Sloop FLY and Schooner UNDINE – Dillons Bay

Drawn from a sketch made on the spot by Captain Oliver, HMS FLY, on the linen backing, watercolour heightened with white and scratching out on paper.

Captain Oliver was in command of HMS FLY during a surveying voyage of New Zealand and the islands of the South West Pacific, from 1847 to 1851. During Oliver’s command, he escorted the Bishop of New Zealand, the Rt Reverend George Augustus Selwyn, on a tour of New Caledonia and the New Hebrides and performed the same task around New Zealand for Governor Grey and the illustrator Cuthbert Clarke.

HMS FLY was already familiar with this part of the world, having been commanded by Francis Blackwood in 1841-45 during a survey of much of Queensland and New Guinea.

Oliver sketched this scene while the ship was anchored in Dillon’s Bay, New Hebrides (Vanuatu). Oliver was quite prolific as an artist and a selection of his work was published in 1852 under the title ‘A Series of Lithographic Drawings from Sketches in New Zealand’.