surgeon there, being reputed to have the necessary requisites for such a situation". Wentworth disembarked at Norfolk Island on 16 August 1790. The Commandant, Lieut. Governor Philip Gidley King appointed him as an unpaid Assistant Surgeon. On the island, he became friends with Captain John Hunter, whose vessel, HMS Sirius, had been wrecked on a sunken reef off the island five months earlier. Hunter and most of his crew were stranded on Norfolk Island for nearly a year, awaiting a vessel to return them to Sydney. In December 1791, King appointed Wentworth to a second position on Norfolk Island, Superintendent of Convicts, responsible for overseeing up to 150 convict labourers on building projects, land clearing and farm work. In June 1793, Earl Fitzwilliam offered him a lifeline; he appointed his London lawyer, Charles Cookney, Wentworth's agent, making it possible for him to become an early trader in the Colony. Public life During his thirty-seven years in New South Wales, D'Arcy Wentworth served under the first seven governors of the Colony. Governor Arthur Phillip, RN, 12 October 1786 to 10 December 1792 Arthur Phillip, the first Governor of New South Wales, returned to England in 1792, after five years in the Colony. He applied for leave in April 1790, and again in March and November 1791, but received no response from London. Weak, ill, and in constant pain, the Governor made his own arrangements. He delegated Major Francis Grose, senior officer of the New South Wales Corps, to act as administrator in his absence, and on 11 December 1792 he left Sydney Town on the Atlantic. Two Aboriginal men, Bennelong and Imeeranwanyee, who had befriended and assisted him during the first years of the settlement, accompanied him to England. Governor John Hunter, RN, 6 February 1794 to 27 December 1800 Phillip’s successor, Captain John Hunter, was appointed in February 1794. He had been Phillip’s second in command, the captain of HMS Sirius that had provided a naval escort for the First Fleet. He was to return to the Colony on HMS Reliance, but after she was thrown ashore at Plymouth in wild weather, it was another year before he sailed. After an anxious voyage through French infested waters, Governor Hunter arrived in Sydney Town on 7 September 1795, nearly three years after Phillip’s departure. In that time, Major Grose had placed the Colony under martial law. He had abolished the Courts,