page_title: James Shairp
section_title: Australian service
hierarchical_section_title: James Shairp / Australian service
caption_attribution_description: Sketch of Sydney Cove, Port Jackson in the County of Cumberland, 1789, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Australia
context_page_description: James Maitland Shairp was an officer in the British Marines and a member of the First Fleet which founded European settlement in Australia.
  Commissioned as a Marines officer in 1778, Shairp volunteered for Australian service in 1787 and spent two years as second in command at Rose Hill, New South Wales, the colony's only inland settlement. In 1789 he was a principal protagonist in the "Criminal Court Affair," a dispute between civilian and military authorities which was a catalyst for the 1792 replacement of the colony's Marine detachment with the New South Wales Corps.
  His colonial deployment at an end, Shairp returned to England in 1792 and resumed his service with the Chatham Division of Marines. He was promoted to captain of Marines in 1795, but died later that year.
context_section_description: On 20 December 1786 Shairp volunteered for service with the Botany Bay Marine detachment. Three weeks later he embarked aboard the convict transport Alexander for the voyage to Australia, arriving as part of the First Fleet on 18 January 1788.
  In November 1788 he was named second-in-command to Captain James Campbell for the expedition to found the colony's first inland settlement, at Rose Hill, leading a party of twenty-five marines and seventy convicts. Campbell, Shairp and fellow Marine lieutenant John Johnson remained at Rose Hill for the following eighteen months, overseeing the garrison and ensuring construction of a redoubt with barracks for officers and a hundred soldiers. Barracks construction was completed in April 1790, several months ahead of similar works in Port Jackson.
caption: Map of Sydney Cove, Port Jackson at the time of Shairp's colonial service in 1789. Original in National Library of Australia, Canberra.
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