James Maxwell (British Marines officer)

James Maxwell (died 1792) was an officer in the British Marines and member of Australia's First Fleet which established a penal colony in New South Wales in 1788.

A long-serving Marines officer prior to joining the Fleet, Maxwell earned swift promotion on arrival in Australia but was incapacitated shortly afterward by a combination of dysentery and a disease of the optic nerves. He was invalided back to England in July 1788 and died in Stonehouse, Plymouth in 1792.

Military service
Maxwell joined the 36th (Plymouth) Company of the British Marines on 16 February 1776 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant from that date. He was promoted to first lieutenant two years later, in April 1778.

Voyage to Australia
In 1787 Maxwell volunteered to join the newly founded New South Wales Marine Corps, formed in 1786 to preserve "subordination and regularity" in the proposed penal colony in Botany Bay, Australia He embarked for Australia aboard First Fleet convict transport Lady Penrhyn on 12 May 1787. As the oldest lieutenant and the longest serving at that rank, he was listed first among his peers in the returns of Marine officers aboard the Fleet.

The voyage posed difficulties for Maxwell in enforcing discipline among the Marines. On 24 June 1787 he was aboard the transport ship Prince of Wales when he was greeted with insolence and disobedience by Marine privates Arthur Dougherty and Robert Ryan. Maxwell had both men arrested and taken to Fleet flagship HMS Sirius (1786). A court martial was convened on the following day, which acquitted Dougherty but sentenced Ryan to 300 lashes, delivered immediately. Two weeks later, Maxwell arrested Marine Sergeant John Kennedy from Prince of Wales, who was so drunk on duty that he fell through an open hatchway and injured the wife of another Marine. Kennedy was held in legcuffs for three weeks, then court martialed and transferred to the Alexander - a hardship post as that vessel suffered from fever, overcrowding and an overflowing bilge.