Australian Dictionary of Biography

George Bouchier Worgan (1757-1838), surgeon, was christened on 3 May 1757 at St Andrew's, Holborn, London, the second son and third child of John Worgan (1724-1790), a doctor of music, and his wife Sarah, née Maclean. At 18 he entered the navy, qualified as surgeon's second mate in February 1778 and was gazetted naval surgeon in March 1780. He served for two years in the Pilote and in November 1786 joined the Sirius, sailing in her next year in the First Fleet to New South Wales and taking with him a piano. In addition to his medical duties he joined several expeditions to such places as Hawkesbury River and Broken Bay. On one excursion from Prospect Hill the upper Nepean was named Worgan River after him. He visited the Cape of Good Hope in the Sirius in 1788-89, and then spent a year on Norfolk Island after she was wrecked there, before he returned to England in the Waaksamheyd in 1791, leaving his piano with Mrs Elizabeth Macarthur. He continued to serve as surgeon's mate and surgeon until about 1800 when he was judged unfit for service and retired on half-pay. He took up farming with little success, and died of apoplexy at Liskeard on 4 March 1838.