John, was the youngest surviving child of Joseph and Sarah Elizabeth. Tales of running away from schools, not staying with jobs found for him -- at some cost -- by his parents, and also by his brother Thomas (father of TPB) and generally no inclination to settle down would not have found favour with less indulgent relations and are the background of TPB's dismissive remark about him.
    Probably his departure for Van Diemen's Land -- Tasmania -- with steady brother Edwin was felt to be something of a relief with hopes that he would settle there at last. However, he had been an avid reader of accounts of voyages of exploration, particularly those of Captain Cook. His agreement to emigration was accompanied, in his own words, by wild schemes and visionary ideas including reaching South Sea islands and Tahiti in particular with its associations with Cook.
    John early showed signs of an independent spirit and, it must be said, a rebellious, impulsive, and rather prickly nature. He described himself in his youth as impatient of control, thoughtless and headstrong but some very different aspects of his character have now emerged. He had an innate sympathy for the oppressed or disadvantaged, powers of endurance and bravery in conditions of great hardship and danger, dogged willingness to turn his hand to whatever, sometimes humble, work came his way in difficult times and not least an ability to describe in vivid language what he saw and whom he met on his travels.
    What happened to him, after describing his early life before he emigrated and after he first left Tasmania, is related in his manuscript which he called Journal of a Rambler. This he wrote up in Ceylon, about 1835, where his wanderings had finally brought him, the narration ending with his arrival there in 1834 eventually hoping to meet his army officer brother George. He was unaware that George had died in 1830.
    The story of his time in Ceylon and many previously unknown details of his life not covered in the Journal came to light through the researches of June Starke, manuscript specialist in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, and they form a vital part of her admirable edition of the Journal for the Oxford University Press published in 1986. (As New Zealand's primary research library Alexander Turnbull Library's collections comprise books, documents and pictorial material relating to New Zealand and the Pacific as well as an important collection of 17th and 18th century literature.)
    The emergence of the Journal after more than a hundred years of obscurity is due to the Reverend James Boultbee (1895 - 1987) a grandson of JB, to whom it had come amongst other family papers left by another Thomas Boultbee, a grandson of TPB. We are much indebted to June Starke for information regarding the history of the Journal. John sent it back to England, at some time later than 1844, to his brother Joseph Bage by then retired. Joseph Bage died in 1865 and, we think, must have already given it to TPB which is why it was passed on down the latter's line.
    James' transcription eventually led to the realization in New Zealand that the Journal fully supplied the previously unknown details of how the sealing trade off the west coast of New Zealand was actually carried out, also much valuable information on contemporary Maori life and personalities, sometimes illustrated by John's own sketches, and a basic Maori/English dictionary. Consequently it was of great historical interest.

    Following the death of James Boultbee it was decided by his family that it would be appropriate for the Journal to be given to New Zealand in perpetuity. It is now carefully preserved in the Manuscript Department of the Turnbull Library. It is written on rough paper bound in hand-stitched sailcloth and held together with a hand-twisted cord of twine.
    Here follows a résumé of some of the principal events in John's adult life.
    After, to him uncongenial, clerking jobs in Liverpool with a merchant and then his brother Thomas, in August 1816, he sailed in the brig Caroline as supercargo for Bahai, Brazil. Although he enjoyed his brief stay there, eventually he became homesick and by March, 1817, had returned home on H.M.S. Congo, being employed on the voyage as the Captain's Clerk.
    1818 saw him in Barbados employed on plantations but he was much affected by the harsh treatment of slave labour. After eight months he returned home and lived first with his brother Edwin on the latter's farm in Anglesey and then with his naval officer brother Joseph Bage and his mother.
    The emigration to Tasmania took place in 1823. John at first helped Edwin to farm but his own application for a land grant was unsuccessful. In financial straits, and perhaps driven on by his spirit of adventure, in August, 1824, he joined the Sally a sealing and trading schooner operating in the Bass Strait between the north coast of Tasmania and the mainland of Australia. The voyage was one of extreme hardship and to escape it, at his own request he was landed alone on Phillip Island. Here he was very lucky to survive, eventually being rescued by another sealing ship in January, 1825.
    After a brief stay with Edwin, now married to Mary Allen, his next employment was at Port Macquarie, the penal settlement on the coast north of Port Jackson (as Sydney was then called) as member of a boat's crew assisting the pilot.
    In March, 1826, he sailed from Port Jackson in the brig Elizabeth on a seal-hunting and trading expedition to the west coast of New Zealand. The normal method of sealing was to land a party of seamen, often for long periods, with small boats and a supply of food, the seals being shot and killed for their valuable fur. The ship would then go off trading or landing other seal parties elsewhere. If its return was delayed the sealers had to endure privation as their food ran out. There was always the possibility of attack by natives and John recounts a fierce battle with them when two of his party were killed. This confrontation was handed down in Maori oral tradition for more than a century.
    For the next two years John was sealing, interspersed with periods of living happily in friendly Maori settlements, protected by chiefs and recording the native way of life in great detail.
    At the beginning of 1828 he was back at Port Jackson, having in desperation with no money been a stowaway on the Samuel a sealing ship he had previously served in. After a short period sealing near Port Macquarie and what must have been the back-breaking job of ballasting ships, he was given a passage back to Hobart. He spent the next few months with Edwin and Mary at Clarence Plains leaving them in April 1829 to go whaling in the Derwent River.
    In September, 1829, he decided to try his luck at the struggling Swan River settlement on the west coast of Australia and shipped there from Hobart as a seaman on the Ephemina. He remained at Swan River until 1833 as coxswain on the Governor's boat, and subsequently had various shore jobs including building boats, selling vegetables, and acting as chainer for a surveyor.
    He finally reached Colombo, Ceylon, via Timor, the Celebes, Manila and Singapore, in May 1834, at first as a seaman and then paying for the later passages. In Ceylon he worked as Manager of a succession of coffee estates. An association with a Cingalese, Selo Hamy, resulted in the birth of a son in 1838 who was baptised Joseph Lane at St. Paul's Church, Colombo. From 1848, his last employment, presumably until his death in 1854, was as Road Officer on the Kandy Road, the main artery for the transport of coffee by bullock-cart, being responsible for the maintenance of the road. There can be no doubt that John would have been a sympathetic supervisor of the conscripted native labour force working on the road.