Colonel William Light (1786 – 1839) was born to Francis Light (an Englishman who established Penang) and a mixed-race mother named Martina. William believed his mother to be a Princess of Kedah from northern Malaysia.

William was educated in England but due to his mixed-race origins he was not allowed to join the East India Company.

Instead, Light joined the British army, rising to the rank of colonel. He fought under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War and is said to have been one of the Iron Duke’s favourite officers.

He was badly wounded at the Battle of Corunna, in Spain in 1809.

In 1823, Light returned to Spain to fight with the “Liberales” in their struggle against King Ferdinand VII. He initially volunteered as a private in a Spanish militia but rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

Light was also an artist of some talent who hung out in artistic and literary circles. Much of his work was destroyed in a fire, but here is a self-portrait that showcases his talent.

This is one of his watercolours showing a view of the South Australian Company’s fishing station at Cape Rosetta, Encounter Bay (1837).

He was the first Surveyor-General of the new British Province of South Australia and is remembered for choosing the site of the colony’s capital, Adelaide. As its first surveyor, he designed the layout of its streets, squares, gardens, and the figure-eight Adelaide Park Lands.  According to the historian Jan Morris, he designed one of the most elegant colonial cities in the British Empire. 

Sadly, Morris adds, ‘poor Light … came to a sad end. He resigned his job after a series of differences with his superiors, and died in 1839, aged 54, penniless and tubercular, in a cottage of mud and reed near his city site, nursed by his English mistress Maria.’