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1791 MARY ANN PARKER
THE FIRST WOMAN TO TRAVEL EAST ROUND THE WORLD
When James Cook landed at Botany Bay in Australia, in April 1770, he encountered the local Gweagal people. Eighteen years later, when Britain’s first fleet of eleven ships arrived in Australia and established a settlement, once again the British came into contact with the indigenous Aboriginal people.
Violence started almost as soon as the colony was set up and there were many fights, mainly over food and land. As the incomers gradually took control and established their way of life, among most of them there was little understanding that the local people, even if they didn’t write or dress in the British style, still had a lot to offer.
One captain’s wife, who had arrived with the third fleet, shared this disdainful attitude until she met and came to really know a local Aboriginal person. It made her rethink her views to such an extent that she finally welcomed him into her London home, much to the horror of neighbours and friends.
It was a happy moment when, on New Year’s Day in 1791, Mary Ann Parker learned that her husband had been appointed as commander of HMSGorgon. Busy in their London house, with her mother helping to look after her two young children, 24-year-old Mary Ann must have been pleased her husband’s career was going so well.
There was a downside, though. In the 1700s the world was being opened up by the tall-masted sailing ships that were plying across the world, bringing home news of fascinating lands and exciting new products as well as being involved in gunship wars and support for land conquests. Being commander of a large 900-ton ship meant Mary Ann’s husband would be away for months at a time. But that was a career she had married into and travel was in her blood. Her grandfather, a London apothecary trading in medicinal remedies for the sick, had travelled to Jamaica and her ambitious father had also travelled as part of his job as a personal medical adviser to wealthy patients. He didn’t actually have any formal medical qualifications, but he was happy to gloss over this aspect in the same way he tended to ignore his continual debt problems. In fact, it was to stay one step ahead of his creditors that, when Mary Ann was around 9 years old, he moved his little family to Cartegena in southern Spain, where he worked for a while as a medical adviser to the British consul. Mary Ann picked up the Spanish language quickly during the years she spent as a child in Spain.
Mary Ann may have first met her husband during her time in Europe; he was certainly in the navy when they were married in London in January 1783. Her mother would have been delighted at this good marriage for her only child; the years of constant financial battles had been wearing, but now the prospects for her daughter were looking really good.
There was a slight embarrassment when, not long after their wedding, Mary Ann’s father was officially declared bankrupt. There was no hiding the situation and, with no money and nowhere to live, Mary Ann’s parents moved in with the young, newly married couple.
The day after Mary Ann’s husband was appointed as commander of theGorgon, on 2 January 1791, she learned more details. The ship had been commissioned to head off for an extended voyage to Port Jackson, now known as Sydney, on the other side of the world. The First Fleet had arrived there just three years before, in January 1788, and the settlement was struggling to survive. TheGorgon had been urgently commissioned to take desperately needed goods and livestock out to Port Jackson along with some convic
