Charles Jeffreys

sketcher, author and naval officer, was born in Cowes, Isle of Wight, on 16 October 1782, son of Ninian and Mary Jeffreys. He entered the Royal Navy aged eleven and was commissioned lieutenant in March 1805. Jeffreys came to New South Wales with his wife Jane Gill of London, whom he had married in August 1810. They arrived in January 1814 in the brig Kangaroo, of which he was commander, and the ship was immediately commissioned to transport convicts from Port Jackson to Van Diemen's Land. It did not return to Sydney for over a year (in February 1815) and Jeffreys's dilatoriness and disinclination to obey orders raised the ire of Governor Macquarie, who labelled him 'a Vain, Conceited, Ignorant Young Man and totally unfitted for such a Command'. While in His Majesty's service, Jeffreys indulged in illicit rum smuggling, turned a blind eye to convict stowaways on board and accepted an escaped government debtor (Garnham Blaxcell) as a paying passenger. While engaged in these activities en route for England, he assaulted and imprisoned the commander and several crew of a patrol boat on the Derwent River on 9 May 1817. Back home, Jeffreys was removed from the naval list but legal impediments were found to prevent prosecution.

At the Derwent Jeffreys had apparently found time to draw a sketch of Hobart Town (unlocated). It was subsequently lithographed and captioned 'Drawn by Lieut. Chas Jeffreys R.N. / Hobart Town in 1817'. Frequently reproduced in later years, no copy of any lithograph made contemporaneously with the purported drawing was known to Clifford Craig in 1961, although Craig thought one was likely to have been produced about the time Jeffreys's book Geographical and Descriptive Delineations of the Island of Van Diemen's Land was published in London (1820), perhaps in conjunction with it. The book, after all, was devoted solely to Van Diemen's Land, the first such monograph published. The lithograph inserted into the Mitchell Library's copy, however, has an attached manuscript note stating that it was copied 'from an old drawing of Capt. Jeffreys, by Frank Dunnet [Dunnett]' and it seems that subsequent reproductions derive from this, that no lithograph was made in Jeffreys's lifetime. Several copies of the Dunnett lithograph survive, with the names of buildings annotated in the print; Kangaroo appears in the foreground.

George William Evans later claimed that Jeffreys's book was written from a manuscript Evans had with him when travelling from Sydney to Hobart Town on board the Kangaroo, which Jeffrey's clerk had stolen. As with his other scandals, Jeffreys appears to have had little trouble in shrugging off this accusation despite its probable truth. Full of propaganda intended to encourage emigration to Van Diemen's Land, the book gained at least two converts. The year it was published Jeffreys and his wife turned up again (in May 1820), this time as settlers. His roseate vision of the colony proved no fable; they were granted a property of 800 acres at Pittwater near Hobart Town, which they called Frogmore. Jeffreys died there on 12 May 1826 'of a liver complaint' and was buried at Sorell. After his death his widow received a further 500-acre grant.

Staff Writer.