William Balmain

William Balmain (1762 to 1803) was a Scottish naval surgeon and colonial administrator who sailed with the First Fleet to found the first European settlement in Australia. Born in Perthshire, he studied medicine at Edinburgh from 1779 and then trained in the Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate. In 1786 he was appointed third assistant surgeon to the new colony of New South Wales and sailed as surgeon on the convict ship Alexander, delivering the fleet's first child on the voyage. In Sydney he treated the sick in tents and emergency huts, and in 1790 he removed a spear that had pierced Governor Arthur Phillip's shoulder. He later served on Norfolk Island and as a magistrate, and from 1797 he was principal surgeon of the colony, caring for several thousand settlers and convicts with a single assistant. Ill health took him back to London, where he died of liver disease in November 1803. The Sydney suburb of Balmain preserves his name from a land grant.