sketcher, diarist and naval officer, is thought to have been the John Watts born in London on 24 June 1755. He entered the Royal Navy in 1770. In March 1776 he was appointed to the Resolution as a midshipman, sailing with Cook on his third voyage. In 1781 Watts was promoted lieutenant. He took leave of absence from the navy to sail with the First Fleet to New South Wales in the convict transport Lady Penrhyn , then was ordered in 1787 to take command of the ship at Port Jackson and continue on to China on charter with the East India Company. The Lady Penrhyn left Sydney on 15 May 1788. After reaching China, Watts returned to England on board the Scarborough . Little else is known about him, apart from an anecdote retailed by Arthur Bowes Smyth who also mentions that he suffered from asthma. When drunk at Port Jackson, Watts fell from the jolly boat and was saved from drowning in Sydney Harbour by two boys.
Extracts from Watts’s journal of the First Fleet voyage appear in The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay (London 1789) as do three plates after his sketches. Two are coastal profiles: one shows two views of the Curtis Isles, the other has two views of the Macaulay Isles. The third plate depicts the New Holland Cassowary , Watts being the first known European to depict an emu. As reported in Phillip’s Voyage : 'the one from which the plate was taken was shot within two miles of the settlement of Sydney Cove, and the drawing made on the spot by Lieutenant Watts. The skin being sent over to England in spirits, had been put into attitude, and is now the property of Sir Joseph Banks, to whom it was presented by Lord Sydney’.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
