Investigating the Charlotte Medal: origins, agency and commemoration

<p dir="ltr">The arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay in 1788 is well documented in official, literary sources. The Charlotte Medal stands as an exception – a personally created commemorative object that narrates the voyage of the First Fleet from Spithead to Botany Bay. The medal is largely unknown but has been presented as the first colonial Australian art object. Scholarship has focused on determining the medal’s commissioner, thought to be the surgeon of the <i>Charlotte </i>transport John White. New evidence has emerged which challenges this consensus, raising novel questions about the origins and functions of the medal. Using a methodological approach based in theories of agency and materiality, this thesis argues that the Charlotte Medal was an active object that had the capacity to communicate understandings and views about the arrival of the Fleet, and the commissioner’s role within it. This thesis contests earlier assumptions that presented the medal as a static art piece, arguing instead that the medal’s modes – namely its text, iconography and materiality – performed active communicative functions within the context of eighteenth-century Britain. Through investigations of travel writing, antiquarian thought, maritime culture and the Charlotte Medal itself, this thesis argues that the medal was an active agent that communicated ideas of empire, trust, reliability and authority. In examining these elements of the object, new understandings about the commemorative function of the medal as a monument to the arrival of the Fleet can be examined. </p>