Dawes, William

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0102 MS 41645
Held at	: School of Oriental and African Studies   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://www.soas.ac.uk/Archives/home.html ›
Full title	: Dawes, William
Date(s)	: 1790, 1793 and undated
Level of description	: Collection (fonds)
Extent	: 2 volumes
Name of creator(s)	: Dawes | William | 1762-1836 | Lieutenant

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

A British expedition which embarked in 1787 to start a penal colony in Australia settled at Port Jackson (later Sydney). The indigenous people were the Eora. William Dawes (1762-1836) was Lieutenant (Royal Marines) on HMS Sirius, the flagship of the 'First Fleet'. He was a pioneering student of the language of New South Wales. His interests also included astronomy and in Australia he directed the building of an observatory under the instructions of the Board of Longitude. For further information see the entry by his friend, Zachary Macaulay, in the Australian Dictionary of National Biography, volume i: 1788-1850 (1983). See also A Currer Jones, William Dawes, RM, 1762 to 1836: a sketch of his life, work, and explorations (1787) in the first expedition to New South Wales (1930), and Arthur Phillip, The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay [with] ... plans and views ... by Lieut Dawes ... (1789).

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Notebooks of William Dawes, one dated 1790, comprising grammatical forms and vocabularies of the language spoken in the neighbourhood of Sydney, New South Wales; short vocabularies of the language of natives of Van Diemen's Land, collected by the officers of the French frigates La Recherche and L'Espérance in 1793.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English and aboriginal dialect

System of arrangement:

Conditions governing access:

Unrestricted.

Conditions governing reproduction:

No publication without written permission. Apply to archivist in the first instance.

Finding aids:

Described in Manuscripts in the British Isles relating to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, ed Phyllis Mander-Jones (1972), p 362. The manuscripts also feature in the Museum of Sydney exhibition catalogue, Fleeting Encounters: Pictures and Chronicles of the First Fleet (1995), p 111.

Archival Information

Archival history:

Formerly part of the library of the Orientalist and linguist William Marsden (1754-1836), a portion of which he presented to King's College London in 1835.

Immediate source of acquisition:

Marsden's manuscripts were transferred from King's College London to SOAS shortly after its foundation in 1916.

Allied Materials

Related material:

The Royal Society holds a manuscript on Port Jackson by William Dawes, 1788-1791 (Ref: MA146), among its meteorological archives. The Royal Greenwich Observatory archives, held at Cambridge University Library, includes accounts of the Board of Longitude by William Dawes, 1800 (Ref: 545 ff 202-4), and his correspondence, 1786-1792, during the establishment of an observatory at Port Jackson (Ref: 576 ff 237-308).

Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Compiled by Rachel Kemsley as part of the RSLP AIM25 project. Sources: Manuscripts in the British Isles relating to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, ed Phyllis Mander-Jones (1972); Fleeting Encounters: Pictures and Chronicles of the First Fleet (1995); British Library OPAC.

Rules or conventions:
Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions:
Apr 2002