Philip Gidley King (1758–1808), naval officer and governor, joined the navy in late 1770 and served in the East Indies and American waters. He was commissioned lieutenant in 1778. In the Ariadne he served under Arthur Phillip in the Channel Fleet. Three years later the pair sailed to India. King was paid off when peace prevailed, but when Phillip was named commander of the expedition to Botany Bay, he asked King to be his second lieutenant in the Sirius. When he transferred to the Supply, he took King with him, in the advance party; a couple of weeks after they arrived in Botany Bay, Phillip appointed King to establish a satellite settlement on Norfolk Island. Later, still backed by Phillip and also by Joseph Banks, King, by then elevated to the rank of post-captain, succeeded John Hunter as governor of New South Wales in early 1880. King’s son, Phillip Parker King, has been described as the first Australian-born person to succeed in the world outside the colonies.
This portrait was engraved as an illustration for Phillip’s The voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay (1790).
