Meehan’s Mapping of the Derwent River in Van Diemen’s Land, 1803–04

Abstract

In 1804, the Irish convict-turned-surveyor James Meehan drafted a map (Monmouth 0) of the area around Britain’s new settlement in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania, Australia). This map describes the terrain and vegetation and guided decision-making by the colonial government for the first few years of the colony’s existence. Despite its importance, it was neither copied nor distributed further than the immediate land it described. For the first time, it has been fully transcribed so that we might examine the fine details. This article argues that despite remaining as a manuscript map, Monmouth 0 is a perfect demonstration of British colonial land management policy as it directed the colonial effort to make their presence permanent on the island of Van Diemen’s Land.

I wish to thank the Rosny School for Seniors for inviting me to give the lecture that turned into this article. Without their curiosity, I may not have looked at Meehan’s map so closely. Thank you also to the feedback from the anonymous referees, my writing group, and the AHS editors.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 James Meehan, Monmouth 0: Plan of Settlement at Derwent River as Examined by James Meehan, Assistant to the Surveyor-General between 16/10/1803 and March 1804 by Order of Governor King (unpublished, 1804), AF 396/1/206, Tasmanian Archives.

2 The Aboriginal Tasmanian peoples are today known as palawa/pakana peoples. Their language is written without capital letters.

3 Giselle Byrnes, Boundary Markers: Land Surveying and the Colonisation of New Zealand (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2001), 108.

4 Matthew H. Edney, Cartography: The Ideal and Its History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 91–2.

5 Meehan, Monmouth 0.

6 Tony Dawson, James Meehan: A Most Excellent Surveyor (Sydney: Crossing Press, 2003), 1.

7 Van Diemen’s Land was part of the New South Wales colony until 1825, but the two started to diverge earlier than their official division. It is simplest to call each a colony, even if – bureaucratically – Van Diemen’s Land was only an extension of New South Wales at this point.

8 Dawson, 1–4.

9 Finnian Ó Cionnaith, Land Surveying in Ireland, 1690–1830: A History (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2022), 97–100.

10 For a more typical example, see the career of Peter Mills: ‘Mills, Peter (1786–1816)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1967), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mills-peter-2458; K.N. Toms and P.M. Plunkett, ‘Crown Land Survey Administration in Van Diemen’s Land: A Historical Indicator for Integrationists’, Australian Surveyor 31, no. 2 (1982): 72–83.

11 King to Bowen, 18 October 1803, Historical Records of Australia (HRA) III (i): 204.

12 Anne-Maree Whitaker, ‘James Meehan, Nearly Australia’s Third Surveyor General’, Descent 24, no. 2 (1994): 66–70; Dawson, 65.

13 W.V. Teniswood, ‘Dry, Richard (1771–1843)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, 18 vols (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dry-richard-1998 (accessed 20 February 2023).

14 Dawson, 54–5, 65.

15 Whitaker, 68.

16 Dawson, 67.

17 John Thomas Bigge, Report on the Colony of New South Wales, Australiana facsimile editions, no. 68 (Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1966), 145.

18 Macquarie to Wilmot, 22 August 1822, HRA I (x): 709–12.

19 Janet McCalman and Rebecca Kippen, ‘The Life-Course Demography of Convict Transportation to Van Diemen’s Land’, The History of the Family 25, no. 3 (2020): 447.

20 ‘Family Notices’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 26 April 1826.

21 ‘Hobart Town’, Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer, 7 February 1812.

22 James Meehan, ‘Meehan Survey: Risdon Cove’ (1803–04), LSD 355/1/3, Tasmanian Archives.

23 lutruwita is one Aboriginal name for Tasmania, and the name most widely used today.

24 Alan Jones, Backsight: A History of Surveying in Colonial Tasmania (Hobart: Institute of Surveyors, Australia (Tasmanian Division), 1989), 5.

25 ArcGIS Pro 2.9.2. Georeferencing requires different accuracy depending on the project, and in some cases river bends or mountain tops would not be considered specific or reliable enough – a church spire or stone pillar is better suited to many historic georeferencing projects. We must work with what the map contains, however, and in this instance the map has very few landmarks that are both identifiable and immovable enough for the purposes of this exercise.

26 Matthew Edney, ‘Mathematical Cosmography and the Social Ideology of British Cartography, 1780–1820’, Imago Mundi 46, no. 1 (1994): 104; Matthew Edney, ‘The Patronage of Science and the Creation of Imperial Space: The British Mapping of India, 1799–1843’, Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 30, no. 1 (1993): 61–7.

27 Daniela Bleichmar, ‘Exploration in Print: Books and Botanical Travel from Spain to the Americas in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Huntington Library Quarterly 70, no. 1 (2007): 129–51.

28 Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

29 Lucy P. Chester, ‘The Mapping of Empire: French and British Cartographies of India in the Late-Eighteenth Century’, Portuguese Studies 16 (2000): 268–70; Kenneth Morgan, ‘Matthew Flinders and the Charting of Australia’s Coasts, 1798–1814’, Terrae Incognitae 50, no. 2 (2018): 123.

30 Edney, ‘Mathematical Cosmography and the Social Ideology of British Cartography, 1780–1820’, 104.

31 Edney, ‘The Patronage of Science and the Creation of Imperial Space’; Francis Curtis, ‘British Charts and Surveys c. 1780–1820: The Rhetoric of Cultural Narrative’, Terrae Incognitae 29, no. 1 (1997): 35–50; Kerry Goettlich, ‘The Colonial Origins of Modern Territoriality: Property Surveying in the Thirteen Colonies’, American Political Science Review (2021): 5.

32 For example, see: G.P. Harris, Letters and Papers of G.P. Harris, 1803–1812: Deputy Surveyor-General of New South Wales at Sullivan Bay, Port Phillip and Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, ed. Barbara Hamilton-Arnold (Sorrento: Arden Press, 1994), 82.

33 The page numbers in these volumes have been pencilled in at a later date. Meehan, ‘Risdon Cove’, 53–6.

34 Ibid., 69–70.

35 King to Collins, 8 January 1805, HRA III (i): 305.

36 Roger Balm, ‘Discovery as Autobiography: The Machu Picchu Case’, Terrae Incognitae 40, no. 1 (2008): 104.

37 Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History (London: Faber, 1987), 23.

38 James Meehan, ‘Meehan Survey: Frederick Henry Bay, Iron Creek at Pittwater’ (unpublished, 1803–04), LSD 355/1/1, Tasmanian Archives.

39 James Meehan, ‘Meehan Survey: River Derwent and Adjoining’ (unpublished, 1803–04), LSD 355/1/2, Tasmanian Archives.

40 G.P. Harris, Hobart 10: Plan of Part of Freshwater River at Hobart Town (unpublished, c.1805), AF 394/1/9, Tasmanian Archives.

41 Charles Grimes, Port Phillip (unpublished, 1803), Z/Ca 80/3, State Library of New South Wales (NSW).

42 Thomas Scott, Survey of a Part of the East Coast, Van Diemens Land (unpublished, 1821), Z/M2 881.3/1821/1, State Library of NSW.

43 Lyndall Ryan, ‘Risdon Cove and the Massacre of 3 May 1804: Their Place in Tasmanian History’, Tasmanian Historical Studies 9, no. 2004 (2004): 107–23.

44 Meehan, ‘River Derwent and Adjoining’. This notebook is unpaginated, these comments are 23 and 29 pages through the microfilm.

45 With credit to Jones for this observation: Jones, 4.

46 J.B. Harley, ‘Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe’, Imago Mundi 40, no. 1 (1988): 57–76; J.B. Harley, ‘Maps, Knowledge and Power’, in The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, ed. Paul Laxton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 67–8.

47 King to Collins, 8 January 1805, 302.

48 John Oxley, Map of the River Derwent Showing Surrounding Bays and Off-Shore Soundings (unpublished, 1810–12), MPG 1/1242/2, The National Archives, Kew, UK.

49 Matthew Flinders, ‘Australia, South Coast: Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)’ (unpublished, 1799), ADM 352/509, The National Archives, Kew, UK.

50 Robert Brown et al., Nature’s Investigator: The Diary of Robert Brown in Australia, 1801–1805 (Canberra: Australian Biological Resources Study (Flora), 2001), 459, 482, 490.

51 This is Sheet VI of the numbered set of charts from A Voyage to Terra Australis, but it is listed as ‘published’ four months before Flinders saw proofs of the full set of fourteen charts printed in this book, according to Morgan, 141. Matthew Flinders, Historic Plan 12: Chart of Terra Australis (London: G&W Nicol, 1814), AF395/1/10, Tasmanian Archives.

52 G.S. Ritchie, ‘Great Britain’s Contribution to Hydrography during the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Navigation 20, no. 1 (1967): 3; Morgan, 117.

53 Thea Rienits, ‘Lord, Edward (1781–1859)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lord-edward-2370 (accessed 12 January 2023).

54 Charles Grimes, Map Showing a Survey of the Country between Port Dalrymple and the River Derwent in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) (unpublished, 1807), FLI/15/6, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

55 For examples of instructions, see: ‘Governor Phillip’s Instructions’, 25 April 1787, HRA I (i): 9–16; ‘Phillip’s Instructions Re Land Grants’, 22 August 1789, HRA I (i): 14, 124–8; ‘Memorandum of Instructions for J. Bowen’, 10 June 1803, HRA III (i): 194. See also: Madeline Shanahan and Martin Gibbs, ‘The Convict Huts of Parramatta 1788–1841: An Archaeological View of the Development of an Early Australian Urban Landscape’, Post-Medieval Archaeology 56, no. 1 (2022): 82–5.

56 Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania: Van Diemen’s Land from the Earliest Times to 1855, vol. I (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983), 32, 40.

57 G.W. Evans, Chart of Van Diemens Land, from the Best Authorities, and from Surveys (London: J. Souter, 1822), National Library of Australia, Canberra, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-229965872 (accessed 5 May 2023).

58 Imogen Wegman, ‘“A Truly Sublime Appearance”: Using GIS to Find the Traces of Pre-Colonial Landscapes and Land Use’, History Australia 17, no. 1 (2020): 22–5.

59 King to Bowen, 18 October 1803, 204.

60 King to Collins, 8 January 1805, 302.

61 Edney, Cartography, 91–2.

62 ‘Sunday and Tuesday’s Posts’, Stamford Mercury, 20 February 1807, British Library Newspapers.

63 Wegman.