'Hubert Phelps Whitmarsh, aged 21 after having spent seven years before the mast, arrived in Adelaide in the mid 1880s. His crowded life in S.A., N.S.W. and W.A. is described. He returned to England in 1888 after many adventures, different occupations and travels in Australia. He was later a journalist in the USA. ' (From the back cover of The World's Rough Hand - Libraries Australia record). Whitmarsh was a Canadian who lived in England and spent the first seven years of his working life at sea. He says he was 'familiar with all the great ports of Australia'. (p.3)
Leaving the seafaring life Whitmarsh returned to Australia and went prospecting for silver at Silverton, New South Wales and then pearl fishing in north west Australia. After three years in Australia he returned to England. Whitmarsh eventually became a correspondent for American magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly and the Century. In 1899 his historical novel, The Golden Talisman, was published. It was based on the adventures of a young Persian noble who led an army against a mysterious mountain kingdom. Taken prisoner, the hero's talisman saves his life.
Later in his career Whitmarsh became a businessman and mining promoter in the Phillipines. He first went there in 1899 as a war correspondent for Outlook Magazine and stayed on to become the first Governor of Benguet province in 1900.
Sources: H. Phelps Whitmarsh The World's Rough Hands (1898); 'The New Governor of Benguet', The New York Times (27 December 1900): 5 and 'Herbert P. Whitmarsh', New York Times (8 April 1935): 19.
