st 



in a robbery, led to Bowen taking a very extraordinary ^^^^''^"' 1°04. 



step. He could not try the man, not being able to 



constitute a court martial, and was so puzzled to know 



what to do with him, that when the Ferret whaler 



chanced to put into the Derwent, he actually determined 



to leave his post, and himself take the culprit to Sydney 



for trial. Accordingly, he sailed from Risdon for Sydney 



in the Ferret, on the 9th January, 1804. 



With all these signs of the utter disorsranisation of the 

 settlement, we cannot wonder that no progress had been 

 made, and that when Collins arrived a few weeks later, 

 he found that after five months' residence not a single acre Collins to 

 of land was in preparation for grain upon Government liing, 29th 

 account. Februai'y, 



But the Risdon settlement was already doomed, owing 

 to a series of events of which neither Governor King 

 nor his Commandant was yet aware. Before Bowen 

 had made his first abortive start for the Derwent, and 

 before Governor King's despatch of 23rd November, 

 1802, respecting French designs could have reached 

 England, the Home Government had taken a resolution 

 which — not by any intention of theirs~was destined to 

 bring Lieut. Bowen's colony to an end, by its extinction in 

 a more systematic and extensive settlement on the banks 

 of the Derwent. In January, 1803, an Order in Council Downing- 

 appointed Lieut. -Colonel David Collins, of the Royal ®^^^®!^ *° 

 Marines, Lieutenant-Governor of a settlement intended °^^^^ ^" 

 to be formed at Port Phillip, in New South Wales. 

 The new establishment sailed from Spithead on the 24th 

 April, 1803 — a month before King had given Bowen Knopwood's 

 his commission as Commandant of Hobart — had just left Diary. 

 Cape Town when Bowen sailed from Sydney in the 

 Albion, and arrived in Port Phillip on the 9th October, 

 1803. 



This is not the place to give an account of Collins' 

 proceedings, at Port Phillip or elsewhere, except in so 

 far as they affected the fortunes of the Risdon settlement. 

 Suffice it to say, that Collins found, or fancied, that Port 

 Phillip was unfit for a settlement, and after corresponding 

 with Governor King, and dawdling near the Heads for 

 some three months, he finally decided to remove his 

 establishment to the Derwent. Thereupon, King sent King to 

 Collins a letter addressed to Bowen, directing the latter Bowen, 26tli 

 to hand over to Collins his command at the Derwent, jg'^^™ ^^' 



