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 governor of the Straits Settlements. On arrival at Singapore, he visited the treaty states and found Perak in a very unsettled condition he and his party were nearly massacred. He developed the able policy of his predecessor, Sir Andrew Clarke, and appointed commissioners to administer the government in the name of the sultan. The murder of Mr. Birch in November, followed by the repulse of a small British force at Passir-Sala, led Jervois to take energetic measures. All available troops in the Straits Settlements and at Hongkong were hurried to the spot, and, reinforced by troops from India, a successful campaign ensued and the sultan was apprehended. The home government expressed its approval of Jervois's energetic measures. He received the Indian war medal and clasp for his services in the Perak expedition.

While at Singapore Jervois made a valuable report upon the defences required there, which formed the basis of the scheme carried out some years later. In April 1877 he was appointed adviser to the various Australasian colonies as to the defence of their chief ports, and visited New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia. While engaged in this duty he was appointed on 6 July to the government of South Australia, retaining the duty of defence adviser to the other Australasian colonies, and, after taking over his government, visited Tasmania and New Zealand. On 25 May 1878 he was promoted to be a knight grand cross of the order of St. Michael and St. George. His recommendations as to the defences of the Australasian colonies were accepted and eventually carried out, and his reports were of great assistance to the royal commission, of which Lord Carnarvon was president in 1882, on the defence of British possessions and commerce abroad.

Jervois proved a good governor, and after five years in South Australia he was transferred to the government of New Zealand in 1882, retiring from the military service on 7 April of the same year. He paid great attention to the defence of the principal ports of New Zealand, and roused public feeling in the colony by his lectures and writings. He was much aided in these endeavours by the war scare in 1885, and had the satisfaction of seeing the scheme of defence completed before the termination of his term of office. His prompt action when the king of Samoa made overtures to the colony to place his dominions under British protection, and the New Zealand ministers proposed to send an armed vessel to Samoa, saved a serious complication.

Jervois differed from the general opinion in Australasia on the question of Chinese immigration, believing that, as half the Australian continent lies within the tropics, it can only be fully developed by coloured labour, of which the Chinese is the most valuable. In 1888 Jervois attended the celebration at Sydney of the centenary of New South Wales, and delivered a remarkably able speech. He left Wellington, New Zealand, on the completion of his term of government on 18 March 1889, 'the best and most popular governor that New Zealand has ever had.'

In 1890 Jervois served on Edward Stanhope's consultative committee on coast defence duties. He had strongly advocated, on his return home, both in the press and by lectures, that the defence of naval bases at home and abroad should be in the hands of the navy. The navy, however, consistently adhered to the fundamental principle that its duty is to fight the enemy's ships, and declined to be hampered by any such charge. This somewhat whimsical proposal, which owed any significance it possessed to its advocacy by Jervois, fell through. In 1892 he revisited South Australia, and on his return to England lived at Virginia Water. He died on 16 Aug. 1897, from the effects of a carriage accident at Bitterne, Hampshire, and was buried at Virginia Water on 20 Aug.

He was a fellow of the Royal Society (7 June 1888) and of other learned and scientific societies, and an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Jervois married, on 19 March 1850, in London, Lucy (d. 17 March 1895), daughter of William Norsworthy, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. Besides the papers already mentioned Jervois contributed to vol. ix. of the Royal Engineers' Professional Papers, new series, 'Observations relating to Works for the Defence of Naval Ports,' and the following were separately published: 'The Defensive Policy of Great Britain,' 1871; 'Coast Defences of England,' 1869; 'Coast Defences and the application of Iron to Fortification,' 1868; 'Report on the Defence of Canada,' 1865, fol.; 'The Defence of New Zealand,' 1884, fol.; 'Anniversary Address to the New Zealand Institute,' 1883; 'Address to South Australian Institute,' 1879.

Two portraits of Jervois in oil, by Fisher, both in uniform one as a young lieutenant and the other as a captain are in the possession of the family. An engraving of Jervois was published about 1860 in the 'Drawing-room Portrait Gallery of Eminent