Colin Arrot Browning R. N.,

Convict Ship Surgeon-Superintendent


Date of Seniority Royal Navy *7 July 1813


Colin Arrott Browning was born in Scotland in 1791, son of James Browning and Magdaine Arrott. 

He was appointed Assistant-Surgeon 7 July 1813. He was on the List of Medical Officers who had served at War and was employed as Assistant-Surgeon in the Hebrus at Algiers

He married Eliza Green, daughter of Samuel Green, surveyor at Sevenoaks, Kent in 1825.
In 1833 when their son Colin Arrott Robinson Browning was born the family resided at 17 Bloomsbury Place, Brighton, Sussex.

Surgeon Superintendent

His first appointment as Surgeon Superintendent on a convict ship was to the Surry in 1831. After the voyage of the Elphinstone he published England's Exiles; or a View of a System of Instruction and Discipline, the introduction of which is below

"When, in the year 1831, on being appointed to the Surry, the duties and responsibilities involved in the surgeon-superintendency of a convict ship, were, for the first time, imposed upon me, I felt myself greatly at a loss from the want of anything like a system of management and instruction; and my inexperience of the nature of the service on which I had entered, and of the details of its duties, caused me no small degree of anxiety. I had, it is true, a copy of the printed official instructions; but these, although they afforded me a general view of the duties of my station, supplied me with nothing like a scheme of education and discipline, and necessarily left the minutiae of duty to my discretion.

Much of the time occupied by my first voyage, was expended in observation and experiment, and was therefore in some measure lost to many of the prisoners, as it respected their advancement in knowledge and moral improvement. I entered on my second charge, which was in the ship Arab, in the year 1834, prepared with a system of instruction and government, the result of my experience in my first appointment, and to which some additions afterwards suggested themselves, during our progress to the Colonies.

As my third voyage, in the Elphinstone, advanced, my plan received farther improvements, and was finally brought to the state in which it is now exhibited, in the second part of this volume. Its fitness for the management of female convicts, was ascertained in the year 1840; when, (having in the mean time served in a ship of war,) I accomplished, in the ship Margaret, my fourth voyage".

Following the voyage on the Surry in 1831, his voyages on convict ships were as follows:
The 1851 census reveals he was employed as surgeon at the Woolwich Dockyard and resided at Government House (probably the Officers residences), Dock Yard,  with Eliza and their children Colin Arrott age 17 and Lucy Sophia age 13, Henry age 10, Hamilton age 5. They employed two women, a cook and a house servant.

Death

He died of cancer at Maryon Road, Charlton, Woolwich, on 23 October 1856 and was interred in the burial ground of St. Thomas on 1st November 1856. Minister A. De la Mare

Notes and Links

1). State Library of Victoria....The convict ship : a narrative of the results of scriptural instruction and moral discipline as these appeared on board the Earl Grey, during the voyage to Tasmania :with brief notices of individual prisoners by Colin Arrott Browning. Colin Arrott Browning 1791-1856.

2). Colin Arrot Browning's last appointment was to the Hashemy in 1849...... Report on the Management of Prisoners

3). Colin Arrot Browning was the grandfather of Walter de la Mare.

References

[1] Browning, Colin Arrot, England's Exiles; or a View of a System of Instruction and Discipline, London, 1842

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