sketcher and ship’s clerk, was born on 16 July 1825 in Marylebone, London. He was taught by Rev. G. Porticury before entering the junior section of Kings College, London, in August 1839. On 18 February 1842, the 16-year-old Sweatman joined HMS Fly as a clerk. Later he served on HMS Bramble , first as a clerk and later as clerk-in-charge of provisions. The surviving second volume of Sweatman’s journal (ML) documents two surveying cruises of HMS Bramble from February 1845 until July 1847 and is illustrated with a number of engravings and original watercolours, most either by or after Harden S. Melville . They include lithographs and engravings from Melville’s Sketches in Australia and from J.B. Jukes 's official Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of HMS Fly … (2 vols, London 1847) as well as what appear to be some of the original watercolours for the plates in Jukes’s book. Unpublished ethnographic illustrations in the journal are attributed to Melville, who also appears to have drawn the vignette for Sweatman’s title-page. Sweatman himself seems to have been responsible for only a few crude watercolour and ink sketches, mostly marginal drawings and coastal profiles. Allen and Corris also attribute to him two ambitious but crude full-page watercolours, Cape Possessions and Mt Victoria, New Guinea, at Daybreak and Gigantic Canoe, New Guinea .
In July 1847 the crew of the Bramble were paid off and their return passage to England procured in the Thomas Arbuthnot . Sweatman arrived in London on 20 January 1848 after 'a long and uncomfortable passage’, having been away for five years and ten months.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
