After a general grounding in art, Oswald Brierly went to Plymouth to study naval architecture and rigging. Then in 1841, he started on a voyage to Australia with his friend Benjamin Boyd in the latter’s yacht Wanderer. Boyd established a new settlement he named Boydtown in southern New South Wales, where Brierly managed his whaling operations until 1848. Brierly Point near Boydtown, commemorates his connection with that new settlement.
In 1848, Captain Owen Stanley then in command of the Royal Navy hydrographic vessel HMS Rattlesnake, invited Brierly to be his guest during an Admiralty survey of the north and east coast of Australia and the adjacent islands. Between 1846 and 1850 HMS Rattlesnake carried out surveys of the Louisiade Archipelago, Eastern New Guinea and the Torres Strait including the Prince of Wales Channel and the Endeavour Strait.
Oswald Brierly accompanied the survey during two cruises and took a number of sketches, including one used for this painting of the Rattlesnake entering the Torres Strait
The painting shows an accurate representation of the Rattlesnake and three types of Islander canoes. A simple dugout canoe with an elaborately carved prow, possibly representing a dugong; a larger single-outrigger with sewn planks to raise its freeboard, and in the background what are possibly three double-hulled outrigger canoes with a mast, matt sail, and platform with men standing.
Gifted by Jeffrey Mellefont, it hung above my desk during the research and writing of the book Dangerous Passage -A Maritime History of the Torres Strait and was an inspiration for the work.
Brierly contributed about two hundred water-colours to the Royal Water-colour Society’s exhibitions. These were, in part, founded on his early working life and travel experiences. The most characteristic subjects of his later period were historical. The first of these was ‘The Retreat of the Spanish Armada’ (Royal Academy, 1871). This was followed by ‘Drake taking the Capitana to Torbay’ (Royal Water-colour Society, 1872), and many other subjects from the history of the Spanish Armada and other stirring incidents of the Elizabethan age.
He became marine painter to the Royal Yacht Squadron at the same time. In 1880, he was elected a full member of the Royal Water-colour Society. In 1881, he was appointed curator of the Painted Hall at Greenwich, and received the honour of knighthood in 1885. He died in London on 14 December 1894.
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