Swan River Colony - The Events of The Settlement

The Events of The Settlement

The first ship to reach the Swan River was HMS Challenger. After anchoring off Garden Island on 25 April 1829, its Captain Charles Fremantle declared the Swan River Colony for Britain on 2 May 1829.

The Parmelia arrived on 31 May carrying Stirling and his party and HMS Sulphur arrived on 8 June. Three merchant ships arrived shortly after: the Calista on 5 August, the St Leonard on 6 August and the Marquis of Anglesea on 23 August.

A series of accidents followed the arrivals which probably nearly caused the abandonment of the expedition. The Challenger and Sulphur both struck rocks while entering Cockburn Sound and were fortunate to escape with only minor damage. The Parmelia however, under Stirling's "over confident pilotage", also ran aground, lost her rudder and damaged her keel, which necessitated extensive repairs. With winter now set in, the settlers were obliged to land on Garden Island. Bad weather and the required repairs meant that Stirling did not manage to reach the mainland until 18 June, and the remaining settlers on the Parmelia finally arrived in early August. In early September a major disaster occurred: the Marquis of Anglesea was driven ashore during a gale and wrecked beyond repair.

The first reports of the new colony arrived back in England in late January 1830. They described the poor conditions and the land as being totally unfit for agriculture. They went on to say that the settlers were in a state of near starvation and (incorrectly) said that the colony had been abandoned. As a result of these reports, many people cancelled their migration plans or diverted to Cape Town or New South Wales.

Nevertheless a few settlers arrived and additional stores were despatched. By 1832 the settler population of the colony had reached about 1,500 (Aboriginal people were not counted but in the south west have been estimated to number 15,000), but the difficulty of clearing land to grow crops were so great that by 1850 the population had only increased to 5,886. This population had settled mainly around the southwestern coastline at Bunbury, Augusta and Albany.

Karl Marx used the Swan River Colony to illustrate a point about a shortcoming of capitalism in Das Kapital.