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In which some guy named John Boston arrives in town
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October 25, 1794, has become a significant day in the modern-day mythology of James Squire the beer brewer. That day in late October was the day one John Boston arrived in Sydney Cove. Thanks to a passive-aggressive fight between two corporations who each took one of these guys’ names for their beer brand, there’s a bit of argy-bargy as to who was the country’s first brewer. But back in the day itself, Boston’s arrival probably meant bugger-all to Squire. And Squire’s presence probably meant bugger-all to Boston too.
There’s certainly no reference to them ever crossing paths. In fact, six months after Boston’s arrival, Squire became a free man and moved away from Sydney Cove to his land grant at Kissing Point. So it’s quite plausible they had nothing at all to do with each other – and one may not have ever spoken a single word to the other.
Boston was a bit of a rabble-rouser and trouble-maker back in England. To be honest, when you read some of the things he said (as we will do in the next two chapters), he does come off as a bit of an insufferable bastard. The kind of guy who always thinks he’s the smartest person in the room but is too arrogant to realise he’s not. Boston was a bit sick of “reactionary” England and the place was probably a bit sick of him too, so him choosing to pack up and head to Sydney was probably seen by both sides as a win.
Despite loathing England and its leaders, Boston didn’t seem to think it at all hypocritical to expect them to foot the bill to send him and his family to Sydney (“Yeah, I hate everything you stand for. Now give me some money”). Which is why, in December 1793 he wrote a letter to the Colonial Office in which he talked himself up massively.
“I was brought up a surgeon and apothecary, but have never since followed that profession. I have since made my particular study those parts of chemistry that are more particularly usefull [sic] in trade and business. Have, therefore, a knowledge of brewing, distilling, sugar-making, vinegar-making, soap-making, etc. I have been in business as distiller, but was unsuccessful. I likewise have a theoretical and some practical knowledge of agriculture.”
To me, that reads like the CV of a person who is severely under-qualified for the job but is grabbing onto whatever meagre skills they have in an attempt to try and sound like a decent applicant – and in the process get their CV to go for more than a single page.
Despite this joke of a letter, England agreed to send Boston and his family over. Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose (who was given charge of the colony when Phillip left and pretty much ran it for himself and his soldiers) received a letter from England in February 1794 in which Boston was described as someone who would “prove particularly useful to the settlement by curing fish and making salt, the objects to which his attention has been particularly drawn”.
So Boston and his family came over on the Surprize. And apparently dicked around for almost a year before looking to actually make some salt by extracting it from seawater. You know, that thing he was sent over to do. And, no surprises, he proved to be spectacularly crap at it. Judge Advocate David Collins recorded that, despite having seven convicts at his disposal, Boston only managed “three or four bushels of salt in more than as many weeks”.
So he gave up on that and went and made beer, which he reportedly learned how to do by reading about it in an encyclopaedia on the trip over to Sydney.
His beer, bittered with tomato leaves and stems, seemed popular enough to allow him to build a larger brewery. Though Governor Hunter apparently didn’t think much of his brewing skills – or his skills regarding anything beyond being a massive pain in the backside. In 1798, Hunter wrote to the Duke of Portland; “I am of the opinion [he] will continue to be one of those whom the colony will not derive any advantage from”. Portland replied that, if Hunter wanted he could give him a choice – bugger off back to England or stop living off the colonial welfare teat.
In time Boston would leave the colony – and one imagines very few people shed a tear. In 1801 he bought a ship called the El Plumier and sailed to the Cape of Good Hope with cargo to sell. But the voyage, like so many other things Boston touched, went pear-shaped. His ship was stolen and it took him until May 1804 before he could get a new ship and return to Sydney. Where everyone went “Oh, God, it’s you again.”
He got the hint and, after a couple of months, decided to leave on another trading voyage, which again went pear-shaped. He anchored at the island of Tongatapu in Tonga, where the natives seemed friendly. Until he and his crew got ashore, whereby the natives promptly killed them. And, as rumour has it, ate them.