George Bouchier Worgan

Who was George Bouchier Worgan?

George Bouchier Worgan was an English naval surgeon who accompanied the First Fleet to Australia. He made several expeditions to the Hawkesbury River and Broken Bay areas north of Sydney and spent a year on Norfolk Island after the Sirius was wrecked there. Worgan recorded many of the events of the first year of the colony of New South Wales. Unlike his contemporary Watkin Tench, he did not publish his account.

Worgan's surviving papers, in the form of a letter to his brother in England, are now held at the Mitchell Library in Sydney. The letter includes a journal kept for the first six months after the First Fleet's arrival in Sydney Cove. The journal was published in 1978 and in 2009.

He married Mary Lawry, probably after his return from Australia, and they had two sons and a daughter. Both sons eventually migrated to Australia. His death certificate says he died of apoplexy at Liskeard on 4 March 1838, but there are other accounts which suggest suicide by hanging.