Peter Scratchley
Encyclopedia
Sir Peter Henry Scratchley K.C.M.G.
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....

 (24 August 1835 – 2 December 1885) was special commissioner for Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 in New Guinea
Papua (Australian territory)
The Territory of Papua comprised the southeastern quarter of the island of New Guinea from 1883 to 1949. It became a British Protectorate in the year 1884, and four years later it was formally annexed as British New Guinea...

 1884-1885 and defence adviser for Australia.

Scratchley was born in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, thirteenth child of Dr James Scratchley, Royal Artillery, and his wife Maria, née Roberts. Scratchley was educated in Paris and at the Woolwich academy and then began a career as an Officer of Engineers in the British Army. Scratchley served in the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...

 and Indian Mutiny and in October 1859 was made a captain. He then had several tours of duty in the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n colonies advising on defence. In 1860 he was sent to Victoria to plan a system of defence for that colony, but after working on this for over three years his plan was not adopted as a whole. Scratchley had, however, constructed batteries around the coast of Port Phillip
Port Phillip
Port Phillip Port Phillip Port Phillip (also commonly referred to as Port Phillip Bay or (locally) just The Bay, is a large bay in southern Victoria, Australia; it is the location of Melbourne. Geographically, the bay covers and the shore stretches roughly . Although it is extremely shallow for...

 by expending a comparatively small sum.

Following the withdrawal in 1870 of British garrison troops from Australia, Major General
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...

 Sir
Sir
Sir is an honorific used as a title , or as a courtesy title to address a man without using his given or family name in many English speaking cultures...

 William Jervois
William Jervois
Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois, GCMG, CB was a British military engineer who saw service, as Second Captain, in South Africa...

 and then Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...

 Scratchley were commissioned by a group of colonies to advise on defence matters. They inspected each colony's defences and produced the Jervois-Scratchley reports
Jervois-Scratchley reports
The Jervois-Scratchley reports of 1877 concerned the defences of the Australian colonies, and influenced defence policy into the twentieth century. From the time of the first settlement in Australia, the Royal Marines, the New South Wales Corps and a succession of regiments of the British army had...

 of 1877. Not surprisingly given their engineering backgrounds and the fear in the colonies of potential enemy fleets, the reports emphasised fortifications against naval attack. The Jervois-Scratchley reports formed the basis of defence planning in Australia and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 for the next 30 years.

Among his achievements in Australia were:
  • Founding of the Corps of Engineers in Victoria in 1860
  • The fort on Bare Island, Botany Bay
    Botany Bay
    Botany Bay is a bay in Sydney, New South Wales, a few kilometres south of the Sydney central business district. The Cooks River and the Georges River are the two major tributaries that flow into the bay...

    , New South Wales
    New South Wales
    New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

  • Fort Scratchley
    Fort Scratchley
    Fort Scratchley is a former coastal defence installation and now museum, located in Newcastle East, a suburb of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. It was built in 1882 to defend the city against a possible Russian attack. However, its guns were not fired in anger until 8 June 1942, during the...

    , Newcastle
    Newcastle, New South Wales
    The Newcastle metropolitan area is the second most populated area in the Australian state of New South Wales and includes most of the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Local Government Areas...

    , New South Wales
  • Fort Lytton
    Fort Lytton National Park
    Fort Lytton is a national park in Queensland, Australia, 13 km northeast of Brisbane. It is located near the mouth of the Brisbane River on the southern bank....

    , Brisbane
    Brisbane
    Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

    , Queensland
    Queensland
    Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

  • Fort Glanville
    Fort Glanville Conservation Park
    Fort Glanville Conservation Park is a registered heritage conservation area in Semaphore South, South Australia, a seaside suburb of Adelaide, that incorporates a functional 19th century fort. The fort was built after more than 40 years of indecision over the defence of South Australia...

    , South Australia
    South Australia
    South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

     — assisted by Alexander Bain Moncrieff
    Alexander Bain Moncrieff
    Alexander Bain Moncrieff CMG was an Irish-born engineer, active in Australia.Moncrieff was the son of Alexander Rutherford Moncrieff, and was born at Dublin, Ireland. His family was of Scottish ancestry. He was educated principally at the Belfast Academy, and at 15 was articled to C. Miller,...

  • Fort Queenscliff
    Fort Queenscliff
    Fort Queenscliff, in Victoria, Australia, dates from 1860 when an open battery was constructed on Shortland's Bluff to defend the entrance to Port Phillip. The Fort, which underwent major redevelopment in the late 1870s and 1880s, became the headquarters for an extensive chain of forts around Port...

    , Queenscliff
    Queenscliff, Victoria
    Queenscliff is a small town on the Bellarine Peninsula in southern Victoria, Australia, south of Swan Bay at the entrance to Port Phillip. It is the administrative centre for the Borough of Queenscliffe...

    , Victoria


Scratchley retired with the honorary rank of Major-General on 1 October 1882, but was still employed as defence adviser for Australia by the Colonial Office. Scratchley was appointed special commissioner for Great Britain in New Guinea in 1884, and arrived there in August 1885. Port Moresby
Port Moresby
Port Moresby , or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, is the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea . It is located on the shores of the Gulf of Papua, on the southeastern coast of the island of New Guinea, which made it a prime objective for conquest by the Imperial Japanese forces during 1942–43...

 was made the seat of government, questions of land tenure and the cultivation of the land were examined, and good relations were established with many of the natives and with the missionaries. Scratchley soon contracted malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

 and died at sea on aboard the Governor Blackall 2 December 1885. He was buried in Melbourne and then reinterred to the Old Charlton cemetery in England. Scratchley was created K.C.M.G.
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....

 earlier in the year. He married and left a widow, 2 daughters and a son.
Scratchley Road in Port Moresby
Port Moresby
Port Moresby , or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, is the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea . It is located on the shores of the Gulf of Papua, on the southeastern coast of the island of New Guinea, which made it a prime objective for conquest by the Imperial Japanese forces during 1942–43...

, Mount Scratchley in the Owen Stanley Range
Owen Stanley Range
Owen Stanley Range is the south-eastern part of the central mountain-chain in Papua New Guinea. It was seen in 1849 by Captain Owen Stanley while surveying the south coast of Papua and named after him. Strictly, the eastern extremity of the range is Mount Victoria , which was climbed by Sir William...

 near Kokoda
Kokoda
Kokoda is a station town in the Oro Province of Papua New Guinea. It is famous as the northern end of the Kokoda Track, site of the eponymous Kokoda Track campaign of World War II. In that campaign, it had strategic significance because it had the only airfield along the Track...

, and Fort Scratchley in Newcastle are named after him.

Publications

  • Peter Scratchley. Australian Defences and New Guinea. Compiled from the papers of the late Major-General Sir Peter Scratchley .... by C. Kinloch Cooke. With an introductory memoir. Elibron Classics.
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