The only printed image of bay whaling in Australia. Benjamin Boyd was a Scottish entrepreneur who became a major ship owner, banker, grazier and politician in Australia after his arrival in 1842. He established Boyd Town on the southern shores of Twofold Bay, New South Wales and by 1848 had nine whalers working from this port. The major port in Twofold Bay became Eden despite strenuous efforts by Boyd to convince the Government that Boyd Town was the better site. The matter was arbitrated by Captain Owen Stanley, Commander of H.M.S. RATTLESNAKE. On board was the biologist Thomas Huxley who became Charles Darwin's "Bulldog". With the decision regarding the selection of Eden as the preferred port, Boyd's whaling manager, Oswald Brierly, an accomplished artist, was invited on their surveying voyage to northern Australia and New Guinea. He subsequently became the major British marine artist of the mid-nineteenth century.
BAY WHALING is almost certainly by Brierly.
Published in Wells' Geographical Gazeteer, Sydney, 1848.
The engraver was John Carmichael (1811-57) the more important Sydney engraver of the period.
110 x 180 mm. (Plateline).
Copperplate etching.
Later hand colour.
A little time stained.