Letters from the colony

Newton Fowell, 1786 – 1790

Letters Home

on the 4 [June] being the Kings birth day we fired 3 Royal Salutes & a Dinner was given by the Govonor to all the Officers, he than Named the intended Town Albion, the County Cumberland

Newton Fowell was a nineteen-year-old midshipman when he joined the Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet. He wrote thirteen letters home, mainly to his father, during this voyage and while at Sydney and Batavia (Jakarta), where he died in August 1790, just after his twenty-second birthday.

Phillip’s naming the town ‘Albion’ is intriguing. Surgeon-General John White, in his published journal of 1790, writes that Arthur Phillip intended to name it Albion. So does David Blackburn, master of the Supply, in a letter to his sister of November 1788. Lieutenant Ralph Clark in a letter to Major Ross of 22 June actually heads the letter ‘Albion’. No other witnesses to the events of 4 June mention it.

So did it happen? And should we rename Sydney?
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