David Collins Esq

David Collins (1756–1810) was the first lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen’s Land. London-born, he followed his father into the Royal Marines at fourteen, later seeing action in the American Revolutionary War and eventually attaining the rank of captain. In 1786 he was appointed judge-advocate of the new colony of New South Wales and embarked for Botany Bay aboard the Sirius, arriving on 20 January 1788. He was among those who joined Arthur Phillip’s sortie to Port Jackson the following day, and on 7 February, at Sydney Cove, he read the Act, commissions and letters patent inaugurating the new government. He was thereafter responsible for all legal matters in the settlement, and before long, for convict labour, health, rations and stores. He published the first volume of An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales after his return home in 1797. Although wanting to remain in England, he was sent to form a settlement in Bass Strait and sailed for Port Phillip in 1803. The chosen site (near present-day Sorrento) proved unsuitable, bringing about the settlement’s removal to the Derwent River and the founding of Hobart in February 1804. Collins’s fraught, six-year tenure as lieutenant-governor was characterised by neglect or rebuke on the part of his superiors in both Sydney and London. Despite matters such as his relationships with convict women, Collins was popular with colonists and generally considered to be humane, honest and cheerfully mannered. Hobart’s St. David’s Cathedral is named after him, as are the Collins Streets in Hobart and Melbourne.