William WESTALL

English 1781–1850
worked in Australia 1801–03

William Westall was one of the artists on Matthew Flinders’s scientific and geographical exploration of Australia in 1801–03 on board the Investigator. The nineteen-year-old Westall had been appointed landscape and figure draughtsman to the Investigator’s scientific party, which included the renowned Austrian natural-history painter Ferdinand Bauer and the English naturalist Robert Brown, among others. This official expedition set out to circumnavigate Australia and to document the continent with precise navigational, topographical and natural history records. During the voyage along the south, east and north coasts of Australia, Westall produced more than 150 pencil sketches and watercolours, comprising topographically accurate coastal profiles, images of the landscape and Aboriginal figures, as well as a small number of natural history subjects.1

Flinders’s expedition was beset by misfortune, and this work by Westall relates to an episode in the voyage’s history that eventually led to its abandonment. Problems with the seaworthiness of the Investigator had troubled the voyage along the south and east coasts of Australia and, by the time the vessel reached the Gulf of Carpentaria in February 1803, the ship was rotting. Flinders was forced to abandon the further survey of the north coast and return to Sydney, from where he planned to set out for England to obtain another vessel for his expedition. Tragedy struck, however, when only a week after leaving Sydney on the Porpoise, the ship (together with the Cato that was accompanying the voyage) ran aground on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. Three men were drowned, but the remaining crews and most of the stores and equipment, including Westall’s drawings (which had been ‘wetted and partly destroyed’) were transferred to a tiny, low-lying island. A temporary camp was set up and the ninety-four men lived there for almost two months while Flinders returned to Sydney for a rescue party. On his return with three ships, Flinders’s crew finally split up, with Westall sailing on to Canton and India before returning to London in 1805. Flinders himself sailed via Mauritius where the final calamity struck when he was imprisoned by the French authorities as a spy, and forced to remain on the island until 1810.

This slight pencil sketch by Westall is one of a small number of works that records the calamitous grounding of the Porpoise and Cato. Depicting survivors of the Cato being pulled out of the sea by crew in a boat from the Porpoise, the drawing is remarkably cursory, with rapid pencil lines capturing the salient features of the rescue bid. The elements of the drawing were repeated exactly in a more finished watercolour by the artist that shows the whole scene, with the Porpoise and the Cato aground on the coral reef in the background.2

1 The National Library of Australia now owns the largest number of these works, which were acquired in 1969. See E. Findlay, Arcadian Quest: William Westall’s Australian Sketches, Canberra, 1998.

2 Described in T. M. Perry & D. H. Simpson, Drawings by William Westall: Landscape Artist on Board H.M.S. Investigator during the Circumnavigation of Australia by Captain Matthew Flinders R.N. in 1801–1803, London, 1962, p. 63, rep. following plate 126.

Cathy Leahy