Eber Bunker (1761–1836) was a sea captain and pastoralist, and he was born on 7 March 1761 at Plymouth, Massachusetts. He commanded one of the first vessels to go whaling and sealing off the coast of Australia. His parents were James Bunker and his wife Hannah, née Shurtleff.
1776-1786: Background
When England lost its American colonies in 1776 in the American Revolutionary War, it lost an important source of raw materials as well as its established dumping grounds for convicted criminals. Consequently, England saw an urgent need to replace these critical resources. Despite the enormous expenses associated with starting a new colony on a virtually uncharted continent in another hemisphere, England elected to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay under the leadership of Captain Arthur Phillip. This project was undertaken in part to relieve overcrowding in the English prisons, as well as to establish a new source for timber and other raw materials, and also to establish a deep water port in the South Pacific for Britain to expand its territories.
After 1776, the American whale oil market suffered because of the high tariffs placed by Britain on American oil. The resulting glut of oil on the American market stopped production there. Whale oil was in demand in Europe for lighting cities and lubricating the machines of the industrial revolution.
The sturdy, wide beamed whaling ships were well suited to serve as convict transports. For this reason, many American whalers migrated to London and served on British whaling ships transporting convicts to New South Wales. Among these was Captain Eber Bunker.
Bunker was already well-established in England by the time he was 25 years old. On 16 November 1786 at St. George-in-the-East, Middlesex, England, Eber Bunker married Margrett Thompson, daughter of Henry Thompson and his wife Isabella (née Collingwood, who was first cousin to Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood).
1791: Voyage to New South Wales as Master of William and Ann
In 1791, five of the whaling ships owned by Samuel Enderby & Sons were chartered as part of the Third Fleet of ships that brought settlers to Australia. Captain Eber Bunker, 30 years old at the time, was selected to be Master of one of these convict transport ships, the William and Ann. The William and Ann departed from Plymouth, England on 27 March 1791, with its cargo of 188 convicts and a company of soldiers. The ship arrived at Sydney Cove on 28 August 1791 with 181 surviving convicts.
1791: First whaling and sealing voyage in Australasia
Leaving Port Jackson on 24 October 1791, Bunker of the William and Ann and Captain Thomas Melvill of the Britannia led the first ever whaling expedition in Australian waters. Between them the two vessels took seven whales but a strong gale caused most of them to be cast adrift and the two ships returned to Port Jackson with only one whale each, which they processed on the shore. Bunker and William Raven led a second expedition to Dusky Sound in New Zealand before returning to England with seal skins, in addition to whale oil.
He next commanded the London whaler Pomona. That vessel departed London for the South Seas in December 1794 under the command of Captain Charles Clark. It was captured by a French privateer in February 1795. It was re-taken by the Susanna of Liverpool and taken to Cork, Ireland. Pomona departed Cork for the South Seas under Captain Bunker in June 1795. The vessel was reported off the coast of Chile in January 1796 and among the Galapagos Islands in November of that year. Pomona returned to London 18 August 1797, a full ship.
1799-1803: More whaling expeditions as Master of Albion
Bunker returned in 1799 to New South Wales in command of the 362-ton (bm) whaling ship, Albion. This ship was built in Deptford, England. Owned by Messrs Champion and registered in London, Albion was fitted with 10 guns and had a crew of 26. Bunker and Albion spent the next two winters whaling, first off the Australian coast and later the New Zealand coast. Bunker returned to Britain with a cargo of 155 barrels of whale oil.
In 1803, during another whaling voyage from England in Albion, Bunker was the first European to discover the Capricorn and Bunker Group of islands. This group of islands and reefs, situated astride the Tropic of Capricorn, is located at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef (roughly 80 kilometers east of Gladstone, off the central coast of Queensland). Bunker named the southern group of islands after himself.