sketcher, surveyor and naval officer, was born in Newsbury, England, on 8 May 1797, the seventh son of Rev. James and Sophia Roe. He entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman on 27 May 1813 and soon became noticed for a carefully drawn chart he had made of Brest Harbour. In 1817 he passed examinations in mathematics and navigation and was appointed master’s mate to the surveying service in New South Wales under the command of Phillip Parker King . During a visit to King’s sister and brother-in-law, Anna Maria and Hannibal Macarthur, Roe made a watercolour sketch of their home, Vineyard Cottage (p.c., photograph ML); throughout his life he kept a journal and sketched.

From Sydney Roe sailed in the Mermaid on three coastal surveys under King: a circumnavigation of Australia from December 1817, a brief survey of the Derwent River, Van Diemen’s Land, from December 1818 and an extensive survey of the northern coast from May 1819 which was interrupted by severe weather damage to the ship. The northern survey was continued in the Bathurst from May 1821, but in June Roe fell 50 feet from the ship’s masthead to the deck, seriously injuring his right temple and perhaps causing the right-eye blindness he developed in later life. At the time, however, he recovered quickly and was soon writing and sketching again.

Returning from Mauritius in September on the way to King George Sound, he sketched Middleton Beach and the entrance to Oyster Harbour with the Bathurst lying at anchor. The Bathurst returned to England in May 1823 and Roe was gazetted lieutenant on 1 June. In 1824 he sailed with Captain J.G. Bremer in the Tamar to Port Essington (Northern Territory) where, on 20 September 1824, they established a settlement and took possession of the northern coast of Australia. After war service at the India Station, where he was awarded the Burma Medal, Roe returned to London and worked in the Hydrographic Office, preparing sailing directions for the Australia Directory (1830).

In 1829 Roe was appointed surveyor-general to the proposed new settlement at the Swan River (Western Australia). He and his wife of five months, Matilda, née Bennett, arrived at Western Australia in the Parmelia in June; Sophia, the first of their thirteen children, was born there in December. Roe charted the sea approaches to the Swan River, surveyed the sites of Fremantle and Perth and marked out the town lots. He made eight short exploratory trips to the south and south-east between 1830 and 1835 and a longer journey east, then north in 1836. He rescued three of George Grey 's party in 1839 and travelled to the Russell Range, east of Esperance, in 1848-49. During these expeditions he continued his old habit of making sketches of features of the countryside; pencil drawings are included among his papers in the Battye Library and many remain in private hands. Most are purely topographic in subject and style, such as a view looking up a ravine in the Russell Range or Echo Glen on the Fitzgerald River, with Mt Barren in the Distance .

Roe was one of the founders of the Swan River Mechanics Institute and its president for about thirty years. The botanical, zoological and geological collections he presented to the institute were the foundations of the West Australian Museum. He visited England in 1860 but soon returned to Western Australia. Matilda Roe died on 22 July 1870 and nineteen days later, aged seventy-three, John Septimus Roe resigned his position of surveyor-general, having spent, as he pointed out, fifty-seven years and two months in the public service. He died in Perth on 28 May 1878 and was given a public funeral two days later.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011