James Matra

James Mario Matra (c. 1746 – 29 March 1806), sailor and diplomat, was a Province of New York-born midshipman on the voyage by James Cook to Botany Bay in 1770. He is known by the surname Matra and Magra (following his father's name change). His Matra family clan had been one of the three families who led the revolt against their long-standing Genoese overlords in Corsica (the other two were the Boneparte and Paoli clans). They had jointly established the Corsican Republic, the world's first elected constitutional republic -- but perpetual feuding between the three main families allowed the French to take possession a few year later (with the Boneparte family agreement)

The Matra's were Anglophiles and so went into exile in Ireland briefly, then migrated to New York where James Matra was born. His father had changed the family name to "Magra" (he was also James Maria Magra), so there is regular confusion between the Matra (original) and Magra (later) versions of the name.

He had sailed with Cook and Banks on the HMB Endeavour when it chartered the East Coast of New Holland and discovered Botany Bay (and we now know, "Port Jackson" the port of Sydney)

Following the British Loyalist defeat by American Patriot forces in the American Revolution, James Matra submitted a plan "A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" (24 August 1783) for the first Australian settlement in the Sydney NSW area, known as the "Matra Plan". In its original form it did not include convicts, but on the advice of Joseph Banks British convicts were included.

This plan had evolved over a few years (1783-1786) with the help of his close friend Sir Joseph Banks to become the so-called "Botany Bay colony" which was really a code-name to prevent French spies from learning about the existence of Sydney Harbour. Matra's motives were primarily to promote the colony as a safe refuge for the ex-slave, Black Loyalist who had fought with the British, and then found temporary refuge in Nova Scotia. But he obviously also knew that Cook (under Admiralty orders) had a secondary purpose when charting the East Australian coast, which was to find a top harbour for a British Pacific fleet.

He worked with British Home Undersecretary Evan Nepean and his political superior Lord Sydney on this plan for three years, but the Prime Minister Pitt the Younger, while strongly anti-slavery was convinced by the "Emancipist" faction of this early "Abolitionist" movement to send Black African ex-slaves back to African. This was a 'tribal' attitude rather than racists.

At the last minutes of 1786 the new UK Tory administration of the Pitt the Younger sent the First Fleet to Australia. The Black Loyalists were to be sent to Africa (Sierra Leone) under a Emancipation ("Blacks to Africa") policy, and so convicts became the sole purpose for urgently populating the new colony.

The UK only had a temporary problem with housing convicts which was being overcome by penitentiary building, but 'convict transportation' became the official explanation for the new colony, despite the ridiculous expense of transporting them half-way around the world, by-passing better settlement areas in Africa and Southern Australia This was done solely to hide their real motivation in establishing a Pacific Fleet base for the British Navy in what was said to be the "best sailing ship harbour in the world".