A 46-year long obsession, and more than two years’ of research which included two trips to London and countless hours of reading through historic documents, has finally paid off for Sydney author Bob Lawrence.
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Lawrence received the first copies of his latest book, ‘From Eden to Windsor Castle’, which traces the life and times of Sir Oswald Brierly, from the publishers this week and is about to embark on a book launch that will bring him to the Far South Coast.
Sir Oswald Brierly, 1817–1894, studied art, architecture and navigation in England before his fascination with seafaring caused him to sign up as staff artist on the Wanderer – a schooner owned by Benjamin Boyd, who was about to embark on a round-the-world trip.
After the voyage ended in Sydney in July 1842, Brierly went south to Eden where he was employed as the manager of Boyd’s Twofold Bay whaling enterprise for several years.
By 1848, Boyd was facing bankruptcy, leading Brierly to accept an offer from Captain Owen Stanley of a place aboard HMS Rattlesnake in surveying voyages, with his scientific research reinforcing the evolution theories of Charles Darwin.
When Stanley died in 1850, Brierly returned to England where he was engaged as an artist during the Crimean campaign and was possibly the first war artist to be commissioned by a newspaper.
After the war, he began to enjoy the patronage of Queen Victoria and later sailed alongside Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, on various voyages, including that of the Galatea, the vessel which conducted the Duke on his around-the-world Royal Tour of 1867–1868 that included Australia.
Brierly was appointed marine painter to the Queen and was knighted in 1885.
‘From Eden to Windsor Castle’ is Lawrence’s second book; he penned a book on Boyd in the 1990s which ran into a second edition and was sold at outlets including the Eden Killer Whale Museum.
“I first read about the adventures of Boyd and Brierly in 1971 and was instantly enthralled,” Lawrence said this week. “If you wrote a Hollywood script about a London stockbroker (Boyd) exploring the wilds of the Far South Coast and Monaro before being killed by cannibals in the New Hebrides, you’d be laughed at. It’s an improbable tale but true and Brierly is central to the Ben Boyd story.
Lawrence’s research took him to various locations in Britain including naval establishments in Greenwich, as well as Sydney’s Mitchell Library and Eden.
Profits from the book will be donated to the Eden Killer Whale Museum and Wanderer Replica Project, currently underway at Boydtown.
