James Morrill

James Morrill (20 May 1824 – 30 October 1865) was an English sailor aboard the vessel Peruvian which became shipwrecked off the coast of north-eastern Australia in 1846. He survived a journey in a makeshift raft to the mainland near the site of the modern city of Townsville and was taken in by a local clan of Aboriginal Australians. He adopted their language and customs and lived as a member of their society for 17 years. By the early 1860s, British colonisation had reached the area and Morrill decided to return to the European way of living. Morrill wrote a memoir of his experiences and died soon after in the town of Bowen in 1865. Morrill is regarded as the first white man to have resided permanently in North Queensland and is one of only a few European people to have lived for an extended period completely within traditional Aboriginal culture.

Early life Morrill was born in 1824 at Heybridge in the English county Essex. His father was a millwright. He left school at the age of 13 to pursue a career as a sailor, obtaining an apprenticeship in a local shipping company. In 1844, Morrill went to London and was induced to sign up to sail aboard the troopship HMS Ramillies which was bound for Australia carrying soldiers of the Royal Artillery and the 11th and 99th Regiments. In December 1845, HMS Ramillies arrived in Sydney where Morrill obtained permission to leave the ship. He decided to continue an adventurous lifestyle and joined the crew of the vessel Peruvian which was to sail to China.

Shipwreck of Peruvian In February 1846, Peruvian, commanded by Captain George Pitkethley, departed Sydney with 130 cedar logs for export. On board were 16 officers and crew including Morrill, as well as six passengers including the captain's wife and two other families. Just over a week into the voyage, at around 4:00 a.m., the vessel ran onto a submerged reef near Minerva Shoal in the Coral Sea. The ship was unable to be floated off the rocks and of the two long boats, one was smashed to pieces and the other detached prematurely, floating away with the first mate and a sheep. A raft equipped with a sail was constructed and the remaining 21 people were placed on board with only a few tins of meat and a small keg of water as provisions. who resided in the Port Denison area. The boy went to live with a tribe further to the south. After two years, the boy, the captain and his wife had died and Morrill, now the only survivor of the shipwreck, became lonely and returned to live with the clan at Mount Elliot. This offer was rejected by the colonial authorities,

Morrill later accompanied a number of surveying expeditions to exploit his local knowledge. He was used by George Elphinstone Dalrymple in his 1864 expedition to Rockingham Bay where he was told to convey the message to the local Aboriginal people that they had come "to occupy the land and would shoot any who approached." Apart from this though, Morrill's life became unassuming. He took a job as a warehouse keeper and looked after the churchyards at Bowen, and in September 1864 he married a domestic servant by the name Eliza Ross.

Death and legacy Morrill's health rapidly declined once he had returned to British society. Rheumatic pains and swellings which occurred while living a traditional Indigenous lifestyle, worsened and flared throughout his body. Having lived so long without clothes, he had trouble adjusting wearing attire deemed essential in the colonial world. In October 1865, he was debilitated by a serious case of septic arthritis and died within two weeks. He was buried in the Bowen cemetery, which is now marked by a modest monument erected in 1963 by the Bowen Historical Society.

Before he died, Morrill and his wife had a son named Ross Morrill. It is claimed that he also had a daughter with an Aboriginal woman while he was living with the Mount Elliot clan, but Morrill never admitted to this. Descendants of Morrill continue to live in North Queensland. Jemmy Morrill and the Brolgas by Lindsay Daen in 1993. It is located in the City Botanic Gardens, Brisbane. Revised editions of his memoirs were reprinted several times up to 1896, and a few biographies have since been published. Author David Malouf used Morrill's experiences in his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon.

Film A film that was meant to be released in 2022, The Wild One, is based on the story of Morrill and the people who took him in. It is directed by Australian film maker Nathan Colquhoun and stars Matt Oxley, John Jarratt and Marlena Law.

Australian survival expert Mike Atkinson's film 'Modern Day Castaway' is loosely based on Morrill's experience, where Atkinson attempts to sail from Morrill's landing point to a rescue haven on Booby Island.