Vice Admiral John Hunter was an officer of the Royal Navy, who succeeded Arthur Phillip as the second Governor of New South Wales, serving from 1795 to 1800.
George Bass was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia.
The Merino is a breed or group of breeds of domestic sheep, characterised by very fine soft wool. It was established in Spain near the end of the Middle Ages, and was for several centuries kept as a strict Spanish monopoly; exports of the breed were not allowed, and those who tried risked the death penalty. During the eighteenth century, flocks were sent to the courts of a number of European countries, including France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Prussia, Saxony and Sweden. The Merino subsequently spread to many parts of the world, including South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Numerous recognised breeds, strains and variants have developed from the original type; these include, among others, the American Merino and Delaine Merino in the Americas, the Australian Merino, Booroola Merino and Peppin Merino in Oceania, the Gentile di Puglia, Merinolandschaf and Rambouillet in Europe.
William Balmain was a Scottish-born naval surgeon and civil administrator who sailed as an assistant surgeon with the First Fleet to establish the first European settlement in Australia, and later to take up the appointment of the principal surgeon, for New South Wales.
John Macarthur was a British Army officer, racketeer, entrepreneur, grazier, usurper, politician, and highly influential figure in the early British colonisation of New South Wales. Macarthur is recognised as the pioneer of the Australian Merino wool industry. He was instrumental in agitating for, and organising, a rebellion against the colonial government in what is often described as the Rum Rebellion.
His Majesty's Armed Survey Vessel Lady Nelson was commissioned in 1799 to survey the coast of Australia. At the time large parts of the Australian coast were unmapped and Britain had claimed only part of the continent. The British Government were concerned that, in the event of settlers of another European power becoming established in Australia, any future conflict in Europe would lead to a widening of the conflict into the southern hemisphere to the detriment of the trade that Britain sought to develop. It was against this background that Lady Nelson was chosen to survey and establish sovereignty over strategic parts of the continent.
The following lists events that happened during 1797 in Australia.
George Raper was a Royal Navy officer who as an able seaman joined the crew of HMS Sirius and the First Fleet to establish a colony at Botany Bay, New South Wales, now Australia. He is best known today for his watercolour sketches of the voyage and settlement, particularly birds and flowers of Sydney Cove.
Henry Lidgbird Ball was a Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy of the British Empire. While Ball was best known as the commander of the First Fleet's HMS Supply, he was also notable for the exploration and the establishment of colonies around what is now Australia and New Zealand. Specifically, Ball explored the area around Port Jackson and Broken Bay, helped establish the Norfolk Island penal settlement, and discovered and named Lord Howe Island.
Captain Henry Waterhouse was an English naval officer of the Royal Navy who became an early settler in the Colony of New South Wales, Australia. He imported to Australia the continent's first Spanish merino sheep, whose wool became one of the colony's best exports.
HMS Investigator was the mercantile Fram, launched in 1795, which the Royal Navy purchased in 1798 and renamed HMS Xenophon, and then in 1801 converted to a survey ship under the name HMS Investigator. In 1802, under the command of Matthew Flinders, she was the first ship to circumnavigate Australia. The Navy sold her in 1810 and she returned to mercantile service under the name Xenophon. She was probably broken up c.1872.
Captain John Black, was an English-born ship's officer who had many adventures in his short career. His best remembered adventure concerned the mutiny on Lady Shore in August 1797, a ship that had been sailing with a cargo of soldiers and female convicts to Sydney, Australia. In 1798 his father, the Reverend John Black (1753–1813), a prolific writer of prose and poetry, published his son's letters which gave an account of the mutiny on board the ship, when his son had been put into a small boat and left to find his way to safety with several other members of the crew. The book was dedicated as a "small testimony of gratitude to the Portuguese nation" for the "unequalled hospitality" extended to his son and his fellows in the Portuguese colonies that are now part of Brazil.
HMS Porpoise was a 12-gun sloop-of-war originally built in Bilbao, Spain, as the packet ship Infanta Amelia. On 6 August 1799 HMS Argo captured her off the coast of Portugal. Porpoise wrecked in 1803 on the North coast of what was then part of the Colony of New South Wales, now called Wreck Reefs, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
HMS Calcutta was the East Indiaman Warley, converted to a Royal Navy 56-gun fourth rate. This ship of the line served for a time as an armed transport. She also transported convicts to Australia in a voyage that became a circumnavigation of the world. The French 74-gun Magnanime captured Calcutta in 1805. In 1809, after she ran aground during the Battle of the Basque Roads and her crew had abandoned her, a British boarding party burned her.
William Kent was a British Royal Navy officer, known for his part in developing British settlement in Australasia.
Peter Kenney Hibbs was an English mariner and a member of the First Fleet to Australia in 1788.
HMS Buffalo was a storeship under construction as the merchant vessel Fremantle when the Royal Navy purchased her on the stocks. She was launched in 1797, and sold in 1817.
HMS Supply was the American mercantile New Brunswick that the British Royal Navy purchased in October 1793 as a replacement for HMS Supply, which the Navy had sold in the year before.
Eliza Kent was a British traveller and writer. It is thought that Eliza was the first European woman to have official duties in Australia as "First Lady" to her husband's uncle who was the second Governor of New South Wales. She spent five years travelling on board a ship and wrote about her visit to New Caledonia and one of her voyages from New South Wales to England.
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