Frederick Clause

Frederick Rushbrook Clause (1791 to 1852) was a British naval surgeon who is remembered in Western Australia as an early explorer and as an artist. Appointed a surgeon in the Royal Navy in September 1813, he joined James Stirling's ship HMS Success in 1826 and was aboard when it reached the Swan River in March 1827 to assess whether a British colony could be founded there. Stirling chose him as one of eighteen men to explore up the river, and a brook and lagoon found on the first day were named for him. He wrote a letter supporting Stirling's account of the healthy climate and painted the party's camp, a picture that became the only published painting of the Swan River area before the colony was established in 1829. Little is known of his later life. He married in 1836 and died in Kent in 1852.