Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society June 1975 [antikvár]

Yol. 61JUNE 1975Pt 2A London Newspaper on the Founding of Botany Bay, August 1786-May 1787GED MARTINAlthough many historians have debated the reasons behind the establishment of the first settlements in Australia, they have had very little firm evidenee to work from. Yet it is clear that the scheme attracted attention in Britain, and a survey of one London daily newspaper yields nrach material. The Daily Unwersal Register, which was founded in 1785 and became The Times in 1788, was an independent journal but one which generally supported the government of William Pitt.1 Like its contemporaries, it published news in a jumble of paragraphs, liberally mixed with comment, both serious and flippant. It generally supported the Botany Bay scheme, although it wavered briefly at the end of 1786 influenced by pamphlet attacks.Newspaper evidenee cannot be uncritically accepted. Sources of journalists' information are necessarily suspect, if only because to be useful they must be kept secret. The Register gave occasional clues. Its Portsmouth correspondent was identi-fied as 'a lieutenant of marines', on board one of the First Fleet transports. For reports of government thinking it relied on the traditional journalistic device of a correspondent 'who in generál speaks from tolerable good authority'. It provided a further clue by sneering at opposition journals which persisted in their confident assertions that the scheme was abandoned in the face of active preparations for sailing:They, to whom the secrets of cabinets are open, prove themselves to be strangers to those eommon occurrences, known to the most inferior clerks in office! 2The balance of news items in the Register suggests that its main informant might have been a clerk in the Admiralty. Varions degrees of credence may be given to its reports. Simple factual items, such as the movement of convicts and ships, it was the business of a newspaper to report accurately. It must alsó be an accurate mirror of its own opinions, and partially