WRONG PORTRAIT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22426, 5 September 1947, Page 5

WRONG PORTRAIT

NEWCASTLE STAMP THE DISCOVERER OF COAL CARELESS HISTORIANS SYDNEY, Sept. 4. The discovery that the portrait of the wrong man has been used on a special 2Ad commemorative stamp to be issued next Monday to celebrate the 150th. anniversary of Newcastle is causing some embarrassment in the PostmasterGeneral's Department. The descendants of Captain John Shortland, who discovered coal at Newcastle in 1797, state that the portrait used on the stamp is that of his father. Lieutenant John Shortland, who came out as Governor Phillips’ naval agent in 1788 and left a year later. A thorough search of the archives of the Mitchell Library proves that this is correct, for the same portrait appears in Phillips’ journal of his voyage to Botany Bay at the time when Captain Shortland, the discoverer, was only a midshipman. 1 The mistake is not of recent growth. It seems to have been made originally during the centenary celebrations of Newcastle in 1897, when it appeared on the official pamphlet, and it has been frequently repeated. Careless historians have thoroughly entangled the lives of the three John Shortlands who arrived in Sydney in 1788. Some accounts see the discoverer of Newcastle as a retarded naval lieutenant aged 68, who had devoted his life without reward to most of the major naval battles of the second half of the 18th century.