Summary

This item is one of our 50 Treasures: Celebrating 50 years of James Cook University

Jean Dartnall answers the question 'Why is this significant?'

Oswald Brierly was a well-known and respected marine artist. In later life he became Marine Painter to Queen Victoria and to the Royal Yacht Squadron. He was knighted in 1885. Brierly's work relied on training in drawing and painting, and also on the study of naval architecture, and practical experience in ships at sea. He travelled widely and made friends everywhere.

Brierly first came to Australia on board the schooner Wanderer sailed by her owner, entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd. For several years Brierly managed Boyd's pastoral and whaling interests around Twofold Bay, New South Wales. However, by 1848 Brierly was ready to move on. He had been befriended by Captain Owen Stanley RN, captain of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, and was invited to join the ship as a guest.

The voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, 1846 – 1850 was significant in practical ways for eastern Australia and Papua New Guinea. It resulted in the first detailed survey of islands and sea passages in the Great Barrier Reef area and in the Louisiade Archipelago. The brief from the Lords of the Admiralty to Captain Owen Stanley was to produce charts and sailing directions for an absolutely safe track in the inner part of the barrier reef.

The timing of this work was of strategic importance as the Dutch, French and American navies were becoming more interested in the Pacific Ocean and Coral Sea which had, until then, been considered by the British as their own.

It seems probable that these sketches of wave patterns were made while the ship was engaging in detailed surveying. These would have been long periods of slow or no movement in fairly calm seas. The vessels shown in some of the drawings would have been the two tenders to the Rattlesnake - Bramble and Castlereagh - forming the other points of triangulation for sightings and soundings. Two of the drawings are dated June 7th [18]48: on that date the ships would have been at or close to the Barnard Islands (approximately offshore present-day Tully). Another sketch is dated Sept 14th 1849 when the ships were in the Louisiade Archipelago in the vicinity of Rossel Island.

These sketches may have been intended for reworking with wash or watercolour, a technique that Brierly often used, or may simply have been made to pass the time. Brierly was a prolific artist and said of himself that he had 'an irresistible urge to sketch'.

The significance of these drawings is as a rare illustration of the superficially boring but vitally important activity of survey. The surveying work of this voyage produced the data for navigational charts which made possible the settlement and development of Queensland.