David Collins (1756–1810), lieutenant-governor, began his career in the British Navy, rising to the rank of captain before being returning to dry land and being placed on half-pay in late 1783. Three years later he was commissioned deputy judge advocate of New South Wales. He arrived in the Sirius at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788, and was one of the party that went to size up Port Jackson the next day. There, on 7 February he read the Act, commissions and letters patent inaugurating the government. He was responsible for all legal matters, and before long, for convict labour, health, rations and stores. In December 1791, with the departure of the detachment of marines and the arrival of the New South Wales Corps, his pay was reduced; after his patron, Arthur Phillip left, he was stranded in the colony assisting Francis Grose and then William Paterson. Returning to England in June 1797 he completed volume 1 of An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, which sold well and was translated into German by 1799. Although he tried to stay in England, he was sent to form a new settlement in Bass Strait in 1803. Finding conditions at Port Phillip Bay unpromising, he suggested removal of the settlement to Risdon on the Derwent, but finding that, too, unsuitable he chose Sullivan Cove as the site for Hobart Town. The early years of the settlement he superintended there were gruelling; although he had been made a colonel, his appeals to England for decent supplies were ignored and he was in fact rebuked, from Sydney, for extravagance. His life became worse after the arrival, in March 1809, of William Bligh, who criticised his administration – as had a spiteful Joseph Foveaux in Sydney, years before. Popularly, however, he was well-regarded for his humane approach and cheerful manners. A temporary place of worship was erected over his grave in St. David's Burial Ground in 1810; and in 1817, the foundation stone of the new St. David's Cathedral was laid in his memory. The Collins Streets in Hobart and Melbourne are also named after him.
