Who discovered and colonized Australia!
James 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.
(Italians and Australia prior to 1900)
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's 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. The suburb of Matraville, within the municipality of Randwick, about nine km south east of the centre of Sydney, was named for him in 1904 at the suggestion of the Labor politician John Dacey.
(Italians and Australia prior to 1900)
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's 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. The suburb of Matraville, within the municipality of Randwick, about nine km south east of the centre of Sydney, was named for him in 1904 at the suggestion of the Labor politician John Dacey.
Matraville NSW - 360 view
Lets clear the air, Giacomo Matra an Italo American guy born from an Italian Corsican that had migrated to Dublin, Ireland in the early 1730s that moved to New York City, where his son James Mario Matra (or Giacomo Matra above) was born in 1746, was the Italian that proposed to the UK Kingdom the Establishing of a Settlement in New South Wales and Not captain Cook that executed the orders to survey and then settle in Australia!
Sydney Matraville was named after the Italian explorer that set foot in Australia exactly where he landed.
Italians set foot on Australian soil 154 years before Captain Cook in 1616 with Mario Sega which run out of a Dutch ship with an aboriginal woman never to be seen again..!
So Captain Cook set foot on Kamay Botany Bay on the 19 April 1770 during the exploration of TerraAustralia before settlement on the 13th May 1787...
See here and Here
On 13 May 1787 a fleet of 11 ships, which came to be known as the First Fleet, was sent by the British Admiralty from England to New Holland. Under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, the fleet sought to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay on the coast of New South Wales, which had been explored and claimed by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. The settlement was seen as necessary because of the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America. The Fleet arrived between 18 and 20 January 1788, but it was immediately apparent that Botany Bay was unsuitable.
On 25 January the gale was still blowing; the fleet tried to leave Botany Bay, but only HMS Supply made it out, carrying Arthur Phillip, Philip Gidley King, some marines and about 40 convicts; they anchored in Sydney Cove in the afternoon!
(So technically Australia day should start on the 25th of Jan)
--- The formal establishment of the Colony of New South Wales did not however occur on 26 January as is commonly assumed. It did not occur until 7 February 1788, when the formal proclamation of the colony and of Arthur Phillip's governorship were read out. First Fleet
Lets clear the air, Giacomo Matra an Italo American guy born from an Italian Corsican that had migrated to Dublin, Ireland in the early 1730s that moved to New York City, where his son James Mario Matra (or Giacomo Matra above) was born in 1746, was the Italian that proposed to the UK Kingdom the Establishing of a Settlement in New South Wales and Not captain Cook that executed the orders to survey and then settle in Australia!
Sydney Matraville was named after the Italian explorer that set foot in Australia exactly where he landed.
Italians set foot on Australian soil 154 years before Captain Cook in 1616 with Mario Sega which run out of a Dutch ship with an aboriginal woman never to be seen again..!
So Captain Cook set foot on Kamay Botany Bay on the 19 April 1770 during the exploration of TerraAustralia before settlement on the 13th May 1787...
See here and Here
On 13 May 1787 a fleet of 11 ships, which came to be known as the First Fleet, was sent by the British Admiralty from England to New Holland. Under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, the fleet sought to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay on the coast of New South Wales, which had been explored and claimed by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. The settlement was seen as necessary because of the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America. The Fleet arrived between 18 and 20 January 1788, but it was immediately apparent that Botany Bay was unsuitable.
On 25 January the gale was still blowing; the fleet tried to leave Botany Bay, but only HMS Supply made it out, carrying Arthur Phillip, Philip Gidley King, some marines and about 40 convicts; they anchored in Sydney Cove in the afternoon!
(So technically Australia day should start on the 25th of Jan)
--- The formal establishment of the Colony of New South Wales did not however occur on 26 January as is commonly assumed. It did not occur until 7 February 1788, when the formal proclamation of the colony and of Arthur Phillip's governorship were read out. First Fleet
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James Mario Matra (1746 – 29 March 1806), sailor and diplomat, was an American-born midshipman on the voyage by James Cook to Botany Bay in 1770. He was the first person of Corsican heritage to visit the future nation of Australia.
His father James was a member of a prominent Corsican family who had migrated to Dublin, Ireland in the early 1730s, where he studied medicine and changed his surname from Matra to Magra. He moved to New York City, where his son James Mario Magra was born in 1746.
James Mario later settled in England. Australian historians remember him for his misbehavior aboard James Cook's Endeavour on its voyage of exploration to New Holland in 1768–70. Magra was suspected of snipping off the earlobes of Cook's drunken and alcoholic clerk after stripping him naked while he was drunk. During this voyage, Magra became acquainted with Sir Joseph Banks, and their friendship lasted until his death. Circumstantial evidence has identified Magra as the anonymous author of A Journal of a Voyage Round the World, which appeared two months after his return to England in 1771, and which offered some details of Cook's voyage not found in other accounts.
In 1775, Magra petitioned the King to have his surname revert to its original form Matra, in order to claim a Corsican inheritance.
Matra was the author of the "Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" put forward in 1783, which the immediate forerunner of the official and semi-official "plans" was resulting in the foundation of the first Australian colony.
In a letter to the British Government in 1783, Matra discussed the potential commercial benefits to Britain of a settlement. He recommended that Britain should send American loyalists and/or convicts to settle at Botany Bay in New South Wales. He looked forward to Australia as an asylum for "those unfortunate loyalists to whom Great Britain was bound by every tie of honour and gratitude and with visions, perhaps, of a reproduction of the life of the planters of Virginia and Carolina". He pushed the latter plan partly because he had aspirations to become the first Governor of the new penal colony.
His biographer, Alan Frost, in 1995, noted that "silence covered Matra's activities until March 1777", when he applied for leave from his post as consul at Teneriffe in the Canary Islands to deal with family matters in British-occupied New York. He was embassy secretary in Constantinople 1778–80. In 1786 Matra accepted the appointment of consul at Tangier, Morocco. In October 1793 Matra married Henrietta Maxwell, daughter of the army victualling agent at Gibraltar. They had no children. He remained in Tangier until his death there on 29 March 1806.
James Matra is remembered in the Sydney suburb of Matraville.
.. see links
www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2011-06-15.112.2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Matra
James Mario Matra (1746 – 29 March 1806), sailor and diplomat, was an American-born midshipman on the voyage by James Cook to Botany Bay in 1770. He was the first person of Corsican heritage to visit the future nation of Australia.
His father James was a member of a prominent Corsican family who had migrated to Dublin, Ireland in the early 1730s, where he studied medicine and changed his surname from Matra to Magra. He moved to New York City, where his son James Mario Magra was born in 1746.
James Mario later settled in England. Australian historians remember him for his misbehavior aboard James Cook's Endeavour on its voyage of exploration to New Holland in 1768–70. Magra was suspected of snipping off the earlobes of Cook's drunken and alcoholic clerk after stripping him naked while he was drunk. During this voyage, Magra became acquainted with Sir Joseph Banks, and their friendship lasted until his death. Circumstantial evidence has identified Magra as the anonymous author of A Journal of a Voyage Round the World, which appeared two months after his return to England in 1771, and which offered some details of Cook's voyage not found in other accounts.
In 1775, Magra petitioned the King to have his surname revert to its original form Matra, in order to claim a Corsican inheritance.
Matra was the author of the "Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" put forward in 1783, which the immediate forerunner of the official and semi-official "plans" was resulting in the foundation of the first Australian colony.
In a letter to the British Government in 1783, Matra discussed the potential commercial benefits to Britain of a settlement. He recommended that Britain should send American loyalists and/or convicts to settle at Botany Bay in New South Wales. He looked forward to Australia as an asylum for "those unfortunate loyalists to whom Great Britain was bound by every tie of honour and gratitude and with visions, perhaps, of a reproduction of the life of the planters of Virginia and Carolina". He pushed the latter plan partly because he had aspirations to become the first Governor of the new penal colony.
His biographer, Alan Frost, in 1995, noted that "silence covered Matra's activities until March 1777", when he applied for leave from his post as consul at Teneriffe in the Canary Islands to deal with family matters in British-occupied New York. He was embassy secretary in Constantinople 1778–80. In 1786 Matra accepted the appointment of consul at Tangier, Morocco. In October 1793 Matra married Henrietta Maxwell, daughter of the army victualling agent at Gibraltar. They had no children. He remained in Tangier until his death there on 29 March 1806.
James Matra is remembered in the Sydney suburb of Matraville.
.. see links
www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2011-06-15.112.2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Matra
Giacomo (James) Matra first arrived here in NSW - 360 view
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