Rear Admiral Sir John Hindmarsh KH RN
1st Governor of South Australia
In office 28 December 1836 – 16 July 1838
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	George Gawler
Personal details
Born	1785 Chatham, Kent Great Britain
Died	29 July 1860 London, United Kingdom
Resting place	St. Andrew's Church, Hove
Occupation	Naval officer, Colonial administrator
Military service
Allegiance	Great Britain (1793–1801) United Kingdom (1801–1846)
Service/branch	Royal Navy
Years of service	1793–1856
Rank	Rear Admiral
Unit	HMS Bellerophon HMS Phoebe HMS Beagle HMS Nisus HMS Scylla HMS Buffalo
Commands	HMS Scylla HMS Buffalo
Battles/wars	Glorious First of June Battle of Algeciras Bay Battle of the Nile Battle of Trafalgar Battle of the Basque Roads Invasion of Java
Awards	Naval General Service Medal Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order

Rear-Admiral Sir John Hindmarsh KH RN (1785^[1] – 29 July 1860) was a naval officer and the first Governor of South Australia, from 28 December 1836 to 16 July 1838.

Early life[link]

Hindmarsh was the son of John Hindmarsh, a gunner on HMS Bellerophon, and his wife Mary. He was baptized at St Mary's, Chatham, Kent.^[2]

Naval career[link]

Hindmarsh joined the Royal Navy in 1793 serving on HMS Bellerophon, being listed on the muster roll as the servant of his father.^[2] He saw action at the Battle of the Glorious First of June, the Battle of Algeciras Bay (or the Battle of the Gut of Gibraltar) and at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 where he was briefly the only officer on the deck of HMS Bellerophon where he gave orders which saved the ship from destruction. Hindmarsh was promoted lieutenant in 1803. He served on HMS Phoebe at the Battle of Trafalgar, at the Battle of the Basque Roads (1809) on HMS Beagle and at the invasion of Java on HMS Nisus. A period of inaction followed, but in 1830 he was in command of HMS Scylla and was made a rear-admiral in 1831. In 1836 Hindmarsh went to South Australia as its first governor after winning influential support and applying the Colonial Office.

When the Naval General Service Medal, designed by William Wyon, was introduced, it was discovered that only two people were entitled to the medal with seven clasps (one clasp for each battle the recipient took part in): Sir John Hindmarsh and Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Alexander Gordon.

Governor[link]

Hindmarsh arrived in South Australia in 28 December 1836, with a fleet of ships carrying the first British settlers for the colony. The ships in the fleet included the Cygnet (carrying Colonel William Light's surveyors), Africaine, Tam O'Shanter, Rapid, and HMS Buffalo (carrying Hindmarsh). Initially they landed on Kangaroo Island, and sent out the team of surveyors led by Light to find a suitable place for the capital city of the new colony. Hindmarsh wanted it at Port Lincoln,^[2] instead of at the present site which had been selected by Light. Light eventually chose the site of Adelaide, and the fleet moved up Gulf St Vincent to Holdfast Bay, now known as Glenelg, South Australia. Hindmarsh's proclamation on 28 December 1836 announced the colonial government and stated that Aborigines were to be treated justly and were now British Subjects. Although most South Australians have been taught that Hindmarch's proclamation created the colony, it did not. King William IV, having been empowered by an Act of Parliament in 1834, over a year latter, in February 1836 in Letters Patent 'Erected and Established' the Province of South Australia. No governor had the power to create colonies.

There was some question as to the respective powers of the governor and the resident commissioner, James Hurtle Fisher, and the two came into open conflict. Feeling ran high and when Hindmarsh went so far as to suspend Robert Gouger and other public officers, the commissioners brought the matter before the secretary of state for the colonies. Hindmarsh was then recalled to London in 1838.^[2] In 1840 he was made as Lieutenant-Governor of Heligoland. Hindmarsh was knighted by Queen Victoria on 7 August 1851, attained the rank of rear-admiral in 1856 and retired in 1856 to the seaside town of Hove, England.

Legacy[link]

Hindmarsh lived at 30 Albany Villas for a number of years, where there is now a blue plaque in his honour. Rear-Admiral Sir John Hindmarsh died in London on 29 July 1860 and is buried in the grounds of St Andrews Church, Hove. Hindmarsh was governor of South Australia for little more than a year, an unfortunate episode in an otherwise distinguished career. His position was anomalous from the start, and, though he was sometimes wanting in both tact and wisdom, his difficulties were great. For an interesting summary see A. Grenfell Price's Founders and Pioneers of South Australia, p. 92. His daughter Jane married Alfred Miller Mundy MP of Shipley Hall, Derbyshire, and was the mother of Maria, who married Sir Constantine Phipps, father of ambassador Sir Eric Phipps. A grandson Alfred Hindmarsh was an MP and early Labour politician in New Zealand.

Places named after John Hindmarsh[link]

• The Adelaide suburb of Hindmarsh was originally laid out as a speculative subdivision, the Village of Hindmarsh, on land owned by him. It was for many years the centre of a Local Government Area called the Town of Hindmarsh, which has now been amalgamated into the City of Charles Sturt.
• The Division of Hindmarsh federal electorate takes in the area near the proclamation site.
• Hindmarsh Island is near the town of Goolwa, close to the Murray Mouth.
• The Hindmarsh River flows into Encounter Bay south of Adelaide.
• Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide is an open space public park within the City of Adelaide.
• Hindmarsh Drive runs through the districts of Weston Creek and South Canberra in Canberra, Australia.

References[link]

1. ^ There is evidence that his parents married on 23 August 1784. Although he could have been born out of wedlock some years earlier, the marriage date is consistent with his baptism as an infant on 22 May 1785. A member of the Hindmarsh family claimed in 1965 to have seen the parish register recording the 1785 baptism. – ADB Online Project
2. ^ ^{a b c d} "Hindmarsh, Sir John (1785–1860)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1. MUP. 1966. pp. 538–541. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010498b.htm. Retrieved 2009-07-27. 

• Serle, Percival (1949). "Hindmarsh, John". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogHi-Hu.html#hindmarsh1. 
• From Powder Monkey to Governor, the Life of Rear Admiral Sir John Hindmarsh, F Stewart Hindmarsh, Access Press 1995, ISBN 0-949795-88-7

External links[link]

• Letters Patent
• The proclamation handwritten notes

v t e Governors of South Australia Before Federation Hindmarsh Gawler Grey Robe Young MacDonnell Daly Fergusson Musgrave Jervois Robinson Earl Kintore Buxton Lord Tennyson Hunte After Federation Bosanquet Galway Weigall Bridges Hore-Ruthven Dugan Barclay-Harvey Norrie George Bastyan Harrison Oliphant Nicholls Seaman Dunstan Mitchell Neal Jackson-Nelson Scarce

John Newton.

John Henry Newton (July 24, 1725 – December 21, 1807) was a British sailor and Anglican clergyman. Starting his career at sea, at a young age, he became involved with the slave trade for a few years. After experiencing a religious conversion, he became a minister, hymn-writer, and later a prominent supporter of the abolition of slavery. He was the author of many hymns, including "Amazing Grace" and "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken."

Early life[link]

John Newton was born in Wapping, London, in 1725, the son of John Newton Sr., a shipmaster in the Mediterranean service, and Elizabeth Newton (née Seatclife), a Nonconformist Christian. His mother died of tuberculosis in July, 1732, about two weeks before his seventh birthday.^[1] Two years later, he went to live in Aveley, the home of his father's new wife.^[2] Newton spent two years at boarding school. At age eleven he went to sea with his father. Newton sailed six voyages before his father retired in 1742. Newton's father made plans for him to work at a sugar plantation in Jamaica. Instead, Newton signed on with a merchant ship sailing to the Mediterranean Sea.

In 1743, while on the way to visit some friends, Newton was captured and pressed into the naval service by the Royal Navy. He became a midshipman aboard HMS Harwich. At one point, Newton attempted to desert and was punished in front of the crew of 350. Stripped to the waist, tied to the grating, he received a flogging of one dozen lashes, and was reduced to the rank of a common seaman.^{[3][unreliable source?]}

Following that disgrace and humiliation, Newton initially contemplated suicide.^{[3][unreliable source?]} He recovered, both physically and mentally. Later, while Harwich was on route to India, he transferred to Pegasus, a slave ship bound for West Africa. The ship carried goods to Africa, and traded them for slaves to be shipped to England and other countries.

Newton proved to be a continual problem for the crew of Pegasus. They left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, a slave dealer. Clowe took Newton to the coast, and gave him to his wife Princess Peye, an African duchess. Newton was abused and mistreated along with her other slaves. It was this period that Newton later remembered as the time he was "once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in West Africa."

Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked by Newton's father to search for him, he made it to freedom.^{[citation needed]}

In 1750 he married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Catlett, in St. Margaret's Church, Rochester^[4].

Spiritual conversion[link]

He sailed back to England in 1748 aboard the merchant ship Greyhound, which was carrying beeswax and dyer's wood, now referred to as camwood. During this voyage, he experienced a spiritual conversion. The ship encountered a severe storm off the coast of Donegal and almost sank. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and finally called out to God as the ship filled with water. After he called out, the cargo came out and stopped up the hole, and the ship was able to drift to safety. It was this experience which he later marked as the beginnings of his conversion to evangelical Christianity. As the ship sailed home, Newton began to read the Bible and other religious literature. By the time he reached Britain, he had accepted the doctrines of evangelical Christianity. The date was March 10, 1748, an anniversary he marked for the rest of his life. From that point on, he avoided profanity, gambling, and drinking. Although he continued to work in the slave trade, he had gained a considerable amount of sympathy for the slaves. He later said that his true conversion did not happen until some time later: "I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterwards."^[5]

Newton returned to Liverpool, England and, partly due to the influence of his father's friend Joseph Manesty, obtained a position as first mate aboard the slave ship Brownlow, bound for the West Indies via the coast of Guinea. During the first leg of this voyage, while in west Africa (1748–1749), Newton acknowledged the inadequacy of his spiritual life. While he was sick with a fever, he professed his full belief in Christ and asked God to take control of his destiny. He later said that this experience was his true conversion and the turning point in his spiritual life. He claimed it was the first time he felt totally at peace with God.

Still, he did not renounce the slave trade until later in his life. After his return to England in 1750, he made three further voyages as captain of the slave-trading ships Duke of Argyle (1750) and African (1752–1753 and 1753–1754). He only gave up seafaring and his active slave-trading activities in 1754, after suffering a severe stroke, but continued to invest his savings in Manesty's slaving operations."^[6]

Anglican priest[link]

In 1755 Newton became tide surveyor (a tax collector) of the port of Liverpool, again through the influence of Manesty. In his spare time, he was able to study Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. He became well known as an evangelical lay minister. In 1757, he applied to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England, but it was more than seven years before he was eventually accepted.

Such was his frustration during this period of rejection that he also applied to the Methodists, Independents and Presbyterians, and applications were even mailed directly to the Bishops of Chester and Lincoln and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.

Eventually, in 1764, he was introduced by Thomas Haweis to Lord Dartmouth, who was influential in recommending Newton to the Bishop of Chester, and who suggested him for the living of Olney, Buckinghamshire. On 29 April 1764 Newton received deacon's orders, and finally became a priest on June 17.

As curate of Olney, Newton was partly sponsored by an evangelical philanthropist, the wealthy Christian merchant John Thornton, who supplemented his stipend of £60 a year with £200 a year "for hospitality and to help the poor". He soon became well known for his pastoral care, as much as for his beliefs, and his friendship with Dissenters and evangelical clergy caused him to be respected by Anglicans and Nonconformists alike. He spent sixteen years at Olney, during which time so popular was his preaching that the church had a gallery added to accommodate the large numbers who flocked to hear him.

Some five years later, in 1772, Thomas Scott, later to become a biblical commentator and co-founder of the Church Missionary Society, took up the curacy of the neighbouring parishes of Stoke Goldington and Weston Underwood. Newton was instrumental in converting Scott from a cynical 'career priest' to a true believer, a conversion Scott related in his spiritual autobiography The Force Of Truth (1779).

In 1779 Newton was invited by John Thornton to become Rector of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London, where he officiated until his death. The church had been built by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1727 in the fashionable Baroque style. Newton then became one of only two evangelical preachers in the capital, and he soon found himself gaining in popularity amongst the growing evangelical party. He was a strong supporter of evangelicalism in the Church of England, and remained a friend of Dissenters as well as Anglicans.

Many young churchmen and others enquiring about their faith visited him and sought his advice, including such well-known social figures as the writer and philanthropist Hannah More, and the young Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, who had recently undergone a crisis of conscience and religious conversion as he was contemplating leaving politics. Having sought his guidance, Newton encouraged Wilberforce to stay in Parliament and "serve God where he was".^[7][8]

In 1792, he was presented with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).

Abolitionist[link]

Newton in his later years

In 1788, 34 years after he had retired from the slave trade, Newton broke a long silence on the subject with the publication of a forceful pamphlet "Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade", in which he described the horrific conditions of the slave ships during the Middle Passage, and apologized for "a confession, which ... comes too late ... It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders." A copy of the pamphlet was sent to every MP, and sold so well that it swiftly required reprinting.^[9]

Newton became an ally of his friend William Wilberforce, leader of the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade. He lived to see the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807.

Newton has been called hypocritical by some modern writers for continuing to participate in the slave trade while holding strong Christian convictions. Newton later came to believe that during the first five of his nine years as a slave trader he had not been a Christian in the full sense of the term: "I was greatly deficient in many respects ... I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time later."^[10] Although this "true conversion" to Christianity also had no immediate impact on his views on slavery, he eventually came to revise them.

Writer and hymnist[link]

The vicarage in Olney where Newton wrote the hymn that would become "Amazing Grace".

In 1767 William Cowper, the poet, moved to Olney. He worshipped in the church, and collaborated with Newton on a volume of hymns, which was eventually published as Olney Hymns in 1779. This work had a great influence on English hymnology. The volume included Newton's well-known hymns "Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken", "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds!", "Let Us Love, and Sing, and Wonder", "Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare", "Approach, My Soul, the Mercy-seat", and "Faith's Review and Expectation", which has come to be known by its opening phrase, "Amazing Grace".

Many of Newton's (as well as Cowper's) hymns are preserved in the Sacred Harp. He also contributed to the Cheap Repository Tracts.

Also, he wrote an anonymous autobiography called An Authentic Narrative of Some Remarkable And Interesting Particulars in the Life of ------ Communicated, in a Series of Letters, to the Reverend T. Haweiss.

Commemoration[link]

The gravestone of John Newton in Olney with the epitaph he penned.

• The town of Newton, Sierra Leone is named after John Newton. To this day there is a philanthropic link between John Newton's church of Olney and Newton, Sierra Leone.

• Newton was recognized for his hymns of longstanding influence by the Gospel Music Association in 1982 when he was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

Portrayals in literature, movies and other media[link]

• Newton is portrayed by actor John Castle in the 1975 British television miniseries "The Fight Against Slavery."
• Caryl Phillips's novel Crossing the River (1993) includes nearly verbatim excerpts from Newton's books.
• Newton is played by the actor Albert Finney in the 2006 film Amazing Grace, which highlights Newton's influence on William Wilberforce. Directed by Michael Apted, this film portrays Newton as a penitent who is haunted by the ghosts of 20,000 slaves.
• Newton is also played by the actor Nick Moran in another 2006 film The Amazing Grace. The creation of Nigerian director/writer/producer Jeta Amata, the film provides a refreshing and creative African perspective on the familiar "Amazing Grace" theme. Nigerian actors Joke Silva, Mbong Odungide, and Fred Amata (brother of the director) portray Africans who are captured and wrested away from their homeland by slave traders.
• African Snow, a play by Murray Watts, takes place in Newton's mind. It was first produced at the York Theatre Royal as a co-production with Riding Lights Theatre Company in April 2007 before transferring to the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End and a National Tour. Newton was played by Roger Alborough and Olaudah Equiano by Israel Oyelumade.

References[link]

The historical novel The Longing Season by Christine Schaub tells the story of the courtship of John Newton and Mary Catlett. It is second in the author’s Music of the Heart series.

Bibliography[link]

• Aitken, Jonathan, John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (Crossway Books, 2007).
•  Bennett, H. L. (1885–1900). "Newton, John (1725-1807)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 
• Hindmarsh, D. Bruce. John Newton in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: University Press, 2004)
• Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains, The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery (Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan, 2005)
• Turner, Steve, "Amazing Grace: The Story of America's Most Beloved Song" (New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2002)
• Rediker, Marcus, The Slave Ship: A Human History (Viking, 2007)
• JohnNewton.org (2007)
• Bruner, Kurt & Ware, Jim, "Finding GOD in the Story of AMAZING GRACE" (Tyndale, 2007)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Newton

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Newton

• The John Newton Project
• Famous Quotes by John Newton
• Biography & Articles on Newton
• Amazing Grace: The Song, Author and their Connection to County Donegal in Ireland
• Amazing Grace: Some Early Tunes
• The Cowper and Newton Museum, Olney
• Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade By John Newton. Published in 1788. Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection. {Reprinted by}Cornell University Library Digital Collections