The Life and Legacy of Capt. John Barker Harwood (Pt 1)

During the pandemic I began transcribing the maritime journals of my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Capt. John Barker Harwood. I also started researching JBH (as I often now think of him) as part of my family history. Before this, I didn’t know anything about him – not even his name, let alone his role in Australian and maritime history.

I knew only that my nanna had some treasured old journals that she thought belonged to her grandfather and which told the intriguing story of his journey to, and arrival in, Australia. The journals do briefly cover some of JBH’s early life in the New South Wales colony. Mainly, they concentrate on selected voyages and aspects of his maritime career, shed light on several at-the-time controversial events, and yield clues about his values, especially when considered in the light of other public records and newspaper accounts of his various activities. 

John Barker Harwood was a Yorkshireman born on 13 November 1799 who, when aged about twelve, went to sea on whaling ships to provide for his mother and siblings. He took responsibility for the family, despising what he saw as his father’s professional incompetence, financial irresponsibility, and disregard for his mother, himself, and his siblings. (This early concern for his family’s welfare became a key driver in many subsequent life decisions.) 

JBH soon became a skilled sailor and an accomplished harpooner, making excellent money through his many kills, quick wits, and eye for an opportunity. He endured many horrendous events during his ten or so years in the Humber whaling industry, including being shipwrecked on ice floes in the Arctic Circle in his late teens. His journals recall some of these events in shocking, even gory, detail. 

In his early twenties, after a particularly bad year for shipwrecks, JBH decided not to work on whalers again despite being offered senior positions. Whaling entailed peril; numerous men had been significantly disabled or killed in the shipwrecks and storms JBH reported. 

He refused offered commissions on whalers saying he was young, untrained, and the crews were tough men, not given to meekly taking orders from others, and especially not from people much younger than them. Crews needed to have confidence in the skills and expertise of their leaders, especially when in crisis. Further, families needed secure incomes and a man’s protection. (Who knows how many families he grew up or worked with had been as destitute as his was? Or how many wives and children had been left destitute by the whaling trade?)

For a short time after turning down the offers of senior whaling positions, he widened his experience by going to sea in what could be called middle-ranking roles, but soon went to London for officer training. He learnt various navigational and other skills and eventually became a ship’s captain with private commissions from the East India Company, among others.

It is not clear when John Harwood first reached Sydney in the Colony of New South Wales: it is known that during winter 1825 a ship he was working on visited Norfolk Island on its way to Mauritius. Over time, he became well-known in the colonies of Sydney, Van Diemen’s Land, and South Australia, sailing regularly between the ‘mother’ country and these Australian colonies, and sometimes taking his family with him.

His involvement in significant and/or notorious events in Australian maritime and political history included the reopening of the infamous Norfolk Island penal colony and several mutinies and attempted piracies (though not as a mutineer or pirate). He is supposed to have discovered what is now the Namoluk Atoll in Micronesia (that fact, like some others in his story, is disputed), and was both rescuer and rescue-ee in various shipwrecks and violent encounters with indigenous people in New Zealand and elsewhere.

JBH was entrepreneurial. He regularly tried his hand in maritime and non-maritime ventures in the colonies and the United Kingdom, not always successfully. Colonial newspapers evidence that he was regularly before the courts as both accuser and accused – for personal, business, and maritime reasons.

An early court appearance was in Hobart town court for non-payment of debt. Leaving Tasmania soon after this first court appearance and early in married life, he gave up the sea to become a licenced publican in Sydney – until he was convicted for allowing ‘five men to drink, tipple and play billiards in his home after 9 PM contrary to the Act’. After this, he went back to sea; presumably due to financial need, though it may have been to avoid gaol or shame.

Today we would call him a ‘go-getter’ or an adventurer. It is not clear that he regarded himself as either, at least initially. He wrote that he had no choice regarding his early decision to go to sea. Other than clearly displaying a contemptuous attitude towards his father, the journals make very few references to his private life – which seems to have been tumultuous. 

JBH moved his family regularly between Australian colonies and between the colonies and the UK. He was often away from home for extensive periods at sea. At times, his family sailed with him while he worked; still other times, he worked away without going to sea. Sometimes, the family had money; sometimes, they really did not.

Knowing what I do of his life story, I wonder what thoughts crossed his wife’s and children’s minds regarding him, his stories and life choices, his attitude to his father, and the impact of these on their lives. I wonder what they thought about moving around so much and the variability and instability in their life contexts. I wonder what lessons and values, and attitudes and behaviours, became deeply rooted in his children, their children, and further generations. 

And I wonder how much of my immediate family’s values and attitudes are part of John Barker Harwood’s legacy.