Philippa Iles
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 79
Chinese School19th CenturyBenjamin Boyd's yacht The Wanderer under sail
30 April 2025, 14:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £1,280 inc. premium
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Polly Cornthwaite
Senior Cataloguer
Rhyanon Demery
Head of Sale
Chinese School, 19th Century
Benjamin Boyd's yacht The Wanderer under sail
oil on canvas
33.4 x 48cm (13 1/8 x 18 7/8in).
oil on canvas
33.4 x 48cm (13 1/8 x 18 7/8in).
Footnotes
Provenance
With Martyn Gregory, London.
Exhibited
London, Martyn Gregory, Treaty Port Views, 2007-2008, no. 92, catalogue no. 83.
London, Martyn Gregory, China in the Frame, 2020-2021, no. 81, catalogue no. 101.
Born in Scotland, Benjamin Boyd (1796-1851) moved to London and in 1825, became a member of the London Stock Exchange, where his main interests were shipping and commerce in Australia. He founded and floated the Royal Bank of Australia, which then financed his journey to Australia and his proposed enterprises there. He and his brother set sail in his luxury schooner, The Wanderer, accompanied by a crew of fourteen. Boyd was a prominent member of the Royal Yacht Club, and The Wanderer had hosted dinner parties attended by members of the Royal Family. She travelled to Rio de Janeiro and around the Cape of Good Hope, before entering Sydney Harbour on 18 July 1842 where she was given a huge reception.
Following various successes and spectacular failures on his extraordinary Australian business ventures, Boyd left Sydney on board The Wanderer on 26 October 1849 for the Californian goldfields. Having failed in America, The Wanderer sailed onto the Pacific Islands, where Boyd hoped to establish a Papuan Republic. He disappeared in the Solomon Islands in 1851, and the cause of his death remains a mystery. The Wanderer was reduced to a wreck by a storm off Port Macquarie one month later.