sketcher, architect, naval officer and provost-marshal, was, according to his shipmate Edwin Spain, 'bred a House Carpenter and having learnd Architecture he was Clerk to some great concern in the building line’. In October 1778 Brewer entered the Royal Navy as a volunteer. He served for several years under Arthur Phillip, and 'being a good scholar was a very great assistant to the Lieutant in copying his Journals, writing out Watch and Quarter Bills’. Spain described Brewer in his early forties as the possessor of 'coarse harsh features, a contracted brow which bespoke him a man sour’d by disappointment; a forbidding countenance, always muttering to himself … and wearing … a blue coat of the coarsest cloth, a wool hat about three shillings a piece, cocked with three sixpenny nails, a tolerable waist coat, a pair of cordurry breeches, purser’s stockings and shoes, a purser’s shirt, none of the cleanest’. He was also a heavy drinker.
Brewer sailed with the First Fleet to Botany Bay as a midshipman in the Sirius . He was employed by Phillip as building superintendent during the first two years of settlement and probably designed Sydney’s first permanent Government House. His appointment as provost-marshal was confirmed in 1792; the following year he was granted land at Concord. By late 1795 Brewer’s health had failed. He was relieved of his duties in February 1796 and died a few months later, on 8 July.
According to Spain, in about 1783 Phillip had presented Sir Edward Hughes, Admiral of the Fleet in India, with 'a couple of Joanna bullocks and some original drawings of places he had visited, done by Henry Brewer’. Spain observed that Brewer was the ideal assistant to Phillip at Port Jackson due to his competence in drawing 'excellent plans, drafts and views of places’. Bernard Smith has plausibly suggested that Brewer 'possesses the strongest claims to being the Port Jackson Painter ' although, as he indicates, a firm attribution is difficult as almost nothing is known that is undoubtedly from Brewer’s hand, apart from a map containing a few vignettes of trees and rocks.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
