Benjamin Boyd (21 August 1801 – 15 October 1851)[1] was a Scottish-born Australian pioneer and entrepreneur.
Boyd was a man of "an imposing personal appearance, fluent oratory, aristocratic connexions, and a fair share of commercial acuteness".[2] Mrs Georgiana McCrae, with whom he had dinner when he first came to Port Phillip, looked at him with an artist's eye and said: "He is Rubens over again. Tells me he went to a bal masque as Rubens with his broad-leafed hat".[1]
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Born at Merton Hall, Wigtownshire, Scotland, Boyd was the second son of Edward Boyd by his wife Jane (daughter of Benjamin Yule).[1] By 1824 he was a stockbroker in London and on 8 October 1840 he addressed a letter to Lord John Russell, stating that he had recently dispatched a vessel entirely his own at a cost of £30,000 for 'further developing the resources of Australia and its adjacent Islands'[1]. He stated that he intended to send other vessels, and asked for certain privileges in connexion with the purchase of land at various ports he intended to establish. He received a guarded reply promising assistance, but pointing out that land could not be sold to an individual to the "exclusion or disadvantage of the public". About this period Boyd had floated the Royal Bank of Australia, and debentures of this bank to the amount of £200,000 were sold. This sum was eventually taken by Boyd to Australia as the bank's representative. He arrived in Hobson's Bay, Port Phillip District, on his schooner, the Wanderer, on 15 June 1842, and reached Port Jackson, Sydney, on 18 July 1842.[1]
Boyd soon began investing his own and his bank's money. In a dispatch of Sir George Gipps dated 17 May 1844 he mentioned that Boyd was one of the largest squatters in the country, with 14 stations in the "Maneroo" district and four at Port Phillip, amounting together to 381,000 acres (1,540 km2) of land. At about the same period the firm of Boyd and Company had three steamers and three sailing ships in commission. Large sums of money were also being spent on founding the port of Boydtown on the south coast, which involved the building of a jetty 300 feet (91 m) long, and a lighthouse 75 feet (23 m) high.
Four years later a visitor, speaking of the town, mentioned its Gothic church with a spire, commodious stores, well-built brick houses, and "a splendid hotel in the Elizabethan style". At this time Boyd had nine whalers working from this port.
Having difficulty in obtaining cheap labour, in 1847 he began shipping natives from the Pacific islands, hoping thus to get an unlimited supply of cheap labour. This scheme turned out to be a complete failure. The start of Boyd's troubles were the loss of two law-suits for the insurance money on one of his vessels which was wrecked, but it seems his schemes were too grandiose for the then state of Australia. The shareholders in the Royal Bank became dissatisfied, and eventually all of the capital was lost and there was a deficiency of £80,000.
Boyd was apparently allowed to keep his yacht the Wanderer, for he sailed on her to California on 26 October 1849. At the gold-diggings he had no success, and in June 1851 he sailed in the Wanderer for a voyage among the Pacific islands with the aim of establishing a 'Papuan Republic or Confederation'.[1]
On 15 October 1851, while at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, Boyd went ashore with one native to shoot game. Soon after being seen entering a small creek in his boat, two shots were heard 15 minutes apart, Boyd was never seen again.[1] A party was landed and search was made for him, but no trace of him could be found except a belt which had belonged to him. It appears to be certain that he was killed soon after he landed. There were afterwards rumours that he had escaped, and at the end of 1854 an expedition was sent to the islands to make further inquiries. The search was fruitless.
In 1971 the Ben Boyd National Park was established, located near Boydtown and Eden and named after Boyd. The park area covers approximately 10,407 hectares (25,720 acres).
Boyd's Tower[3] is located at the entrance to the park near Twofold Bay and was designed as a lighthouse and lookout.
The tower was designed by Oswald Brierly who had accompanied Boyd to Australia from England. It was built from sandstone quarried in Sydney.[4] The structure was not commissioned as a lighthouse and the building work stopped in 1847 as funds became short.[5] The tower was used as a whale sighting station.[6][7]
Whaling was already an established industry when Boyd arrived in the area and he brought with him his own boats and crew,[8] aggressively went into competition with the locals and expanded his fleet until he had nine whaling boats working for him.[1]
Boyd's legacy includes the decaying buildings of Boydtown near Eden on Twofold Bay in New South Wales. The township was established by Boyd to provide services for the extensive properties he owned locally. It was abandoned in the mid 1840s when Boyd's finances failed.[8] The township has since been revived.
An addition, Ben Boyd Road in Neutral Bay, New South Wales was named in his honour, as was Boyd house of Neutral Bay Primary School[9]. A small plaque describing his life and death is on display on the Kurraba Point-end of same.
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Boyd's disappearance, a scale model of the Wanderer was created for the Eden Killer Whale Museum.[10]