SAMUEL TOMLINS
Samuel Tomlins
Born about 1783 in England
Son of Edward and Mary Tomlins [nee Hooker]
sibling(s) John, Edward, Hester and Mary. spouse(s) Poolrerrener / Bulra / Bullrub]
Father of Edward Tomlins (Black Ned)
Died 1819 at about age 36 in Bay of Shoals, (Drowned) Kangaroo Island, South Australia
Committed to a “session of peace” on the 11 January 1802 at Worcester city, age 19
Sentenced to 7 years and Transported on the ship Calcutta leaving February 1803 and arriving at Port Philips, New South Wales, Australia, on the 4th October 1803, then sailing to Hobart, arriving on January 1st 1804
Samuel Tomlins drowned between 11/1818 and March 1819.
The Jupiter (Captain Ainsworth) reported the death by drowning of Samuel Tomlins, ‘one of the island men’, between November 1818 and March 1819.
They are complete savages, living in bark huts like the natives, not cultivating anything, but living entirely on kangaroos, emus, and small porcupines, and getting spirits and tobacco in barter for the skins which they lay up during the sealing season.
They dressed in kangaroo skins without linen, and wore sandals made of sealskins. They smell like foxes.
They have carried their daring acts to extreme, venturing on the mainland in their boats, and seizing on the natives, particularly the women, and keeping them in a state of slavery, cruelly beating them on every trifling occasion; and when at last some of the marauders were taken off the island by an expedition from
New South Wales, these women were landed on the main with their children and dogs to procure a subsistence, not knowing how their own people might treat them after a long absence. Sutherland reported that there were about twelve sealers on the island <Kangaroo Island>, at an inlet of Salt Water Creek (South West River, between Cape de Couedic and Cape Bouguer). He did not name them. Although they grew no vegetables, they said there was a plant growing wild on the island that was as good as cabbage.
greg petersen on 11th May, 2019 wrote:
Samuel Tomlins was aged 20 when sentenced to seven years’ transportation, reaching Sydney in 1803 on the Calcutta and Hobart on January 1st 1804. He served a seven year sentence and afterwards took to whaling in the straits. He is recorded as having been on Kangaroo Island before formal colonisation.
On Christmas Day 1806 when John Fawner had gone to town, bush rangers Samuel Tomlins and William Russell visited his hut. They threatened Fawkner’s two children but they managed to escape and on returning the next day found the house ransacked and most of their possessions gone. The bushranger Tomlins was known to the children, having come across from England aboard the ‘Calcutta’ as a convict on the same voyage as their family did when they accompanied their convict father. William Russell was also a convict from Port Dalrymple.
After he was freed in 1809 Tomlins was on the sealing grounds between Australia and Van Diemen’s Land.
Samuel Tomlins fathered a child named Edward (Ned) Tomlins who was born at Cape Barren in 1813 to Samuel Tomlins and a woman whose name George Robinson of the Tasmanian Aboriginal mission gives as POOL.RER.RE.NER, or BULL.RUB, BULLROE, BULRA and BOOLROI. Edward was baptised at St John’s, Launceston, on January 22nd 1819.
Samuel Tomlins drowned in 1819 when the ship Jupiter was anchored at the Bay of Shoals, Kangaroo Island.