Like many other officers on half-pay, Friend was obliged to seek his living in the colonies to support his wife and growing family in respectable circumstances.
He presented his collection of specimens of flora and fauna from the Australian continent at the Zoological Society in England during 1831.
Friend was involved in controversy relating to his appointment as Port Officer, and eventually won a libel action.
Ill health and increasing blindness forced him to resign in 1852, and he and his second wife returned to England, where he died at Clevedon, Somerset, in October 1871.
During his last years he continued his interest in nautical science, inventing an indicator compass and the pelorus for measuring the local magnetism in iron ships.