Captn. John Hunter Late Governor of New South Wales

An unusual portrait of Captain John Hunter, captain of the Sirius during the First Fleet era and later Governor of New South Wales from 1795-1800. This portrait was prepared in 1801, and so is significant as showing Hunter just after he had returned from New South Wales for the second time.

An accomplished and professional naval officer, Hunter's time on the Sirius saw him become a mainstay of the colony, dispatched to Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope to trade. His governorship was not as successful, as Hunter's attempts to confront the illegal trade in rum and other challenges to his authority led to even more turbulence from the New South Wales Corps and its cronies. It was a crucial period in the consolidation of New South Wales as the penal outpost of the British Empire, and while Hunter was widely regarded as a competent administrator by 1799 things had deteriorated to the extent that he was recalled rather sternly.

This engraving appeared in the Naval Chronicle of 1801. It depicts Hunter as a more senior and dashing figure than the earlier engraving of 1792 which had been included as frontispiece in Hunter's An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island.