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SWEET'S NAVAL CAREER
Samuel Sweet was born into a naval family in the small English town of Portsea, in Hampshire, on 1 May 1825.By the time he joined the Royal Navy in 1844, at nineteen, the use of photography for travel and expeditionary purposes was just becoming popular. The young Sam Sweet spent five years in the China Station where his main experience was in the signal department. He made occasional voyages to India during this period, giving him plenty of experience at sea and the chance to see new and distant places. For many English people in the nineteenth century the world was a small place – family, the village, the local church, school, farm, surrounding villages and market towns. Sweet’s world was vast – China, India, South America, Australia – anywhere that could be reached by sea. With the broad horizons he was developing as a mariner Sweet was open to all kinds of travel and adventure. The idea of travelling to uncharted territories became his daily norm. This outlook would later show itself in his photographic ventures to the Northern Territory and the South Australian outback. In 1849 Sweet returned to England to study navigation, astronomy and meteorology. He obtained his Certificate of Competency as a Master Mariner (‘Master Ordinary’) from the Liverpool Examining Board in 1854. This made Sweet eligible ‘to command any vessel of whatsoever tonnage’. It was in 1854 that Sweet’s identity as Captain Sweet, Master Mariner was established and he was set to take command of his first ship. In 1857 Sweet took command of the merchant ship Pizarro. Aboard this ship he kept a meteorological log of the Pacific Ocean for the Board of Trade which involved logging observations every four hours, around the clock, for three years. In 1861 Sweet commanded the Pizarro on a voyage to conduct a survey of Pena Blanca Harbour in South America. Sweet’s meteorological work was part of a huge worldwide project by the Board of Trade to establish ‘a uniform system of meteorological observations at sea’ and compile a comprehensive body of information to improve navigation. Captain Sweet had become part of Britain’s great nineteenth century preoccupation of surveying and mapping the world. Just as Britain’s thirst for knowledge about the world created Sweet’s opportunities in Marine Surveying, it also created the demand for visual images which fuelled his later photographic career in Australia. Following his voyages on the Pizarro, Sweet was commended by Admiral Fitzroy who praised Sweet in particular for ‘forty sets of Lunars taken during one passage of seventy days’. Sweet is also believed to have faced a mutinous crew during one of his Pizarro voyages, rising to the occasion and putting a stop to the mutiny with his prompt action. By this time Sweet was at the peak of his nautical career and must have been a man with considerable leadership skills – someone who could command a crew of men and keep them in order. He had many years of technical and scientific study under his belt, and was accustomed to danger, risk and considerable responsibility. These skills would have been a great asset to him as a photographer – an occupation which which required scientific aptitude and the ability to run a business. Sweet’s own brand of photography also involved a thirst for adventure and a willingness to endure the physical challenges of remote and unexplored places.
REFERENCES: George E Loyau, Notable South Australians, George E Loyau, Adelaide, 1885 John J Mayo (ed), The Mercantile Navy List and annual appendage to the commercial code of signals for all nations, London, 1863 The Merchant Navy Association, Red Duster website, http://www.red-duster.co.uk/BIBBY10.htm, viewed 30 January 2007 James Booth, Letter on behalf of the Office of Committee of Privy Council for Trade, Marine Department, September 1854, published in the official notices in John J Mayo (ed), The Mercantile navy List and annual appendage to the commercial code of signals for all nations, London, 1863
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© Karen Magee 2008 - 2009 |
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