Peter Miller Cunningham

Peter Miller Cunningham (1789–1864) was a Scottish naval surgeon and pioneer in Australia.

Peter Miller Cunningham was the fifth son of John Cunningham, land steward and farmer (1743–1800), and brother of Thomas Mounsey Cunningham (1776–1834) and of Allan Cunningham (1784–1842). He was born at Dalswinton, near Dumfries, in November 1789, and was named after that Peter Miller who is generally recognised as the first person who used steam in propelling boats.

He received his medical education at the University of Edinburgh, and on 10 December 1810 entered the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon, and in that capacity saw service on the shores of Spain, where the war was then raging. From August 1812 until promoted to the rank of surgeon (28 January 1814) he was employed on board the Marlborough, on the coast of North America. In 1816 he served in the Confiance, on Lake Erie, where he became the close friend of the traveller, Hugh Clapperton.

After 1817 he made four voyages to New South Wales as surgeon-superintendent of convict ships, in which upwards of six hundred criminals were transported to that colony without the loss of a single life. The results of his observations during this period were embodied in his Two Years in New South Wales, (1827, 2 vols.), which was favourably noticed in the Quarterly Review for January 1828, pp. 1–32. To the profits arising from this book he added his early savings while in the Navy, and expended them in an attempt to open up a large tract of land in Australia, which he then fondly regarded as his adopted country. But the locality was perhaps badly chosen, the seasons were certainly unpropitious, and he soon abandoned the struggle, as far as his own personal superintendence was concerned.

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