The topsail schooner Wanderer, R.Y.S., in a fresh breeze

Sir Oswald Walters Brierly embarked on his first tour round the world as an artist on board Benjamin Boyd's Wanderer in 1841, but on his arrival in Australia settled in New South Wales, managing Boyd's whaling and other enterprises at Twofold Bay from 1842-1848. Whilst there, he joined Owen Stanley's surveying trip to the Great Barrier Reef, Torres Strait and New Guinea in the Rattlesnake and travelled with Henry Keppel on H.M.S. Maeander to New Zealand, Tahiti and South America, before returning to England in 1851. In 1874, he was appointed marine painter in ordinary to Queen Victoria.