Robert Towns
Officially, master mariner, merchant, and speculator Robert Towns (1794 – 1873) founded Townsville and named the new settlement after himself. However, the story is slightly less straightforward and has its share of controversy.
Northumberland-born Towns was a teenager when he went to sea as an apprentice on a North Shields collier in 1809. He worked his way upwards rapidly and was the master of a brig trading throughout the Mediterranean before the age of twenty. His first voyage to Australia was as captain of Boa Vista in 1827, and by the 1840s he was making the voyage almost every year after marrying William Charles Wentworth's half-sister Sophia at Sydney's St Phillip's church on 28 December 1833 at St Phillip's church, Sydney. After the wedding, the couple returned to England, where Towns became associated with London shipowner, merchant and banker Robert Brooks. Initially, as part-owner of the Royal Saxon during the First Opium War (1839-1842), Towns was a minor player in the partnership, but at the end of the war, he was asked to go to put the affairs of Brooks’ Sydney agent, Ranulph Dacre, in order.
After Towns arrived in Sydney at the beginning of March 1843, he established Robert Towns & Co., General Merchants, Ship and Commission Agents, acquiring wharves at Millers Point and building up a fleet of largely second-hand vessels. His wife and son followed in the Royal Saxon the following year.
