GOVERNOR KING.


For the reason that all the contemporary historians were officers, and
their writings little more than official accounts of the colonization of
Australia, the personality of the naval governors never stands out from
their pages. The German blood in Phillip seems to have made him a
peculiarly self-contained man; the respect due to Hunter, as a fine type
of the old sea-dog, just saves him from being laughed at in his
gubernatorial capacity; King, however, by pure force of character, is more
sharply defined. In reading of his work we learn something of the man
himself; and of all Phillip's subordinates in the beginning of things
Australian, he, and he alone, was the friend of his cold, reserved chief.

Philip Gidley King was twenty years younger than Phillip, and was thirty
years of age when he, in 1786, joined the _Sirius_ as second lieutenant.
In a statement of his services sent by himself to the Admiralty in 1790,
he supplied the following particulars:--

"Served in the East Indies from the year 1770 to 1774 on board His
Majesty's sloop and ships _Swallow, Dolphin_, and _Prudent_; in
North America in His Majesty's ships _Liverpool, Virginia,
Princess_, and _Renown_ from the year 1775 to 1779. I was made a
lieutenant into the last ship by Mr. Byron November 26th, 1778. On
Channel service, Gibraltar, and Lisbon, in His Majesty's sloop and
ship _Kite_ and _Ariadne_ from 1780 to 1783; in the East Indies in
His Majesty's ship _Europe_ from 1783 to 1785; in New South Wales
in His Majesty's ship the _Sirius_ from 1786 to 1790. This time
includes the ship being put in commission, and my stay at Norfolk