What was james stirling famous for

James' first encounter with colonialism was during a time he provided an escort for ships bound for a settlement in Hudson Bay Canada. When he finished serving in the Americas his Commander in Chief sent the following recommendation to the Admiralty in London: "I cannot permit Captain Stirling to leave this station without expressing to your Lordships my entire satisfaction with his conduct while under my command.

The zeal and alacrity he always displayed in the execution of whatever service he was employed upon are above praise; but it is to his acquaintance with foreign languages, his thorough knowledge of the Station, particularly the Spanish Main, and his gentlemanlike and conciliatory manners, that I am so much indebted for the preservation of friendly intercourse with the foreign colonies in this command.

I conceive it will be as gratifying for your Lordships to hear, as it is for me to make, so honourable a report of this able and intelligent officer, whom I detach from my command with considerable regret; but I feel at the same time a very sincere pleasure in thus recommending him to the notice of your Lordships.

James was lucky to get so far in the Royal Navy as a cloud hung over the family name when uncle Charles Vice Admiral Charles Stirling was brought up on charges at a court martial and the charges were found to be 'partly proven. This system went all the way to the top and when Charles Stirling had the temerity to try and stamp it out, he was set up and brought up on false charges. The proceedings were rigged and Charles retired on half pay and was never to be active in the service again.

James may well have languished as a low ranking officer for his entire career but he had ambition and he also had some friends who were to eventually to move into high office. The Stirling family can be traced back all the way to They were Scottish nobility and had been supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Their allies were the Murray family and it was George Murray who was to come to prominence in the British Government and assist James in getting his Swan River venture accepted.

Murray Street in Perth was named after George and Stirling also named Hay and Wellington Streets after others who he saw as his allies.

In September James married Ellen Mangles with whom he would eventually have 11 children. Ellen was only half his age but she turned out to be an inspirational choice, totally suited for life in the new colony as the new Governor's wife.

Ellen's mother wrote to a friend about Stirling as follows: 'Of character unimpeachable for honour and integrity, joined to an intelligent mind and a handsome face an figure. Even if not exactly weighed down with riches, he is extremely prudent and steady; really a most gentlemanly elegant young man.

His mission was to help move settlers from Bathurst Island to Raffles Bay. After, it must be said, quite some prompting by Stirling himself. Governor Darling also sent Major Edmund Lockyer with a detachment of soldiers and some convicts to establish a fort at King George Sound Albany to deter the French from expanding into the area. They already had established a whaling station at what is known today as Frenchman Bay.

When Stirling arrived at Port Jackson there was already a ship in port, a ship flying the tricolour of France! The French Captain made no bones about the fact that he had been exploring the west and south coasts of Australia and Stirling must have been alarmed at the prospect of the French his old enemies being so interested in an area he wanted to establish a settlement in.

Stirling was impressed with what he saw at Swan River and made a favourable report to Darling, who in turn sent a report to the Colonial Office. The British Government was less than enthusiastic about establishing a new colony and wanted nothing to do with funding such a proposal. With a sailor's eye, Stirling saw Swan River as a much better alternative to King George Sound as the winds on the west coast meant that Swan River was more suitable and could be supported by naval power much better than the southern site.

James Stirling saw the foundation of a colony in the west as his big chance to make a name for himself and from he campaigned vigorously to get his ideas accepted.

Once the exploration had been completed, Stirling returned to his original mission and sailed to Melville Island. He helped to establish a new base at Raffles Bay but ultimately both these settlements were to fail and be abandoned. Stirling suddenly 'fell ill' and requested a transfer back to England. It turns out the the illness was a rouse used by Stirling to get himself back to London where he could start actively advocating his proposed new settlement.

The gastric ulcer he was supposedly suffering from was miraculously cured the moment he got home. Stirling now began a process he called 'the assault on Downing Street'. He wrote a series of letters and held numerous meetings with influential people.

It was at this time that he met Thomas Peel - something he would later have cause to regret - and a syndicate that proposed to send settlers to the new colony in return for 4 million acres of land. This was negotiated down to , acres but in the end Peel arrived too late to make the original claim on land south of the Swan and canning Rivers and had to accept land further south along the coast to present day Mandurah.

The competition that brought the College into being is considered by many to be a watershed moment in British Post War architectural history. It brought together 20 names, young and old, all practicing in Britain, all working in the Modernist and more specifically the nascent Brutalist style. None of these made the shortlist of four. The decision was a good one. It was good for WWM and good for the profession — a youngish practice being recognized for a small but beautiful piece of work.

It genuinely feels like a project made at a different point in history, the result of the quite particular interests of three minds, Stephen Witherford, Chris Watson and William Mann.

It is direct and personal. And not just for its powerful draftsmanship, plan and restricted palette of materials, but for its intimacy. I do not refer to the production of intimate spaces per se but the formulation of an architecture that is authored not by a factory but a few minds. About Contact Submit Advertise. Change country. Log out. February 26, September 29, April 22, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany — , Alastair Hunter, photographer.

Image Courtesy of Canadian Centre for Architecture British architect and Pritzker Laureate Sir James Stirling 22 April — 25 June grew up in Liverpool , one of the two industrial powerhouses of the British North West, and began his career subverting the compositional and theoretical ideas behind the Modern Movement.

October 23, He was also attentive to the complaints of the lower orders. The main problem in the colony's early days was to get enough food to prevent starvation, and this largely depended on finding good soil in the right position. Clearing the virgin bush and building weather-proof homes called for much effort, adaptation and improvisation.

While the settlers were establishing themselves, Stirling had to buy emergency supplies from the Cape and Van Diemen's Land. The burdensome economic troubles of this ill-planned little colony and the recurrent hairbreadth escapes from famine were not permitted to interfere with the due observance of British law and justice. Honorary magistrates were appointed to see that the lower orders kept their places and fulfilled their obligations: pioneering anxieties were not to interrupt the genteel style of living of the middle and upper orders in this colony of transplanted Britons.

The governor expected his guests to dress formally for dinner, even if meals were taken under canvas in oppressive summer heat, or at his country seat of Woodbridge, near the little town of Guildford. The musical evenings and the outdoor recreations of hunting and picnicking were designed to make any new settler from the English counties feel almost at home.

Public worship was officially recognized by the appointment of colonial chaplains; the colony was predominantly English and Anglican. Stirling was not deeply religious but he realized the value of the churches in helping to maintain moral standards and public order.

The small Aboriginal population in the vicinity of the first settlements was sometimes troublesome. In company with his settlers, Stirling patronized those who succumbed to the ways of the white man and became persistent beggars, but he ordered summary punishments for those who became persistent thieves.

Several natives responsible for killing white settlers were captured, tried and executed. In October the governor personally led a posse of twenty-five police, soldiers and settlers to punish some seventy natives of the Murray River tribe in retaliation for several murders and 'the pertinacious endeavours of these savages to commit depredations of property'.

This one-sided encounter between bullets and spears became known as the 'Battle of Pinjarra'. Fourteen Aborigines and one police superintendent were killed. The credit rightfully accorded to Stirling for his part in founding the colony of Western Australia and for his vision, tenacity and enterprise in guiding its early development must be balanced by the colony's obvious failure to make much material progress.

At no time during his ten year term did the settlers number more than men, women and children. When he left in the flag had been well and truly planted to warn off ambitious French naval officers or other marauders, but little else had been achieved. The land near the Swan was very poor and on the south-western coast was heavily timbered and very difficult to clear. Good land was more scarce than even Stirling was prepared to admit in unguarded comments to friends and relatives in England.

Because of the poor quality very little land was bought after sales were introduced in ; no grain was effectively harvested until , and experience proved the sandy soils of the inland more suited to grazing sheep than to intensive agriculture. Viewed as a strategic operation, Swan River was probably of some significance; in any event, the British government was always most reluctant to abandon any land which it had added to its empire. But as a commercial and agricultural enterprise, it was a failure.

A Mangles-inspired scheme to plant a settlement of Anglo-Indians near Albany on the south coast and to develop trade with India collapsed when the first vessel was lost in with all hands.

As governor and general administrative factotum, Stirling's personal responsibilities were heavy, and the constant anxiety borne by this colonial Solon, prompted by the uncertain future of the colony, must have outweighed the occasional excitement of finding new country or of launching the colony on some new venture.

He had knowingly embarked on an undertaking with only slight support from the British government, the protection of a distant navy, and the salaries of a few officials.

Stirling himself received a grant of , acres 40, ha of land in the colony and repayment of his expenses, but the government was always reluctant to accept the slightest financial responsibility for his or the colony's success.

Stirling's repeated requests for succour were fruitless. So also was his visit to England in , which had originally been inspired by the need for 'an agreeable leave of absence' but was at the last moment sanctified by the consensus of opinion among settlers that a personal deputation was likely to do them more good than any more letters or petitions. Captain Irwin was left to administer the colony in his absence.

However, the British government was not well pleased at seeing this truant governor on its doorstep, and Stirling was lucky to escape censure for leaving his post without permission.

He was saved mainly by his obvious sincerity on behalf of a group of settlers who had long since ceased to welcome new shiploads of either capitalists or workmen. For nearly two years Stirling doggedly explained to officials and politicians in London the necessitous circumstances of the colonists, but to no avail. He returned to the colony more than ever apprehensive about its future, and in the next four years was able to effect few improvements.

He had, however, to combat the persistent opposition of legislative councillors to his proposal for financing a mounted constabulary from local funds, and their objection to the British government's proposal to add several nominated, not elected representatives to the Legislative Council. The whining of frustrated speculators grew loud in , the colonists inconsistently demanding both increased public expenditure and decreased taxation.

Stirling had also to cope with the deliberate falsifications in the British press by the Wakefield ians, who cited the Swan River as the best example of the worst type of colonization, in order to back their propaganda for the founding of a new type of colony in the south of Australia. They eagerly seized on the failure of the grandiose land settlement scheme of Thomas Peel , which they misguidedly identified with the whole colony, and whose failure they wrongly and maliciously attributed to faults in government policy rather than to the calibre of its promoter or to the deficiencies of nature.

Stirling gave Peel no priority in the choice of his land and he was not responsible for Peel's financial difficulties. At various times Stirling was strongly criticized for his inept administration, for his aloofness or domineering attitude towards his civil officers, for his lack of humour, for his occasional acts of nepotism in the public service, and for his erratic and blundering land policies.

In the voluminous public correspondence, in the columns of the colonial press, in the surviving papers of private settlers, and even in the governor's own matter-of-fact dispatches, there is ample evidence that Stirling tried to do too much, and much of what he did was badly done. Some historians have thought his governorship merely a congenial and profitable diversion from his naval career.

It is true that many early settlers had been misled by the enthusiastic reports of Stirling and Frazer, and that during the first eighteen months much land was unwisely distributed, either in very large blocks, which tied up its development, or to speculators with no intention of cultivating it. Stirling also allowed his robust and somewhat irrational enthusiasm, which flowed strongly after his discovery of each new piece of attractive countryside, to influence his official judgment.

He could never distinguish clearly between his personal profit and the public advantage, and he constantly changed the location of the various portions of land which were to form his own grant of , acres 40, ha.