 Chapman retired in 1875 taking up commerce and sheep farming in Central Otago, he died of cancer in Dunedin, New Zealand.He had an obituary notice in The Times.Chapman married twice; firstly on 6 June 1840, to Catherine DeLancy Brewer (born 1810), (daughter of T. G. Brewer, a London barrister), who was drowned while returning to Australia from visiting England along with two sons and a daughter when the passenger ship SS "London" foundered in the Bay of Biscay in January 1866.