In the Footsteps of Captain Patrick Logan

By John Tilston

In 1824 Captain Patrick Logan of the British Army's 57th Regiment of Foot was chosen to be the commandant of the harsh new penal colony of Moreton Bay, the forerunner of Brisbane, the capital of the Australian state of Queensland, because he was thought to be of strong character and impeccable credentials. He was by official reports, a very successful overseer of the fledgling settlement, and may be said to be the father of Brisbane. Yet his charges, the incorrigible old lags - convicts with repeat offences - saw him as a heartless tyrant who routinely ordered unconscionable punishments. He met with a grisly, mysterious end. Was it related to his treatment of convicts? Local author John Tilston takes us on a journey to discover the true character of the man behind so many myths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yellow Sail Company
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781663565594

John Tilston

John Tilston has over 25 years’ experience writing for leading financial publications reporting on economies and stock markets from close quarters. He has worked as Melbourne Bureau Chief for the Australian Financial Review; Economics Editor for Business Day; and London-based Economics News Editor for Dow Jones Newswires. He has contributed to New York's Business Week; the London-based Investors' Chronicle; the Financial Mail in Johannesburg; The Sunday Times; and Finance Week. He is the author of four books, most recently: NIMBY! Aligning regional economic development practice to the realities of the 21st Century. Others are Meanjin to Brisvegas: Brisbane’s journey from colonial backwater to new world city; How to explain why you’re vegetarian to you dinner guests (published in Japan, 2004); and a work of historical fiction, Churchill’s Mole Hunt (novel) (2006)

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In the Footsteps of Captain Patrick Logan

John Tilston

Published by Yellow Sail Company, 2020.

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF CAPTAIN PATRICK LOGAN

First edition. September 30, 2020.

Copyright © 2020 John Tilston.

ISBN: 978-1663565594

Written by John Tilston.

Also by John Tilston

Bull Market: The rise and eclipse of Australian stock exchanges

Churchill's Mole Hunt

Meanjin to Brisvegas: Snapshots of Brisbane's journey from colonial backwater to new world city

NIMBY! Aligning regional economic development practice to the realities of the 21st Century

The Ghosts of Great Zimbabwe: An imagined journey

In the Footsteps of Captain Patrick Logan

Natural Rhythms of Main Beach

Watch for more at John Tilston’s site.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Also By John Tilston

In the footsteps of Captain Pa | trick Logan | John Tilston | In the footsteps of Captain Patrick Logan

About the Author

In the footsteps of Captain Pa

trick Logan

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John Tilston

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In the footsteps of Captain Patrick Logan 

PROLOGUE 

INTRODUCTION 

Britain in the early 19th Century 

CHAPTER ONE 

Heritage 

CHAPTER TWO 

Forged in battle 

CHAPTER THREE 

Port Jackson 

CHAPTER FOUR 

Moreton Bay penal outpost 

CHAPTER FIVE 

Commandant 

CHAPTER SIX 

The original inhabitants 

CHAPTER SEVEN 

Brisbane Town 

CHAPTER EIGHT 

Farming and first signs of conflict 

CHAPTER NINE 

Crime and punishment 

CHAPTER TEN 

Explorer-in-chief 

CHAPTER 11 

Person or persons unknown 

CHAPTER 12 

Curious and curiouser 

CHAPTER 13 

Funeral and praise 

EPILOGUE 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

PROLOGUE

There is only one known portrait of Captain Patrick Logan that has survived. It is held by the Mitchell Library, within the State Library of New South Wales. It reveals a pale-faced man with a steely gaze directed at the unknown artist, indeed it is almost a glare. He has a high forehead, a long, prominent nose and thin, tight lips. His reddish mop of hair could be on the verge of thinning. The subject could be a man in his mid-to-late forties, but he must be at least ten years younger, given he died at the age of 38.

He is wearing the standard issue New South Wales military scarlet wool coat with a tan collar. His epaulettes denote the rank of captain. He has a fine linen shirt collar with the points brushing his chin, as was the style of the 1820s. He is clean shaven with discrete sideburns, nothing too flashy. The portrait is of a stern, humourless, guarded man who would rather not have had his portrait done. Perhaps he thought it a frivolous obligation and that is why there is only one of them.

Yet he was a self-starter and adventurous. As an infantry officer in the British King’s army, he had seen brutal action close up. He had commanded men in battle. He was also a family man, or at least a man with a young family.

Patrick Logan can lay claim to being the father of the Queensland capital Brisbane, bringing order and purpose to the recently established and hitherto poorly managed penal colony of Moreton Bay: a place for recidivist convicts of seemingly dubious morals.

He oversaw the planning and erection of the first buildings of substance and set out the urban skeleton of the fledgling settlement, defining Queen Street and George Street, a T-junction from which the city has grown and evolved over the past 200 years.

Once he had set down his markers in administration, in prison management and town planning, he set about far flung and extensive exploration of southeast Queensland. He was the first settler to stumble over the Logan River, the first to climb the region’s second highest mountain Mount Barney and the first to survey the land that is now under Lake Wivenhoe to the west of the city.

He was a divisive personality: loathed, despised, and admired and glorified in not always equal measure. Judged by the attitudes of the 21st Century he was a cruel, despotic, ruthless commandant of Moreton Bay penal settlement. By the standards of the early 1800s, he was a notably stern disciplinarian who ran a very tight ship. He was reviled by the convicts under his control, praised by the Governor of the developing colony of New South Wales. A hardscrabble colony annexed a generation earlier by the British Crown to add to its Empire on which the Sun never set.

Moreton Bay was a lonely command. It was five hundred miles from Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, itself a small outpost of Empire three months sail from London. Communication was by letter, delivered by sailing ships. Distance and time necessitated delegation: close control, micromanagement from Sydney or London, no matter the instincts of the rulers, was just not feasible. Also Logan was an officer in His Majesty’s Army. Like many other officers in the colony at the time, he had served under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula Campaign in Portugal and Spain against Napoleon’s finest. Ingrained in him was the strict requirement to obey orders, though as a captain he was free to devise his own methods of implementation. Generals set the strategy; a captain worked up his own tactics in his assigned sector of the theatre of operations.

He knew, too, the calibre of men, if not so much the women, under his control and command. Wellington described the soldiers of the British Army as the scum of the earth but such scum could be melded into a fine fighting force. Fine enough to eventually defeat Napoleon. Discipline was the key: no quarter given, no quarter taken.

Wellington, it is true, from time to time showed some compassion but it was unusual for the times. Indeed, it is notable that Britain’s two great commanders during the Napoleonic Wars – Admiral Horatio Nelson and Wellington – cared for their men, but they were unusual anomalies in a harsh and unforgiving era.

After Logan’s diligent efforts to establish Brisbane and map the south east, it was a surprise then that such a resourceful man should be so careless as to allow himself to become isolated in less than safe country. And as a result be killed. The lifeless body of Patrick Logan was discovered bloodied, battered and mutilated 50 kilometres west of Brisbane in October 1830 at a spot now covered by Lake Wivenhoe. There was little doubt that his life had been deliberately ended but it was by person or persons unknown. Indeed, the circumstances remain a mystery to this day.

When the news of the demise of their tormentor reached the prisoners on the banks of the Brisbane River there was an unrestrained night of rejoicing. It was received much more glumly by the officials in Sydney weeks later.

But the germination of myths and legends commenced. The larrikins that dominate the writing of Australian post-settlement history have had the upper hand and they have ensured that it is the dark side of Logan that has found its way into folklore. Stripped of context and contemporary circumstances, it is not the full story. This book explores that.

INTRODUCTION

Britain in the early 19th Century

With our 2020 spectacles on, it is not immediately apparent that Jane Austen  created a false sense of the world of the early 19th century, or at least that her novels didn’t capture large swathes of what life was like for most people. All the subsequent decorous film and television costume drama adaptations of her writings, with the alluring Mr D’Arcy and Elizabeth Bennet and others, have only buttressed those fairy tales. This is not to assail Austen, she was after all a novelist providing escapist entertainment for her time. She was neither a historian or a sociologist. It was not her role to provide a balanced picture of the times in which she lived. But the reality of the first quarter of a century of the 1800s was much less genteel. The whole country was in poor shape, enduring one of the most difficult times in the nation’s history.

It was a time of turmoil, disruption and change. Of extreme poverty. The Georgian era, particularly in the few years after the war with France ended at Waterloo in June 1815, was a rough and violent age. It had a hard, uncaring edge and a bloody, vindictive set of punishments for criminals, both for felonies and for petty crimes.

It was, more so than today, an era dominated by money. Everything came at a price. Army commissions were bought and sold, not as an act of corruption, but as a widely accepted practice. Seats in parliament could be procured for money. ‘Blood money’ was offered to witnesses to secure dodgy convictions in the courts. Rewards for catching criminals were commonplace. Church of England parishes could be bought and sold, and then neglected if a better opportunity arose. Soldiers and sailors were routinely paid their shares of plunder looted from real and supposed enemies. 

It was a time of high bread prices and other basic commodities were heavily taxed. The inflammatory Corn Laws of 1815, which guaranteed an artificially high price for grain to appease landowners who dominated the Parliament, increased the risk of starvation dramatically. The tariffs and trade restrictions they imposed triggered riots in Canterbury, in Kent and elsewhere. They were was not repealed until 1846.

The age also marked the beginning of the industrial revolution, which resulted in massive disruption to the lives of so many. Jobs and lifestyles were being destroyed by new technologies and machines.

When the Battle of Waterloo ended the generation-long wars with France, there was mass unemployment as soldiers and sailors were demobilised, and left to fend for themselves on the streets of the towns. In 1814, there were 250,000 men under arms; by 1821 the army numbered only 101,000 combatants, about a third of which were stationed in the colonies, especially India. Unlike after the two world wars of the twentieth century, there was no immediate move for reform and the betterment of the lives of those who had sacrificed so much.