John Macarthur (Napoleon's Australian Victory)

Sir John Macarthur, 1st Earl Macarthur, KCB (1767--10 April 1834) was a British soldier, colonial adminstrator, pastoralist, architect and pioneer. Macarthur is universally recognised as the father of modern Van Diemen's Land. He served as the first (and only) Lieutenant-Governor of Northern Van Diemen's Land between 1805 and 1810, and as the Dominion's second governor from 1821 to 1827. Macarthur drove the early economy of the island by introducing merino sheep to his estate and by encouraging whaling in the Bass Strait.

==Birth and Pre-Colonial Life==

John Macarthur was born near Plymoth as the second son of Alexander Macarthur, a former Jacobite who had returned to Britain after a delf-imposed exile in the West Indies and was, by some accounts, a linen draper and "seller of slops". John Macarthur's exact birthdate is not known, however he was christened on the 3rd of September, 1767.

In 1782, Macarthur was commissioned as an Ensign in Fish's Corps, a unit formed to serve in the American War of Independence, which ended before the regiment sailed. Macarthur, on half-pay, lived for five years on a farm in Devon, where he became interested in "rural occupations". In April 1788, Macarthur secured a posting in the 68th Regiment of Foot. In October that year, Macarthur married Elizabeth Veale. In 1789, after negotiations with the War Office, he managed to gain a posting in Sydney with the newly-formed New South Wales Corps. John and Elizabeth traveled on the Neptune, but due to Macarthur's various disputations with the crew, including a duel with the captain, the couple transferred to the Scarborough, another ship of the Second Fleet.