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'HMS Pelorus in company with HMS Conway
running out of Sydney, Port Jackson, July 7th 1838'
Watercolour by Montague Frederick O'Reilly
(Courtesy of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales; no reproduction except by special permission from the library)
'Situation of HMS Pelorus the morning after the hurricane....'
Watercolour 1839, Owen Stanley
(Used by permission from the State Library of New South Wales)

'HMS Pelorus at half tide.'
Watercolour 1839, Owen Stanley
(Unsigned and undated)
'HMS Pelorus, 16 Juin, 1838, Sydney, New South Wales'
Sepia wash (M.Reilly?)
Montagu Frederick O'Reilly, watercolourist and naval officer, was born on 17 February 1822, only child of Lieutenant John O'Reilly RN. Montague entered the Royal Naval College in February 1835 and exactly two years later joined HMS Pelorus as a volunteer. The ship was in Australian waters in 1838-39, from which period date two small watercolours by O'Reilly (now a midshipman). H.M.S. Pelorus in Company with H.M.S. Conway Running out of Sydney, Port Jackson (ML) is dated 7 July 1838.
While anchored off Port Essington (Northern Territory) delivering supplies, the Pelorus was wrecked in
a hurricane that swept the area on 26 November 1839 and killed twelve of the crew. The survivors gathered at the settlement, then little more than a collection of prefabricated wooden buildings, which had also been extensively damaged. O'Reilly's other known watercolour, The Habitation of the Crew of H.M.S. Pelorus, after She Had Been Wrecked ... Nov. 26, 1839 (ML), shows Port Essington in its desolate state after the disaster struck, including ruined buildings and blasted trees. Appropriately bleak, the drawing is also extremely crude, O'Reilly denoting figures simply by blobs of red and blue paint.
(Account from the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online)