sketcher and naval officer, was born on 16 March 1791, third son of James McArthur and Catherine, née Hawkins, and a younger brother of the pioneer New South Wales pastoralist Hannibal Macarthur (the family spelt the surname both ways). A captain in the Royal Marines, John was officially appointed commandant of the naval garrison and settlement at Port Essington (Northern Territory) when its founding commandant Sir Gordon Bremer left in June 1839, although he was unofficially in charge from the first, having helped establish it in 1838. He remained at Port Essington for the whole of the settlement’s existence, under miserable conditions, and seems to have been the major force which ensured its survival; T.H. Huxley called him ('with all reverence’) 'a pragmatical old fogey’.
McArthur’s idyllic watercolour View of Victoria, Port Essington, Northern Australia (1839, National Library of Australia [NLA]) is regularly reproduced to represent the settlement. It shows the major, and only, 'town’ at Port Essington, always referred to by McArthur, although by few others, by its official name Victoria. Through a forest of trees can be seen McArthur’s own cottage ('Government House’), the prefabricated huts landed from Sydney, a hospital and a church. Much of the place was destroyed when a hurricane swept the area in November 1839. Its desolate state was depicted in watercolours by Owen Stanley and M.F. O’Reilly , but not by its commandant who chose a far more bucolic moment. Other watercolours of Port Essington signed J. McArthur (NLA) include Cemetery, Victoria (c.1847), featuring the large wooden pyramid monument erected in memory of Emma Lambrick (died October 1846) by her officer husband. Hannibal Macarthur exhibited one of John’s paintings under the title Landscape (by Capt Macarthur) at the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia Exhibition at Sydney in 1847. It probably also depicted Port Essington.
In November 1849, after eleven years, the settlement was abandoned and the inhabitants were removed to Sydney; Macarthur arrived there on 7 February 1850. Twelve weeks later he was invalided home in the Rattlesnake . He spent the rest of his life in England, being commissioned major-general in 1857. On 28 July 1862 he died. He and Mary, née Macarthur, had seven sons. Two civilian sons accompanied their father to Port Essington from Plymouth on board the Alligator in 1838: James H., who acted as storekeeper, clerk and draughtsman, and John A., who took over as storekeeper when James left on HMS Britomart in September 1841. John junior remained at the settlement with his father for the duration, returning to Sydney, then England, with him in 1849-50. Architectural elevations and plans of the settlement and its buildings signed 'J.A. McArthur’ are by John junior, but architectural elevations which are signed 'J. McArthur’ like the watercolours are by the father.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
