James Thomas Manton (c. 1812 – 6 June 1899) was a surveyor and engineer in the young colony of South Australia and a pioneer of the Northern Territory.
He had letters of introduction from Earl Grey, and was immediately put in charge of erection of the Cape Willoughby Lighthouse,[1] South Australia's first, and which still stands.
In 1864 he was selected by the government to be second-in-charge to B. T. Finniss, who led a party of 40 by the barque Henry Ellis to Adam Bay in the Northern Territory, where a settlement was to be founded at Escape Cliffs.
They investigated the East and South Alligator rivers without finding anything useful, then turned westward, where they were impressed with the harbour at Port Darwin, and found that Point Emery had all the practical requisites for a settlement: good water could be had by sinking wells, and there was a large area of tableland with fine sea views.
[6] The settlement at Escape Cliffs was abandoned and all remaining personnel sailed away aboard the steamer Eagle, Captain Hill, on 11 January 1867, transshipped to the Rangatira in Sydney, and arrived in Adelaide on 4 February 1867.