People Australia

James Furzer ( -1799) was 1st Lieutenant and quartermaster of marines when he arrived at Sydney in January 1788 aboard the Alexander as part of the First Fleet. He had started the voyage on the Sirius, transferred to the Scarborough in October 1787 and then to the Alexander on 21 October.

Furzer was one of 11 marine officers who agreed that it was their duty to serve as members of the criminal court in the settlement. His son James Patrick Furzer, with Ann Pasley, was baptised on 24 October 1791. Furzer took the child (and probably the mother) back to England with him on the Gorgon in December 1791 and made him the major beneficiary in his will.

Promoted to captain in 1794, James Furzer died in February 1799 in Jamaica.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 138