Francis William Cadell (9 February 1822 – 1879) was a Scottish explorer of Australia, mostly remembered for opening the Murray River up for transport by steamship and for his activities as a blackbirder, where he systematically kidnapped Indigenous people to work as slaves on his pearling and trepanging interests in northern Australia.

Early life

Cadell was born in 1922 in Cockenzie, Haddingtonshire, Scotland. He was the second son of Hew Francis Cadell, a mine-owner and shipbuilder from a notable Scottish family.

His brother, Thomas, was a notable British soldier and administrator. Another brother, Robert, During that time, he claimed to have taken part in the siege of Canton.

By 1844, he was serving on the Royal Sovereign which sailed to ports in Europe and South America. In 1846, he returned to Scotland where he studied shipbuilding and the application of steam-power in the workshops of Robert Napier and Sons.

He first arrived in Australia in January 1849 as captain of the schooner Royal Sovereign, visiting Adelaide, Circular Head and Sydney, sailing in ballast for Singapore in June.

In 1850, the government of South Australia offered a prize for the first two ships to navigate the Murray River up to the Darling River. Cadell had a ship, the s/s Lady Augusta, built specifically for the purpose.

In March 1865, Cadell was involved in the mutiny of Captain Hannibal Marks on . Cadell ordered the first mate of Sandfly to get underway without its captain. When Marks caught the ship in a row boat, he placed the mate under arrest for taking orders from Cadell. Cadell then ordered Marks to reinstate the mate and fire another crew member. Marks refused and the crew sided with Marks.

1867 expedition to Northern Australia

In 1867, the South Australian Government sent Cadell on an expedition to the Northern Territory. His modus operandi was much criticised at the time, for his employment of men from New South Wales rather than experienced South Australians, for choosing the ex-paddle-wheeler Eagle for transport, and for taking few, if any, horses, without which any inland exploration was futile.

He approached the Northern Territory by ship, and his choice of site was influenced by the navigability of the river. He traversed a strait between Elcho Island and the mainland, which Matthew Flinders had previously noted as a probable island.

During the expedition an Aboriginal party-member called Tommy tried to desert three times and was imprisoned on the ship. Tommy reportedly drowned whilst making a fourth escape attempt, although Cadell indicated in a separate report that he had in fact been murdered by other party-members.

Blackbirder

During the early 1870s, Cadell became involved in whaling, trading, pearling and blackbirding in North-West Australia. Cadell and others became notorious for their coercion, capture and sale of Aboriginal people as slaves. The slaves were often detained temporarily at camps known as barracoons on Barrow Island, offshore.

In 1878, Cadell was investigated by police for the kidnapping of around forty Aboriginal Australians from the Cobourg Peninsula region of what is now called the Northern Territory. He had also kidnapped a number of Aboriginal people from Queensland. He forced them to work on his luggers, diving for pearls and sea cucumbers. There were several mutinies of his captives due to his harsh treatment and fourteen people managed to escape and report him to the authorities. In 1879, he fled the region.

In 1879, he was killed by a crewman near New Guinea.