On return to the West Indies, Stirling made two surveys of the Venezuelan coast and reported on the strengths, attitudes and dispositions of the Spanish government and various revolutionary factions, later playing a role in the British negotiations with these groups.

In his second command, HMS Success, he carried supplies and coinage to Australia, but with a covert mission to assess other nations' interest in the region and explore opportunities for British settlements.

He formally founded the city of Perth and the port of Fremantle and oversaw the development of the surrounding area and on 4 March 1831 he was confirmed as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the new territory, Western Australia, in which post he remained until in 1838 he resumed his naval career.

In October 1834 Stirling personally led a group of twenty-five police, soldiers and settlers in a punitive expedition against approximately seventy Bindjareb men, women and children camped on the Murray River partly in retaliation for several murders and thefts.

In 1847, he was given command of the 120-gun first rate ship of the line HMS Howe and his first commission was to conduct Her Majesty, the Dowager Queen Adelaide on trips to Lisbon and Madeira and then back to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

His education at Westminster School[8] was interleaved with periods of training on board British warships, and on 14 January 1804, at the age of 12, he entered the navy as a First-Class Volunteer,[9] embarking on the storeship HMS Camel for the West Indies.

[11] In August 1807 the Stirlings crossed the South Atlantic for a stay of five months at the Cape of Good Hope and at the end of February 1808 Diadem returned to England via a short period in Rio de Janeiro.

[14] After that, during most of 1814, Brazen patrolled the Irish Sea and the Hebrides in search of French or American ships until, at the end of the year, Stirling received orders to return to the West Indies, to the Windward Islands Station at Barbados, where Admiral Duckworth was now Commander-in-Chief.

[16] Soon after that he was given a mission to carry the news of the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812, to the British troops under the command of General John Lambert, near New Orleans, and to assist in their return to England.

[17] The Treaty of Paris, signed by France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia on 20 Nov 1815, ended the Napoleonic Wars and a large fleet was no longer needed.

From Güiria in the Paria Peninsula he sailed west to Caracas and the port of La Guaira and returned eastward by an inland route, in order to study the conditions in the interior of the country.

However, Admiral Harvey had sent the Lords of the Admiralty a letter strongly commending "the zeal and alacrity of this intelligent and excellent officer", which may have influenced their decision to promote him to Post Captain on 7 December 1818.

During the next eighteen months Stirling put forward several ideas to the Admiralty, including a means of assessing compass declinations at sea[28] and a proposal for improving stowage in warships.

He had returned from the grand tour short of funds, his father had died in 1823, the family businesses were not prospering and he himself had to make payments to the court in connection with the Hércules case.

Success sailed on 9 July 1826, carrying cases of coins and a distinguished passenger, Admiral Sir James Saumarez, Knight Companion of the Bath, a hero of the Napoleonic Wars.

One hundred and thirty years later, the British ship Success arrived off the west coast of Australia on 5 March 1827 and anchored near the north east corner of Rottnest Island.

On 21 March Success weighed anchor and three days later arrived at Geographe Bay, in order to carry out Governor Darling's instructions to explore and report on the region.

Success then sailed to King George Sound, to pick up Major Edmund Lockyer and unload provisions for the settlement there,[45] after which the ship returned to New South Wales, anchoring off Sydney Heads on 16 April.

Success arrived at Fort Dundas on Melville Island on 25 July and set sail again four days later for Madras, and then to Penang, to report to Admiral Gage, Commander of the Eastern Station.

He emphasised the defensive prospects of Mount Eliza, the large hill on which Kings Park is now situated, "as it is near the narrows of the Swan River, which would make defending the colony from gunships easy, with just a few cannons."

On 21 August 1828, Stirling and his friend the colonial expert Thomas Moody wrote to Under-Secretary Robert Hay to offer to form an association of private capitalists to using their own money settle Australia in fulfilment of the "principles" of William Penn's settlement of Pennsylvania.

[51] Parliament initially rejected the proposal of Stirling and Moody, but rumours of a new French interest in the region provoked Sir George Murray,[52] on 5 November, to request that the Admiralty send a ship-of-war "to proceed to the Western Coast of New Holland and take possession of the whole territory in His Majesty's name.

After hectic preparations, on 6 February 1829 these pioneers, with their assistants, families, servants and livestock, departed Plymouth in Parmelia under Captain J H Luscombe out of Spithead in company with Sulphur, carrying 100 men of the 63rd Regiment of Foot, under the command of Major Frederick Irwin, and three years' of army stores, 10,000 bricks and £1,000 to meet all expenses of government.

In October 1834 Stirling led a detachment of 25 armed troopers and settlers including Septimus Roe and Thomas Peel that attacked an encampment of 60-80 Pindjarep Aboriginal people.

[57][58][5] Stirling remained entirely unsympathetic to the needs of Aboriginal people in Western Australia, and never recognised their prior ownership of the land despite the fact that the Buxton Committee of the British House of Commons informed him that this was a mistake for which the new colony would suffer.

Portugal had been in turmoil for several years and the British Admiralty had received intelligence that Lisbon was threatened by a 5,000 strong revolutionary army and the Portuguese Government was preparing for conflict.

[60] This threat also failed to materialise and after three months at Piraeus in Greece Indus sailed to Naples to take part in the farewell celebrations sending the Princess Teresa Cristina on her way to marry the Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.

[63] In November 1854, with Hong Kong Governor John Bowring, he led a fleet up the Pearl River to Canton to support the Viceroy of Liangguang (modern day Guangdong and Guangxi) Ye Mingchen and his forces besieged by the Tiandihui army.

[64] In 1856 he was recalled because he had failed in the primary naval duty of finding and destroying the Russian squadron - partly, perhaps, because of his preoccupation with the self-imposed task of negotiating with JapanStirling was promoted vice admiral in August 1857.

He told everyone what he was going to do, went down there, did it and reported on it.In 2020 a statue of Stirling on Hay Street in Perth's central business district was defaced amid Black Lives Matter protests.