A moving group of manuscripts, shedding light on the later life of Vice-Admiral John Hunter, the captain of the Sirius in the First Fleet and the second Governor of New South Wales. This series of revised wills covers most of the period when Hunter was effectively retired, 1810-1821, a period when he was splitting his time between his house on Judd Street in Hackney, London and his Georgian terrace on Leith Walk in Edinburgh.

A moving group of manuscripts, shedding light on the later life of Vice-Admiral John Hunter, the captain of the Sirius in the First Fleet and the second Governor of New South Wales. This series of revised wills covers most of the period when Hunter was effectively retired, 1810-1821, a period when he was splitting his time between his house on Judd Street in Hackney, London and his Georgian terrace on Leith Walk in Edinburgh.

All three versions of his will are unusually full and detailed. Quite apart from giving an excellent account of his financial standing (most of his money was held in the famous "three per cents," totalling more than £11,000 by the time of his death) the detailed accounting of a score or more different bequests gives not only a revealing snapshot of his extended family, but also a barometer of his feelings about the different branches. Not least, he singles out the daughter of his nephew Henry Kent RN, Penelope Percival Kent, for her "kind and affectionate attention to me when ill" and also the daughters of his sister Janet Maule, to whom he leaves larger sums as well as his house in Leith – a reminder that he spent a lot of his time in the town of his birth and remained deeply connected to Scotland.

It is interesting to see how many of his family served in the Royal Navy, not least his nephew Capt. William Kent who came out to New South Wales with Hunter in 1795 and stayed on until 1805, but sadly predeceased his uncle: indeed, one of the sadder moments in the trajectory of the wills is the way that Hunter's gold chronometer was initially left to Kent, but ended up being listed among his general chattels to be sold. Kent's death also means that one of Hunter's prized possessions, a portrait bust of his great patron Lord Howe, effectively goes missing from the inventory.

However, the real recurring theme is Hunter's fretfulness about the daughters of his many siblings, writing at one point that the "great number of female relatives which my Brothers and Sisters have left wholly unprovided for make it rather difficult for me to divide that small sum so as to satisfy all, I am well aware that my conduct in this respect will by some of them be much censur'd…".

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John Hunter (1737-1821) had already had a long but not necessarily glittering career in the Royal Navy when he was appointed to command the Sirius in 1786. During his stint in New South Wales he oversaw the detailed surveys made of the harbours as well as making a fast circumnavigation to the Cape and back for supplies, but lost the Sirius in a storm in the difficult waters off Norfolk Island in March 1790. He returned to Britain in April 1792, where his Historical Journal was published, one of the most important First Fleet books, and the following year took a key role serving with Lord Howe in the battle of the Glorious First of June.

His good standing led to his appointment as the new Governor of NSW, arriving in Sydney in late 1795. His stint as Governor was marked by dissension and unrest, Hunter ultimately returning with something of a cloud over him, although the later troubles of King and Bligh did rather restore official faith in him, especially after a wonderful biography of him was published in the influential Naval Chronicle for 1801. Hunter was promoted Rear Admiral on 2 October 1807, and Vice-Admiral on 31 July 1810. He never hoisted his flag at sea, but passed his last years quietly, dying at Hackney on 13 March 1821. He was buried in the Hackney Old Cemetery (ADB).

We have prepared a longer notice of the remarkable details included in the various wills, but in essentials the group comprises:

1 April 1810: Folio, 4pp., in Hunter's hand, signed at conjugate blank, the foot of the first page and also signed at the foot of the second, with his red wax seal added.

23 November 1819 Folio, 4 pp., in Hunter's hand, signed at the foot of the first page and the second, where the signature has been crossed through: also with black (mourning) wax seal. With an added paragraph initialled by Hunter.

9 March 1821: dated just four days before Hunter's death; endorsement on the fourth page, entirely in the hand of a clerk.