Peter Degraves; Tasmanian entrepreneur; founder of the Cascades Brewery Empire and a serious enigma.
Before you start reading the history of Peter Degraves which is written below please take the time to study this photograph of Peter Degraves and have a long hard think about that face. What kind of man was he? Look at the eyes, the turn of his mouth: just what kind of man was Peter Degraves?
Obituary Hobart Courier
Monday 3rd  January 1853 page three

THE LATE MR. P. DEGRAVES.-Our obituary of this
day contains the announcement of the decease of the
late Peter Degraves, Esq. Mr. Degraves arrived
about 28 years ago in a vessel called the Hope, the
joint property of himself and Major Mackintosh. His
family were in a highly respectable position, of French
extraction, Mr. Degraves being the son of an eminent
medical practitioner for very many years resident in
Dover, and brother of Colonel Degraves, lately
deceased at Madras. Mr. Degraves was during a
portion of his early life with the celebrated engineer
Rennie. The deceased was well known as the pro-
prietor of the extensive brewery and steam sawmills
very successful: he was highly and deservedly es-
teemed, and leaves a large family resident in the
colony.
.
The conventional history of Peter Degraves states that he was born in 1778, probably in England, and was the son of a 'highly respected' doctor of French extraction who lived
at Dover, England. It claims that after  studying civil engineering he decided in 1821 to
emigrate to Van Diemen's Land. In partnership with Major Hugh McIntosh, he
secured the Hope and after many delays and vicissitudes, including arrest for
overcrowding his ship and imprisonment for debt, Degraves arrived in Hobart Town
with his wife and eight children in 1824. In fact that is totally untrue. Degraves was a merchant of fabric in Manchester in England who went bankrupt in 1807 and in 1810 was convicted of theft of a huge amount of goods, worth a small fortune, and as a result spent one full year in jail.
He dissappeared from 1811 to 1820 and then covertly purchased the Hope through his brother in law Hugh Macintosh who was a disgraced East India Company Major in order to shoot through to Tasmania in the hope of escaping his debts

Below is what the conventional history says of Degraves as written by Myrtle L. Reid-McIlreavy a Tasamanian historian. This is also telling only half the story.

He was granted 500 acres (202 ha) of land for himself and McIntosh at the
Cascades in 1824, and next year another 2000 acres (809 ha) on the face of Mount
Wellington as far as the Organ Pipes. Between Thomas Lowes's distillery and the
mount he soon had a sawmill in operation with an overseer and twenty millers and
timber getters. He also diverted the waters of Guy Fawkes Rivulet into the town
rivulet, and from a dam below the sawmill he proposed to pipe a pure water
supply to Hobart if the government would give him a prescriptive charter.
Unfortunately he had not satisfied his creditors before leaving England; through
Francis Court, licensee of the Help-Me-Through-the-World inn in Collins Street,
they renewed their charges against Degraves in 1826 and he was taken into
custody for debt. During his detention he submitted to Lieutenant-Governor (Sir)
George Arthur a plan for improving the gaol, but although large scale
alterations were made his plan does not appear to have been used. In 1826 a bill
of sale was placed on his house, sawmill, machinery and timber; by order of the
Supreme Court the partners and their solicitors met their creditors in December
for an examination. Under a new Insolvency Act from England, the partners were
thought to have fulfilled the whole 'ordeal of the Act', but Chief Justice (Sir)
John Pedder ruled otherwise; the partners became insolvent, Court took over the
sawmill and Degraves returned to custody until in 1831 Arthur had him released.
By the will of Major McIntosh, who died about 1835, he became owner of 3200
acres (1295 ha) on Mount Wellington.
In 1832 Degraves laid down a brewery on his property. It soon flourished, and
when a second sawmill, flour-mill, and bakehouses were added he employed more
than fifty hands. On the mainland his beer brewed from cool mountain water was
considered superior to other beers and sold well; with his sawn timber, flour,
bread and biscuits, he was said to earn nearly £100,000 a year. However, he had
much trouble over the water which passed through the brewery into his reservoir
and thence to the town rivulet. Soon after 1833 its flow decreased in volume and
citizens complained that he was exceeding his water concessions. The government
retaliated by building a dam above his reservoir, but this gave only temporary
improvement, and the town water supply remained a contentious subject. In 1840
Degraves proposed a scheme and the Hobart Town Courier supported it but nothing
more was done until 1844, when his offer of a town supply with the necessary
piping and a filtering reservoir at the 'edge of the city', for £4000, was
accepted by the government. In April 1845 Degraves temporarily cut off the water
and caused a public outcry. In 1846 when his contract was under revision,
consumers complained that his supply was tainted; an earlier scheme promulgated
by Sir John Franklin's government for diverting the water from the springs on
Mount Wellington was popularly believed the only way to get pure water.
Degraves's contract was broken and the town supply was handed over to Major
(Sir) Sydney Cotton, who had been employed on irrigation work in India. Next
year Degraves's claim against the Public Works Department was countered by a
public petition. Feeling ran high and H. Moore, editor of the Hobart Town
Guardian, held him up to ridicule and, when threatened with assault, prosecuted
him. Degraves was imprisoned in 1848 but quickly released on bail. Although his
two sons later pleaded for restoration of their riparian rights the
solicitor-general gave his opinion that their father's rights were so
detrimental to the rights of the citizens that it was they who should be
recouped rather than the Degraves family.
In 1834 Degraves was prominent in designing the Theatre Royal which is still
considered one of the best theatres in Australia for acoustics. His syndicate
opened it in 1837, but he fell out with other members and by 1840 was
practically sole proprietor.
As early as 1836 Degraves had thought of building ships. Next year he applied
for an allotment on the Old Wharf for a patent slip. When this was refused he
later tried to secure a frontage near Mulgrave Battery on the foreshore of the
Derwent, but was again unsuccessful. In 1841 he established a shipyard between
Perry's Point and the end of Castray's Esplanade. His first foreman is said to
have been John Watson, formerly builder at the government's yard at Port Arthur.
Among the ships turned out by Degraves were the barque Lady Emma (203 tons), and
the schooners Miranda (127 tons), Fair Tasmanian (145 tons) and Jenny Lind (136
tons). In 1847 he built the barque Tasman (563 tons), said to be the largest
ship built in Van Diemen's Land. The schooner Circassian (105 tons), the brig
Yarra (139 tons) and the barque Melbourne (150 tons) were built in 1851.
Degraves closed his shipyard after the gold rush began in Victoria, and loaded
his ships with timber for the growing town of Melbourne. He died at Hobart on 31
December 1852, predeceased on 30 May 1842 by his wife Sophia, née McIntosh, at
the age of 50.
Degraves was typical of those practical men who were essential for the building
of new colonial economies. In spite of obstacles, checks and frustrations which
daunt men of lesser purpose, he pursued his self-ordained tasks with that energy
which flows from dedication and ambition. In Tasmania he discovered an
environment in which his versatility and ability as a pioneer industrialist
could flourish. At least two industries, shipbuilding and brewing, which he
established have continued to the present day. The Theatre Royal at Hobart still
stands, with little alteration, and remains an important institution.
Select Bibliography
correspondence file under Degraves (Archives Office of Tasmania).
Author: Myrtle L. Reid-McIlreavy

Please note this page is under construction and will not be complete until sometime in 2010
Peter Degraves: Hero or Villain?

The existing histories describing the life of Peter Degraves tell of a multi-talented entrepreneur who migrated to Van Diemen’s Land to found what would become a vast business empire in the fledgling British colony of Hobart on the outer fringes of the civilised world. He has been variously described as a skilled architect, engineer, mathematician, lawyer, surveyor and a “pioneer industrialist” who came to Hobart Town from England in his middle life and who flourished amidst the challenges and opportunities presented by the colonial environment.  Yet there is little in the existing literature that deals with the 46 years of Degraves’ life prior to his arrival in Hobart Town and what few details there are, are generally vague or, at best, brief with little or no documentary support other than material that Peter Degraves himself wrote.

Degraves arrived in Hobart Town in 1824 with a steam engine, a sawmill and a corn mill, which he brought out from England in the Hope.  As the story has it, when he arrived in Hobart Degraves’ engineer’s eye immediately saw that water power, freely available from the fast flowing streams that ran down the steep slopes of Mount Wellington, would be more efficient and cost effective than a steam engine—so he built his mill on the banks of the Hobart Rivulet where it joined with the Guy Fawkes Rivulet at a place called the Cascades, converting the mills’ drive mechanisms from steam to water in the process. There was a significant demand for sawn timber in the young colony and also in Britain so Degraves’ first action was to set up the machinery of the sawmilling plant, which he eventually extended to include a flour mill. Both these mills sourced their power from the water of the rivulet as it flowed rapidly down from Mount Wellington to Hobart Town. To utilise those waters more effectively Degraves built dams across the rivulet. In the short term this was not a problem though later, as Hobart’s population grew, it became a bone of contention between Degraves and the people of Hobart, who lived down stream.  In 1832, after his release from five years in the Hobart prison, Degraves added a brewery to his Cascades domain, again utilising the clear, clean waters of the Hobart Rivulet.

After 1832 Degraves consolidated his base at the Cascades then rapidly expanded his business empire to include ship building yards at Battery Point and extensive farmlands. By the end of the 1830’s he had also designed, built and eventually come to own Hobart’s Theatre Royal, Australia’s oldest still operational theatre.
It has been claimed that by the end of the 1830’s Peter Degraves was, with an annual income of around £100,000 (at a time when a labourer’s wage was around £50 per annum), one of the richest men in Australia. When he died in December 1852, at the age of 74, his family was well poised to reap an even greater fortune by supplying the Victorian Gold Rush with flour, beer and timber .

In a booklet published in 1924 to celebrate the centenary of the Cascades Brewery (although the brewery did not actually exist at all until 1832), Cecil Allport wrote the first chapter entitled “The Degraves Centenary” dedicated to Peter Degraves, the brewery’s founder, and to the Degraves dynasty that followed him.  In the first paragraph of the opening chapter of his work Allport called for the name of Peter Degraves to “ever occupy a prominent place” amongst the captains of Australian enterprise and industry.   In addition to being an engineer, Degraves is also described as:

… an architect of no mean order and also an able draughtsman. He had, moreover, a knowledge of surveying… and was an experienced mathematician well versed in the science of Algebra…an authority on water boring.

Another detailed history of Peter Degraves was authored  by Mike Bingham in 1991, “Cascade: a taste of history”. Bingham opens the book’s first chapter with the words:

“Australians have not always recognised their country’s true heroes and achievers despite professing admiration for individuals who dare to have a go, to challenge the odds and the system, and to follow a dream whatever the setbacks. It is therefore perhaps fortunate that Peter Degraves built his own memorials.”

It is true, as Bingham implies above, that Degraves was largely forgotten by the Australian public of the 20th century. But in their attempts to write a history for Peter Degraves, and to promote him as a forgotten hero, his “official” biographers do not appear to wonder at to why he was forgotten. They skip over the fact that Degraves spent five of his first seven years in Van Diemen’s Land in prison and that he was generally disliked by a large portion of Hobart’s population.  Likewise they gloss over or ignore the controversy that saw Degraves arrested and imprisoned when he first attempted to leave England for Hobart on the Hope in 1821 and there is no mention of the fact that he was bankrupted in 1807 and later imprisoned for theft in 1810.  Nor is there any mention of the well documented suffering he directly inflicted on the hungry men, women and children crammed on board the overloaded Hope or of his speculation with passenger’s fare money on London’s short term money market or the fact that the fare money was not returned to the passengers after the Hope was seized by the Authorities in Royal Ramsgate Harbour for being unseaworthy and overcrowded.

In fact it would appear that not only did Peter Degraves “build his own memorials”, as Bingham puts it, but perhaps he also built his own history, a history passed down through his family, his friends and his letters and upon which his biographers have been forced to rely where primary and other documentary sources were not existent or inaccessible. So who was Peter Degraves? To paraphrase Jane Austen “Who was his father? Who were his brothers and sisters?” and what did he really do with his life before he sailed to Van Diemen’s Land.

The Sins of the Father

The existing literature concerning Peter Degraves’ life before he arrived in Hobart Town in 1824 relies almost exclusively on Degraves’ own rendition of his history; either through recollections of the stories he told to his peers or from a number of letters and memorials written by Degraves, mostly from prison either in England or Hobart.  These letters were generally written to promote himself or his case in some form legal dispute and are now mostly preserved in the Tasmanian State Archives. 
Because, at the time, these documents represented the bulk of available information on Degraves’ pre-Hobart life Hooper, and Degraves’ other biographers, were more or less forced to rely on Degraves’ own rendition of his history. However with the recent improvements in archival finding aids and the digitalisation of historic records in Australia and overseas it has now become possible to apply a more critical eye to Degraves’ claims that he was a wealthy, highly respected member of English society who became a victim of the times when he lost his vast fortune due to the Napoleonic War and the machinations of Bonaparte the tyrant—a claim designed to extract sympathy in the post-war period.

As with much else, the sole evidence that he had lost a fortune is contained in the letters and memorials Degraves wrote to Lieutenant Governor Arthur from Hobart gaol between 1826 and 1832 or to stories he told guests after his release.  Within the various versions of his tale Degraves claims that he once owned a number factories in England (Hooper says four) employing thousands of workers and that he had personally been worth more than one million pounds, which in today’s money would have made him almost a billionaire.

The facts about Peter Degraves' early life are very different. Degraves was Apprenticed through the 1790's to a mercantile house in London. Once he had finished his apprenticeship the young Degraves went into business. Between 1803 and 1805 Degraves owned, in partnership with at least two or three other people, a small cotton mill in Manchester—a business which was dissolved in late 1805 after less than three years of operation.  His next business venture as a “warehouse man, dealer, and chapman”, was also a partnership. This business ended with Degraves being declared bankrupt in 1807 and from which bankruptcy Degraves was not discharged by 1809, if ever.   A year later he was in jail after being convicted for theft of a valuable consignment of cloth.

Issues of debt, bankruptcy and imprisonment followed Degraves through most of his life and it was a reoccurring theme in his personal narrative that he inevitably portrayed himself as the victim of other peoples’ machinations, conspiracies or evil doings. It is a perspective which does not stand up to a close scrutiny of Degraves’ life although it can be argued that there were clear psychological causes why it was Degraves continually saw himself as a victim; those causes are to be found in the life of his father.

The Real History of Peter Degraves and Cascades Brewery

In fact the early history of Peter Degraves is almost complete fabrication, as is that of the Cascades Brewery which he founded with Hugh Macintosh in 1832 (not 1824 as is commonly held).

This page will reveal the real history of Peter Degraves and Cascades Brewery.