David Collins and Robert Ross

David Collins, who rose from second lieutenant to adjutant and deputy paymaster for the 2nd Marine Battalion, entirely through his family connections during the time he was enduring the siege of Boston (1775-1776) initially got on well with his Scottish marine comrade, Captain Robert Ross. Ross was a comrade of Collins's father, Lt. General Tooker Collins, by whose side he'd fought at Louisburg in 1758. He appears, at that time, to have been a friend of the Collins family. Young David records sociable times with him when they were garrisoning Charleston Heights across from Boston in the weeks after the Battle of Bunker Hill. In 1775, Ross was not yet the 'social monster' he was to become.
Events during the siege of Boston may indicate why Ross eventually turned into the curmudgeon renowned to Australian historians. One English officer records that there was great discontent in Boston among the corps at 'the advancement, insolence and self-sufficiency of a number of Scotch officers'. '[S]everal common soldiers were reprimanded, and threatened with the most exemplary punishment, for swearing they ought to be commanded by Englishmen, and that they would not sacrifice their lives in an attempt to butcher their friends and fellow subjects for any interested North Briton on earth.' [Margaret Wheeler Willard, Letters on the American Revolution, 1774-1776, New York, 1968, p. 190.]
Even as late as 1775, some 30 years after the Jacobite Rebellion, there was still a deep 'Scotophobia' within English society, probably not as intense as it had been in the early years of George III's reign, when the Stuart Lord Bute had been the King's first Minister, and the radical John Wilkes was stirring up popular resentment against the Scots, and Bute in particular, across London, but lingering, still. The American revolutionaries used an empty boot hanging from a tree as a symbol of their discontent with the home government. Colonial Governors, like Gage in Boston, and later Phillip in New South Wales, before they took office had to swear the Oath of Abjuration, wherein they affirmed their belief that no descendants of the Stuart James II who claimed to be the Prince of Wales had title to the British throne. This was followed by a further Oath of Assurance which was yet another declaration against the descendants of the Pretender. [John Currey, David Collins. A Colonial Life, Melbourne. 2000, p. 50.]
For loyal Scots like Robert Ross, who had spent their whole lives in service of the Crown, such anti-Scots feeling no doubt rankled. It is not surprising, then, that Scots officers tended to stick together. Ross's career path, and that of his compatriot, Captain William Campbell, after the American Revolution, was to a great extent dependent on the patronage of the English Tooker Collins. They were friends of the family both and owed their advancement to Tooker Collin's benevolence. Senior British officers in the latter quarter of the 18th century frequently looked kindly on recruits from Scotland, who were recognised for their fighting qualities. General Gage had gone out of his way to recruit Scots migrants straight off the ship from New York and had them brought back to Boston to fight for the British. [General Thomas Gage to Captain Duncan campbell and LieutenantSymes, Boston, 18 July, 1775 in William Bell Clark (ed.) Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Vol. I, washington, 1964, p.912.] Such consideration was not always returned
It is not my intention to outline all the reasons why David Collins fell out with Robert Ross in this post. They are many and various ranging from professional jealousy and hurt pride at the favour shown to Collins by Governor Phillip to sheer bloody-mindedness on Ross's part. [cf. Currey, op. cit, chs. 3,4,5, and 8] David Collins believed Ross no longer paid him due deference, as he had got all he could out of Tooker Collins now that he had been appointed Lieutenant Govertnor of New South Wales. (Collins was mistaken; Ross's appointment had been made by Evan Nepean, under-secretary at the Home Office and Tooker Collins had had nothing to do with it. [Currey, p.39 and 323.]) Beyond these personal reasons , there was also, I would contend, on Ross's side, a simmering resentment at the way he was treated, as a Scot, in the Royal Marines, possibly reaching back as far as the siege of Boston at the beginning of the War of American Independence, and possibly even as far back as the Seven Years' War. Such rancour ate into his soul changing him into the bitter, obstreperous man familiar from First Fleet documents and journals.
In modern parlance, while we do not know the specific occasions when, or for that matter where Robert Ross was taunted about his Scottishness, we can safely conclude it is highly likely he was a victim of a peculiar kind of English racism. Like many victims of racism he was angered and soured by that experience of racism, to the point that it was detrimental to his army career.

Robert Ross at the Siege of Louisbourg, 1758.

I'm currently engaged in researching the early career of the First Fleeter Lieutenant Governor Robert Ross. The research has already taken about a week and I expect it to take about a week more, even though the end result of it all will probably only be a few paragraphs in the first section of the chapter on his experiences during the battle of Bunker Hill.

Mollie Gillen in her Founders of Australia implies the tenuousness of detail about 2nd. Lieutenant Robert Ross's service in North America during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) when she notes that he was 'said to be present at the siege of Louisbourg ... in 1758 and at the capture of Quebec in September 1759.' (p.314.) We know he probably left Plymouth (England) aged 18, in late February 1758 for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he arrived about the end of the first week of May. He wintered in Halifax and was probably part of the naval blockade of Louisbourg from March 1758. (John Robson, Captain Cook's War and Peace, Sydney, 2009, pp.48-51.) Undoubtedly, he played some part in the landing at Garbarus Bay near Louisbourg on 7 June 1758, including the driving back of the French from outlying works and posts. (William Charles Henry Wood, The Great Fortress. A Chronicle of Louisbourg, 1720-1760. Vol. 8, Chronicles of Canada, Glasgow, 1920, p.110.) He was probably also involved siege preparations from 13 June, including the setting up of batteries. (Robson, p. 55.) though possibly mainly in supervising picket duty; use of marines this way freed up soldiers for duty of the siege works. Brigade Commander James Wolfe noted that 'all the officers of the Navy in general have given us their utmost assistance, and with the greatest cheerfulness imaginable.' (cited in Robson, p. 58.) This inter-service co-operation was to say the least, unusual, especially from the Royal Navy. Naval personnel thought more highly of dogs than they did of anybody from the Army.
Ross probably took part in the burning and capture of French ships in Louisbourg Harbour on 26 July, the day before the British imposed harsh surrender terms on the garrison (Fred Anderson, Crucible of War, London, 2001, pp.254-255). Indeed, he may have been wounded, (A list of the Additional manuscripts of the French and Indian War in the library of the Society, prepared from the originals under the direction of the library committee, http://www.archive.org/details/listofadditional00amer ) though that is unlikely. Ross probably viewed with equanimity the New Englander provincials' pursuit and massacre of the Native American allies. The New Englanders and Scottish Highlanders decapitated and scalped as many Indians as they could find. giving 'no quarter to anyone, and are scalping everywhere so you cannot know a French from an Indian scalp.' (Frank McLynn, 1759. The Year Britain Became Master of The World, London, 2005, p. 318.) The cause of this savagery was a desire for revenge for an Indian massacre of New Englander prisoners and others, men, women and children, following the British surrender to the French at Fort William Henry in August, 1757. (Anderson, Crucible of War, pp.196-199.) That suspicion of indigenous people would carry over for Robert Ross when he was Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales. Early on he thought Sydney's Aborigines, were by no means 'that harmless, inoffensive race they have in general been represented to be ...' (Ross, cited in Keith Willey, When the Sky Fell Down, Sydney, 1985, p. 69.) Growing Aboriginal hostility to the white presence at Sydney Cove evoked memories of the savagery of Amerindians during the Seven Years'War and the War for American Independence.
In later life Ross was something of 'a social monster' (Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, Melbourne, 2003, p. 17) burdened by a large family and financial problems. (Major Ross to Under Secretary Nepean, Portsmouth, 27th April, 1787 in HRNSW, Vol. 1, Pt.2, Mona Vale, 1978, p. 93) His material problems blinded him to the beauty of the world around him. We have no record of his reaction to the Canadian wilderness, but in New South Wales in 1788 he was almost alone in denouncing the colony as 'vile' and of wretched prospect.' (Ross to Nepean, 16 November, 1788, in Tim Flannery (ed. and intr.) The Birth of Sydney, Melbourne, 2000. p. 82.)