1788 Read online

  Banks was the only son of a wealthy landowner and was to maintain a lifelong interest in the family estates at Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire. Both his father and his grandfather had been members of parliament. He had first travelled as a botanist to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1766 and was soon after elected as a member of the Royal Society.

  When he had boarded Cook’s Endeavour as a ‘gentleman of fortune’, he had taken aboard his own suite of eight staff, which included the noted naturalist Solander and two servants. Of Banks’ party, only Banks, Solander and two tenants from his family estates survived the journey.

  Banks became president of the Royal Society at the relatively young age of 35 and was heavily involved in the development of Kew Gardens. He became a trustee of the British Museum, a member of the Society of Antiquities and a member of many London clubs, including the Society of Dilettanti. In his later years he became a well-known spectacle in London, where he lived in New Burlington Street, overweight and crippled with gout, presiding over the Royal Society in a wheeled chair in full court dress, wearing the Order of the Bath.

  Banks’ glowing report to the committee is not only at odds with Cook’s assessment but also strangely at odds with his own far less enthusiastic journal entries of the time. The Endeavour arrived in Botany Bay on 29 April 1770 and left on 6 May. Banks went ashore on five of those days with his colleague Solander and wrote a brief account in his daily journal. On the second day he was ashore, Banks wrote that the ‘soil wherever we saw it consisted of either swamps or light sandy soil on which grew very few species of trees’. Four days later, on 4 May, he ventured a little further inland,

  where we went a good way into the country which in this place is very sandy and resembles something our Moors in England, as no trees grow upon it but every thing is covered with a thin brush of plants about as high as the knees.6

  It is perhaps worth noting that Banks stood to gain from any settlement on the east coast of Australia. He had collected many botanical species when he had visited Botany Bay on the Endeavour and would benefit from any ships returning with more specimens. His influence would later result in British ships being modified to have sheds installed on their decks for the storage of botanical samples.7

  Despite the committee’s deliberations and Banks’ recommendations, the decision on where to send the surplus convicts was deferred for many years. It seems that some of the British ruling elite were still hopeful that the American insurrection could be put down and the transport of convicts to the American colonies resumed. As late as 1783, before the formal surrender of the colonies, King George III was adamant that he would make no concessions to the Americans and remained of the view that ‘unworthy’ convicts would still be sent there: ‘The Americans cannot expect nor ever will receive any favour from me, but permitting them to obtain men unworthy to remain in this island I shall certainly consent to.’8

  That year the Botany Bay option was given further support by an American named James Matra, who had sailed with Banks and Cook on the voyage of 1768–71 and had consequently been to New South Wales. (New South Wales was given its name by Captain Cook. He never explained why he used the name in the journal he wrote on his way home in 1770, but it is believed that the land simply reminded him of South Wales.) On the voyage Matra had been a lowly seaman, and the only reference to him in Cook’s log is a poor one, following Matra’s involvement in a violent and drunken brawl.

  Matra was an Italian American who had returned to England in 1781 from New York and wanted Britain to help those Americans who had remained loyal to the empire during the American War of Independence. In 1783 Matra submitted to the British Government ‘A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in NSW to Atone for the Loss of the American Colonies’ and was able to meet and discuss the idea with a number of influential people, including Joseph Banks. Matra wrote of New South Wales:

  This country may afford an asylum to those unfortunate American loyalists to whom Great Britain is bound by every tie of honour and gratitude to protect and support, where they may repair their broken fortunes, and again enjoy their former domestic felicity.9

  Even though the proposal to assist American loyalists was never actually embraced, many of the details of Matra’s proposal were incorporated in the later British convict-settlement plan. Matra had suggested, for instance, that the settlement fleet stop at Cape Town to take on board plants and animals for the new colony – a stopover that the First Fleet did indeed make.

  A striking feature of the Matra proposal that was also included in the official British plan for the convict colony was the suggestion that, to address the shortage of women, the settlers could send a ship across to nearby Pacific islands and simply take the women:

  When the landing is effected … the … ship may, if thought proper be dispatched to New Caledonia, Otahite, and other neighbouring islands to procure a few families there and as many women as may serve for the men left behind.10

  Matra had managed to successfully lobby the support of Banks – whose own suggestions would also make it into the final plans – and included in his proposal the endorsement that ‘Sir Joseph Banks highly approves of the settlement and is very ready to give his opinion of it; either to his Majesty’s Ministry or others, whenever they may please require it’.11

  After circulating his plan, Matra was able to gain an audience with the home secretary, Lord Sydney, who was to become a significant figure in the First Fleet story. Lord Sydney told Matra that the government was looking for a solution to the convict problem, so Matra amended his plan for an American colony to include convicts:

  When I conversed with Lord Sydney on this subject it was observed that New South Wales would be a very proper region for the reception of criminals condemned to transportation. I believe that it will be found that in this idea good policy and humanity are united.12

  It is not clear whether Matra himself ever intended to be part of the new colony, but he was never to return to New South Wales. In 1786, while the First Fleet was being prepared, he managed to secure a minor British diplomatic posting to Morocco, where he would spend the rest of his life. He died in Tangier in 1806, aged 60.

  Meanwhile the issue dragged on, with no decision from the government and the convict population still growing. In 1784 the House of Commons debated and passed a Bill titled An Act for the Effectual Transportation of Felons and Other Offenders, which stipulated the reintroduction of transportation but again did not mention any sites.

  On 5 March 1785 a petition from the high sheriff and grand jury of the county of Wiltshire to the government typified the widespread concern about the overcrowded prisons and hulks:

  To his Majesties Secretaries of State.

  The country is overburdened with such a number of transports [hulks] which have been increasing for the last two assizes and is continuing to increase by the addition of many more sentenced to the same punishment we apprehend from the physicians employed for the purpose of inspecting the state of the gaols by the justices of the said county that there is a great danger of an epidemical distemper being the consequence of the close confinement of so many prisoners. We therefore humbly entreat that the [prisoners] may be removed from the said gaol with the utmost expedition.13

  In April 1785 an increasingly frustrated House of Commons set up yet another committee to look at how its transportation Bill of the previous year might be given effect.14 The committee heard how the hulks were failing to help address the convict problem and how being imprisoned on a hulk was more, rather than less, likely than standard imprisonment to corrupt newcomers and commit them to a life of crime. The usual destinations for transportation were again presented, including Africa, but these were rejected, largely because of evidence that the environments were too hostile.

  Earlier in 1785 Attorney-General R. P. Auden had sent to his colleague Lord Sydney a detailed proposal for the transportation of convicts to Botany Bay. He had received the proposal from Sir George Young, an admiral in the
navy, and added his own highly qualified recommendation:

  I profess myself totally ignorant of the probability of the success of such a scheme, but it appears to me, upon a cursory view of the subject, to be the most likely method of effectively disposing of convicts, the number of which requires the immediate interference of the government.15

  It seemed that Auden wanted the problem solved in whichever manner was the quickest.

  Young’s plan emphasised the potential benefits of increased trade between countries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and Britain, which at that time was consciously seeking to expand its empire in the face of its recent losses:

  Botany Bay, or its vicinity … with a fair open navigation … there is no doubt but that a lucrative trade would soon be opened … I think … that a territory so happily situated must be superior to all others for establishing a very extensive commerce, and of consequence greatly increase our shipping and number of seamen.16

  The plan also took up the Matra idea of helping the displaced American loyalists to find a new place to live and argued it would be at less cost than any other option:

  The American Loyalists would here find a fertile, healthy soil, far preferable to their own, and well worthy of their industry, where with a very small part of the expense the crown must necessarily be at for their support, they may be established now comfortably and with a greater prospect of success than in any other place hitherto pointed out for them.

  It was Sir George Young who first excited the British with the prospect of opening a new colony for the purpose of growing New Zealand flax, which was of critical strategic importance for making canvas and rope for the British navy. Captain Cook had noted the value of the flax during his explorations to the south seas some fifteen years earlier, and Joseph Banks had brought back some samples to England from the voyage. Sir George Young believed it would be superior to what the British were using:

  The New Zealand flax-plant may be cultivated in every part, and in any quantity, as our demands may require. Its uses are more extensive than any vegetable hitherto known, for in its gross state it far exceeds anything of the kind for cordage and canvas, and may be obtained at a much cheaper rate than those material we at present get from Russia.

  In these early years of the Industrial Revolution Young also offered the tantalising prospect that the new colony might provide the British Empire with rich deposits of valuable minerals. His plan, too, suggested that transportation to Botany Bay would cost less than maintaining prison hulks in England and that Britain would be permanently rid of the convicts because the distance and expense made their return ‘the most distant probability’:

  The very heavy expense the Government is annually put to for transporting and otherwise punishing the felons, together with the facility of their return, are evils long and much lamented. Here is an asylum open that will considerably reduce the first, and forever prevent the latter.17

  By the year of Young’s proposal, 1785, there was a public clamouring for a decision on what to do with the rising number of convicts, and there were fifty-six separate requests and petitions from sheriffs, mayors, judges, town clerks and gaolers calling for their removal.

  In March 1786 the country was shaken when prisoners on a hulk in Plymouth rioted and forty-four were shot, eight of them fatally. At the same time the Lord Mayor of London, Fraser, appealed to the government for something to be done about the overcrowded hulks.18

  For months the government procrastinated while ‘parliament, press, pamphlet and pulpit’19 were all calling for something to be done about the overcrowded prisons. Rumours began circulating that Botany Bay would emerge as the chosen solution.

  In June the Cabinet considered a number of specific sites for the resumption of transportation in Canada, the West Indies and Africa, but again no decision was made. Finally, two months later, in August 1786, Lord Sydney advised the lords of the Treasury of the government’s decision.20

  Lord Sydney, whose real name was Thomas Townshend, was the home secretary but also the colonial secretary in the government of William Pitt the Younger for six years from 1783 to 1789. He was ultimately responsible for the decision to establish a convict colony in Australia and for the appointment of Arthur Phillip to lead the expedition. Sydney was of aristocratic birth, the Townshend family estate being Frognal House in Sidcup, Kent. He began his political career in the House of Commons and later moved to the House of Lords, before becoming a viscount. There is considerable argument about Sydney, who has been variously described as an enlightened and progressive politician and a person who ‘scarcely rose above mediocrity’.21

  In his letter to the Treasury outlining the decision, the main reasons he gave were the overcrowded prisons and the fear of society being doubly threatened by escaped convicts and the outbreak of disease. There was no mention of creating a new colony that would benefit from British trade or provide a refuge for American loyalists:

  The several gaols and places for the confinement of felons in this kingdom being in so crowded a state that the greatest danger is to be apprehended, not only from their escape, but for infectious distempers, which may hourly be expected to break out among them, his Majesty, desirous of preventing by every possible means the ill consequences which might happen from either of these causes, has been pleased to signify to me his royal commands that measures should immediately be pursued for sending out of this kingdom such of the convicts as are under sentence or order of transportation … His Majesty has thought it advisable to fix upon Botany Bay.22

  In the end Botany Bay was a last resort, chosen because, after years of deliberation and inquiry, the government could come up with no better option.

  Sydney’s letter went on to instruct the Treasury ‘to take such measures’ to provide the necessary shipping to transport seven hundred and fifty convicts, ‘together with such provisions to last two years’.23 The transport fleet would take a route that would include stopping at the Cape Verde Islands and the Cape of Good Hope, where it would be authorised to pick up cattle and other livestock for the convict settlement in New Holland. The expedition was to have all the necessary officers and assistants and would be accompanied by three companies of marines, who would stay in Botany Bay ‘so long as it is found necessary’.

  The decision was officially announced to the House of Commons in the king’s Speech from the Throne in January 1787:

  A plan has been formed, by my direction, for the transporting a number of convicts, in order to remove any inconvenience which arose from the crowded state of the gaols in the different parts of the kingdom and you will I doubt not, take such further measures as may be necessary for this purpose.24

  If Lord Sydney was responsible for policy, it was his deputy, Evan Nepean, who was to be responsible for the detailed implementation of the plan. Nepean was a 33-year-old undersecretary when the decision was made. He headed a branch of the Home Office that administered the British overseas colonies, and working on the details of the First Fleet was his first major appointment.

  Nepean came from Saltash in Cornwall. He began his naval career working as a purser on a number of British ships along the American coast during the American War of Independence. In 1782 he became secretary to Lord Shuldham, a post-admiral in Plymouth, before being promoted a year later to work in London as Lord Sydney’s undersecretary.

  He was regarded as an excellent administrator and later became chief secretary for Ireland, a lord of the Admiralty and a member of parliament. He was made a baronet in 1802 and admitted to the Privy Council in 1804, was governor of Bombay from 1812 to 1819, and died in Dorset in 1822 after a short retirement. Arthur Phillip was later to name Nepean River, about fifty kilometres west of Sydney, in his honour.

  At the time of the Botany Bay decision there was little rivalry between the European trading interests in the south Pacific, as the region had small populations and few exploitable natural resources. The British East India Company, which by now was emerging as the dominant
trading influence in the Indian Ocean and north of Australia, expressed no interest in the venture, and commercial shippers, who may have been interested in the business of transportation, were more heavily involved in the much bigger slave trade.

  Nor was there much reaction from the other European powers to the British decision, which was first reported in the British newspapers from September 1786. There was no hint that the other colonising powers of France, Spain, Holland and Portugal wanted to mount any counter initiative.

  Britian’s most obvious rival, France, showed little interest in the region until Napoleon sent Nicolas-Thomas Baudin in 1800 to explore New Holland and Tasmania – to which the British responded by establishing outposts at Fremantle and Perth on the west coast of Australia.

  It has been argued that Britain had a strategic interest in controlling Australian waters, if not the land, but even this was subordinate to the imperative of doing something about the convict problem.

  The Times came out in favour of the decision, arguing – erroneously as it turned out – that transportation was to cost less than the other schemes to deal with the growing number of convicts:

  There is one circumstance to be alleged in favour of the Botany Bay scheme in which it surpasses every other mode for the punishment of felons which has hitherto been carried into execution. In every former scheme, whether of confinement and hard labour, ballast heaving on the Thames etc., etc., there was a constant and growing expense on the public, which could not be reduced so long as the punishment continued. In the present instant the consequence is quite reversed for after the second year it is to be presumed that the convicts will be in the habit of providing for themselves and the expense to the public will be extremely trifling.25