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The Precarious Life of James Mario Matra: Voyager with Cook, American Loyalist, Servant of Empire
In August 1768, James Mario Matra, the 22-year-old son of an American loyalist, sailed with Captain Cook to unknown parts of the world. The voyage, fraught with danger and uncertainty, marked the beginning of what was to be, in many ways, a precarious life. On the Endeavour 's return in 1771, Matra anonymously published the first major account of Cook's voyage. He never saw New Holland again, but his significant role in the history of the settlement of Australia was not yet ended. When the American War of Independence deprived Matra of his family inheritance, the Endeavour 's celebrated naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks, helped get Matra employment as an official in various foreign outposts. In this capacity he turned his mind to ways of promoting Britain's global commercial network. Having personally felt the loss of one British colony, he conceived a plan to found another. In 1783 he proposed a British settlement in new South Wales to "atone for the loss of our American colonies." The settlement would give asylum to dispossessed American loyalists and would be built on the labor of young convicts. Matra offered to be its "Conductor and Governor." The Pitt administration concurred with Matra's proposal but declined to offer him the government of the intended colony. Instead he was given the post of Consul at Tangier, where he remained until his death in 1806. This book blends Matra's extensive and colorful correspondence with a biographical narrative to reveal for the first time the life and influence of this mysterious figure.
280 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1995
5 people want to read
About the author
Alan Frost
38 books7 followersAlan Frost is emeritus professor of history at La Trobe University. His books include Convicts and Empire, The Voyage of the Endeavour and The Global Reach of Empire. His latest work, Botany Bay: The Real Story, was
published in 2011.
published in 2011.
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July 10, 2013James Mario (Maria) Matra (1746?-1806), sailor and diplomat, was born James Magra, probably in the second half of 1746 in New York, son of James Magra and his wife Elizabeth. A member of a prominent Corsican family, Magra senior had migrated to Dublin in the early 1730s and changed his name from Matra. He perhaps studied medicine in Ireland and moved to New York before 1740. By his death in April 1774, Dr Magra had become prosperous, with large property holdings; however, the family lost its wealth in the American Revolution.
According to Evan Nepean, the under secretary at the Home Office, who knew him well, young Magra was educated in England. He entered the Royal Navy as 'Captain's Servant' in May 1761 and served in European waters until the end of the Seven Years War. In July 1764, having returned to New York, he became a midshipman in the Hawke. This and other ships in which he later served undertook peacetime patrols on the eastern coast of North America and around the British Isles.
On 25 July 1768 Magra joined the Endeavour and sailed on James Cook's first great voyage of Pacific exploration. In May 1770, when midway up the coast of New South Wales, suspecting that Magra was implicated in the drunken cropping of his clerk's ears, Cook suspended the midshipman from duty, noting that he was 'one of those gentlemen, frequently found on board Kings Ships, that can very well be spared, or to speake more planer good for nothing'. During this voyage, Magra became acquainted with (Sir) Joseph Banks, and their friendship lasted until his death. The Endeavour returned to England in July 1771. Circumstantial evidence has identified Magra as the anonymous author of A Journal of a Voyage Round the World, which appeared two months later, and which offered some details of Cook's voyage not found in other accounts.
In 1775 Magra petitioned the King to 'take the name and bear the Arms of Mario Matra', so as to obtain a Corsican inheritance. He followed a penurious career in minor diplomatic posts on the fringes of Europe, becoming consul at Tenerife (1772-75), then embassy secretary in Constantinople (1778-80).
Matra became a leading proponent of the idea of establishing a convict colony at Botany Bay. He presented his schemes for settlement to the Portland and Pitt administrations in 1783 and 1784. One of the very few Europeans then alive who had actually visited New South Wales, he testified to the House of Commons committee enquiring into the resumption of transportation in May 1785.
As Nepean's 'Memo of matters to be brought before Cabinet', about December 1784, indicated, when Pitt's ministers considered 'The Erecting a Settlement upon the Coast of New South Wales which is intended as an Assylum for some of the American Loyalists, who are now ready to depart and also as a place for the Transportation of Young Offenders who[se] crimes have not been of the most heinous nature', they were considering Matra's plan. His proposal to colonize New South Wales accorded well with the government's interests in disposing of the convicts, in building strategic resources in the Pacific Ocean and in establishing a trading network linking Asia and the Americas to Europe.
Disappointed in his hopes for a post in his proposed colony, in July 1786 Matra accepted the appointment of consul at Tangier, Morocco, where he was to remain (with some respites at Gibraltar when the plague ravaged North Africa) until his death. His later life exemplified the common lot of American Loyalists who, displaced and poverty-stricken, had to eke out precarious existences. 'I occupy but a small place on this Globe', he wrote plaintively in 1781, '& yet there is not room on it for me'.
In his letters from North Africa, Matra reported informatively on the geography and peoples of the region. He supplied Banks with curiosities; and he assisted travellers sent by the Association for the Exploration of the Interior Parts of Africa. Through the long years of war with revolutionary France, he saw that the British had the food supplies they needed to maintain their garrison at Gibraltar and to keep their Mediterranean squadron at sea.
In October 1793 Matra married Henrietta Maxwell, daughter of the army victualling agent at Gibraltar. They had no children. Matra died on 29 March 1806 at Tangier, survived by his wife.
Land around Botany bay WAS named after Matra and was called Matraville. Matraville’s beginnings were small farms and market gardens, many of them worked by the Chinese following the gold rush era. In 1917 a gift of 72.5 acres of Crown land, described as ‘the waste sand hills beyond Daceyville, was made available for returned soldiers from World War I. A Voluntary Workers Association formed and between 1918 and 1925 some 93 homes were built, south west of Anzac Parade and Beauchamp Road, as the Matraville Soldiers’ Garden Village… The houses eventually passed to the State Housing Board. In 1977 despite local protests, all but one of the cottages was demolished and the site redeveloped. The surrounding streets recall battlefields and sites of World War I.
According to Evan Nepean, the under secretary at the Home Office, who knew him well, young Magra was educated in England. He entered the Royal Navy as 'Captain's Servant' in May 1761 and served in European waters until the end of the Seven Years War. In July 1764, having returned to New York, he became a midshipman in the Hawke. This and other ships in which he later served undertook peacetime patrols on the eastern coast of North America and around the British Isles.
On 25 July 1768 Magra joined the Endeavour and sailed on James Cook's first great voyage of Pacific exploration. In May 1770, when midway up the coast of New South Wales, suspecting that Magra was implicated in the drunken cropping of his clerk's ears, Cook suspended the midshipman from duty, noting that he was 'one of those gentlemen, frequently found on board Kings Ships, that can very well be spared, or to speake more planer good for nothing'. During this voyage, Magra became acquainted with (Sir) Joseph Banks, and their friendship lasted until his death. The Endeavour returned to England in July 1771. Circumstantial evidence has identified Magra as the anonymous author of A Journal of a Voyage Round the World, which appeared two months later, and which offered some details of Cook's voyage not found in other accounts.
In 1775 Magra petitioned the King to 'take the name and bear the Arms of Mario Matra', so as to obtain a Corsican inheritance. He followed a penurious career in minor diplomatic posts on the fringes of Europe, becoming consul at Tenerife (1772-75), then embassy secretary in Constantinople (1778-80).
Matra became a leading proponent of the idea of establishing a convict colony at Botany Bay. He presented his schemes for settlement to the Portland and Pitt administrations in 1783 and 1784. One of the very few Europeans then alive who had actually visited New South Wales, he testified to the House of Commons committee enquiring into the resumption of transportation in May 1785.
As Nepean's 'Memo of matters to be brought before Cabinet', about December 1784, indicated, when Pitt's ministers considered 'The Erecting a Settlement upon the Coast of New South Wales which is intended as an Assylum for some of the American Loyalists, who are now ready to depart and also as a place for the Transportation of Young Offenders who[se] crimes have not been of the most heinous nature', they were considering Matra's plan. His proposal to colonize New South Wales accorded well with the government's interests in disposing of the convicts, in building strategic resources in the Pacific Ocean and in establishing a trading network linking Asia and the Americas to Europe.
Disappointed in his hopes for a post in his proposed colony, in July 1786 Matra accepted the appointment of consul at Tangier, Morocco, where he was to remain (with some respites at Gibraltar when the plague ravaged North Africa) until his death. His later life exemplified the common lot of American Loyalists who, displaced and poverty-stricken, had to eke out precarious existences. 'I occupy but a small place on this Globe', he wrote plaintively in 1781, '& yet there is not room on it for me'.
In his letters from North Africa, Matra reported informatively on the geography and peoples of the region. He supplied Banks with curiosities; and he assisted travellers sent by the Association for the Exploration of the Interior Parts of Africa. Through the long years of war with revolutionary France, he saw that the British had the food supplies they needed to maintain their garrison at Gibraltar and to keep their Mediterranean squadron at sea.
In October 1793 Matra married Henrietta Maxwell, daughter of the army victualling agent at Gibraltar. They had no children. Matra died on 29 March 1806 at Tangier, survived by his wife.
Land around Botany bay WAS named after Matra and was called Matraville. Matraville’s beginnings were small farms and market gardens, many of them worked by the Chinese following the gold rush era. In 1917 a gift of 72.5 acres of Crown land, described as ‘the waste sand hills beyond Daceyville, was made available for returned soldiers from World War I. A Voluntary Workers Association formed and between 1918 and 1925 some 93 homes were built, south west of Anzac Parade and Beauchamp Road, as the Matraville Soldiers’ Garden Village… The houses eventually passed to the State Housing Board. In 1977 despite local protests, all but one of the cottages was demolished and the site redeveloped. The surrounding streets recall battlefields and sites of World War I.
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