SWEET, SAMUEL WHITE (1825-1886)

Samuel Sweet is well known as a photographer but he was also a ship's captain and a surveyor. Born at Portsea, England 1825, Sweet joined the navy at around 19 years old and travelled extensively to China and India. He was commander on the Pizarro (ship) and then the Sarah Neumann (ship) for N. J. Myers Son & Co. of Liverpool. He arrived in Adelaide 1867 and worked as a photographer.

He soon took to sea again 1869 and was in command of various vessels until 1875 when his ship the Wallaroo, was involved in an accident. Sweet was blamed and following an enquiry, retired from the sea. He set up a photographic studio in Rundle Street, running a travelling photographic service from there, mainly concentrating on landscapes. Sweet became the colony's foremost documentary photographer of the 1870s. In the early 1880s he was one of the first to use the new dry-plate process.

Before migrating to Australia, Sweet had married Elizabeth Tilly. They had four daughters and five sons. He died suddenly of sunstroke on 4 January 1886 at Halldale near Riverton.

See all of the Library's digitised holdings of Captain Sweet's photographs.