Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/620

 496 ARTHUR PHILLIP. Does not know much about PhfUip. Oerman father. Midahip- Lieutenant. Country gentleman. In Portu- guese navy. your department, I could never have thought a£ oontestmg the choice you woxdd make of the officer to be entrusted with the con- duct of it I cannot say the little knowledge I have of Captain Phillip woukl have led me to select him for a service of this complicated nature. But as you are satisfied of his ability, and I conclude he wiU be taken under your direction, I presume it will not be unreasonable to move the King for having his Majesty's pleasure signified to the Admiralty for these purposes, as soon as you see proper, that no time may be lost in making the requisite preparations for the voyage. The following Anecdotes of Qovemor Phillip were published in Phillip's Voyage, pp. 1-6 : — Arthur Phillip is one of those officers who, like Drake, Dampier, and Cook, has raised himself by his merit and his services to dish tinction and command. Bis father was Jacob Phillip, a native of Frankfort in Germany, who, having settled in England, maintained his family and educated his son by teaching the languages. His mother was Elizabeth Breach, who married, for her first husband, Captain Herbert, of the navy, a kinsman of Lord Pembroka Of her marriage with Jacob Phillip was her son Arthur, born in the parish of AUhallows, Bread-street, within the city of London, on the nth of October, 1738. Being designed for a seafaring life, he was very properly sent to the school at Greenwich, where he received an education suit- able to his early propensities. At the age of sixteen he began his maritime career under the deceased Captain Michael Everet, of the navy, at the commencement of hostilities in 1755 ; and at the same time he learned the rudiments of his profession imder that able officer, he partook with him in the early nusfortunsB and subsequent glories of the Seven Years' War. Whatever opukooe Phillip acquired from the capture of Havannah, certain it is that, at the age of twenty-three, he there was made a lieutenant into the Stirling Castle, on the 7tii of June, 1761, by Sir George Pococke, an excellent judge of naval accomplishments. But of nauticaJ exploits, however they may raise marine officezs, there must be an end. And Phillip now found leisure to many and to settle at Lyndhurst in the New Forest, where he amused himself with farming, and, like other country gentlemen, dis- charged assiduously those provincial offices which, however nn- important, occupy respectably the owners of land, who, in this island, require no office to make them important. But sailors, like their own element, are seldom at rest 1%<»® occupations, which pleased Phillip while they were new, no longer pleased him when they became fkmiliar, and he hastened to ofo his skill and his services to Portugal when it engaged in war- fare with Spain. His offer was readily accepted, because such Digitized by Google