1788 Read online

  The Shortland family would become prominent in the early history of Australia. Two of Shortland’s sons also travelled with the First Fleet: 18-year-old John sailed as master’s mate on the flagship Sirius and 16-year-old Thomas George sailed as the second mate on the Alexander. Son John would stay on in the colony for several years after his father returned to England, before going back himself with Captain John Hunter in 1791. He returned in 1795 with the now governor Hunter and would later explore and give the latter’s name to the Hunter River, which is about a hundred and fifty kilometres north of Sydney.

  John Shortland senior was to command some of the transports of the First Fleet on their ill-fated return to England after unloading the settlers and their provisions in New South Wales. When he finally reached England, he was promoted to captain but never promoted again and retired as a naval officer at 57 years old at Whitby in Yorkshire.

  Having a navy agent on the First Fleet with overall responsibility for the transport of convicts was a new arrangement. Until the American War of Independence the transportation of convicts had been the total responsibility of the private shipping contractors. Shortly before the Admiralty had been ordered to arrange the ships of the First Fleet, two contractors, Turnbull and Macaulay, had put a proposal to the British Government that they manage the entire venture, but their offer was not accepted. The government felt that the establishment of a new colony at the other end of the earth should not be left in the hands of those whose only interest lay in getting their cargo to its destination and unloading it on arrival.

  Initially there were to be five ships for transporting the convicts: the Alexander, the Charlotte, the Scarborough, the Friendship and the Lady Penrhyn. Later it was realised that another ship was needed, and the Prince of Wales was added. The three ships commissioned to carry the required two years’ worth of supplies were the Golden Grove, the Fishburn and the Borrowdale.

  The largest of the transport ships in the fleet, the four-hundred-and-fifty-ton Alexander, measured a hundred and fourteen feet (thirty-five metres) long and thirty-one feet (nine and three-quarter metres) wide. According to the official navy report it was to leave Portsmouth carrying almost two hundred male convicts, thirty-seven marines and one wife of a marine, plus the ship’s crew.22 For a ship of this size, the crew would have numbered nearly a hundred, compared with that of the smallest ship, the Supply, which would have numbered only around thirty.

  The transport Scarborough was the next largest, at a hundred and eleven feet (thirty-four metres) long and thirty feet (nine metres) wide and weighing four hundred and eighteen tons. It was to carry two hundred and ten male convicts, thirty-four marines and the ship’s crew.

  The transport Charlotte was a hundred and five feet (thirty-two metres) long and a little over twenty-eight feet (eight and a half metres) wide. It was to carry eighty-eight male and twenty female convicts with two of their children, forty-four marines, six wives and a child, plus the ship’s crew.

  The transports Lady Penrhyn and the Prince of Wales were almost identical in size, at a hundred and three feet (thirty-one metres) long and a little over twenty-nine feet (nine metres) wide. Both ships carried women convicts. The Lady Penrhyn was to carry a hundred and two women convicts with five children, six marines and the ship’s crew. The Prince of Wales carried almost all of the families of the marines. In addition to the ship’s crew, it boarded thirty-one marines, sixteen wives and six children, a hundred women convicts and one of their children.

  The Friendship was the smallest of the transports, weighing only two hundred and seventy-eight tons. At barely seventy-five feet (twenty-three metres) long, it would carry forty-four marines, three of their wives and five children, in addition to its crew. It would also take eighty-eight convict men, twenty-four convict women and three of their children.

  The private supply ships the Fishburn and the Golden Grove were both a hundred and three feet (thirty-one metres) long and twenty-nine feet (nine metres) wide. The Fishburn also carried twenty-eight passengers in addition to its crew and the Golden Grove twenty-two passengers, including the Reverend Richard Johnson, his wife and their servant. The Borrowdale was seventy-five feet (twenty-three metres) long and carried twenty-four passengers and its crew.

  Ever mindful of money the Treasury was keen to make sure that the contracted ships were used for the transport of the First Fleet for as short a period as possible, so as to keep the hire costs to the government at a minimum. George Rose, the undersecretary of the Treasury, wrote to Phillip Stephens, the undersecretary of the Admiralty, to say they wanted the ships released from Botany Bay as soon as possible to carry out their tea run to China:

  I am commanded by their Lordships to desire that you will move the Lords of the Admiralty to direct the captain of the Kings ship … to take care that no unnecessary delay happens on the passage to Botany Bay, or on their departure from thence, and that he uses his best endeavours to enable the ships under his command to reach China by the 1st January, 1788.23

  The last months of 1786 saw the filling of a number of other key positions, some of which would be successful, others not. It was not difficult to attract competent officers to the project. Many saw these expeditions as an opportunity for career advancement and even fame. In the decades leading up to the colonisation of Australia, the navy had been involved in a number of non-military voyages of scientific discovery that had captured the public imagination and made their participants famous. Also the recruits for Botany Bay were well aware that a number of those who had been on the early expeditions had successfully published handsome illustrated journals of their travels, which had been snapped up by an enthusiastic public. Sure enough, a number of the officers with the First Fleet would hurry to publish their journals – some before they had themselves returned to England.

  Whether or not those on board the First Fleet ships expected fame, many became well-known figures and were to be instrumental, in one way or another, in the early days of the colony.

  Major Robert Ross was appointed as the commander of the marines. He was initially assigned to sail on the Sirius but later in the voyage transferred to the Scarborough for the rest of the journey. He would prove to be a constant problem for Phillip and for many of the others he dealt with in the new colony.

  Reverend Richard Johnson, sailing on the Golden Grove, would become the hardworking chaplain in the new settlement, having been given the role at the age of 34. Distressed by what he regarded as the depravity of the convicts, Johnson went to a lot of trouble to take with him plenty of material with which to help straighten their twisted souls. With the help of the Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge he loaded aboard the First Fleet four thousand two hundred books, including a hundred Bibles, a hundred Books of Common Prayer, four hundred testaments, five hundred psalters and two hundred Church catechisms. In addition he took a large number of pamphlets on moral guidance, including a hundred and ten copies of Exhortations to Chastity, a hundred copies of Dissuasions from Stealing, two hundred copies of Exercises Against Lying and fifty copies of Caution to Swearers. No doubt Johnson wanted the convicts to benefit from all this, but only a tiny proportion of the new settlers – mainly the officers – could actually read.

  Johnson belonged, of course, to the Church of England. Despite the fact that around three hundred of the convicts on the First Fleet were Catholics, no priest was planned for them. Thomas Walshe, a Catholic priest, wrote to Lord Sydney saying that the Catholic convicts had an ‘earnest desire some Catholic clergyman may go with them’, but despite saying he ‘would be so happy as to be permitted to go’ without pay or any support from the government, the offer was not accepted.24

  Phillip’s two most valued officers, Captain John Hunter and Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, were to prove loyal supporters of their chief and would both eventually become governor of the colony.

  David Collins, sailing on the Sirius, had been appointed the colony’s judge advocate. He would have the major resp
onsibility of administering justice in the new colony and would become a valuable supporter of Phillip. Collins would also keep one of the most extensive journals of the settlers, covering the many years he spent in Britain’s new colony.

  John White was 30 years old when he accepted the appointment as chief surgeon with the First Fleet, having been in the navy for ten years and served as a surgeon on ships in the West Indies and India. As the senior medical officer he would have a great deal to do with the remarkably good health record of the convicts on the voyage to New South Wales. In the new colony he worked in the most difficult circumstances, operating in a small tent hospital and treating outbreaks of scurvy, smallpox and the hundreds of diseased and dying convicts who arrived on the ill-fated Second and Third Fleets. He returned to England after five years, pleading ill health, and later resigned rather than go back to New South Wales.

  A number of other surgeons were appointed under John White. They were spread around the transports for the voyage out. The job of a surgeon in the convict service was far from attractive. It was demanding, the conditions appalling and the pay poor. With more appealing opportunities elsewhere the general standard of surgeons on convict ships was low. The work generally attracted novices fresh from the lecture room, the mediocre or the ‘embittered failures’.25

  William Redfern, who later ran the Colonial Medical Establishment, said that many of the surgeons were ‘ill qualified to take charge of two hundred to three hundred men about to take a long voyage through various climates and under particularly distressing circumstances’ and that many were all too ‘devoted to inebriety’.26

  Among the surgeons was William Balmain, who sailed on the Alexander and would later in Sydney fight a duel with his boss, John White. The surgeon appointed to the women’s convict ship the Lady Penrhyn was John Turnpenny Altree, who took ill and was taken off the ship in Tenerife. He was replaced by Arthur Bowes Smyth, who would be another to keep a journal covering the voyage and his time in New South Wales.

  Along with the appointment of personnel, during these last months of preparation the exact amount of food to be consumed on the voyage was calculated. The marines were to have the same rations as the seamen: seven pounds of bread a week, four pounds of beef, two pounds of pork, two pints of peas, three pints of oatmeal, six ounces of butter, three-quarters of a pound of cheese, half a pint of vinegar and three and a half pints of rum.27 The convicts were to be given about two-thirds those quantities and were denied grog, except when it was prescribed by the surgeon for the sick.

  Phillip was involved with almost every detail of the fleet’s planning. With only one month to pass before its departure, he wrote to Undersecretary Nepean asking about the number of caps for the convicts, supplies for the wives of marines, whether the judge advocate could bring along his servant and whether enough port wine could be loaded for the officers.28

  The navy agreed that some of the marines sent out to maintain order and defend the colony could take their wives and children but stipulated that the number of wives be limited to forty, so as to minimise the need for provisions on the voyage out and in the new settlement:

  As it is usual when any regiments are sent upon service to his Majesty’s colonies or plantations to allow them to take with them a certain number of women, we beg leave to propose that the wives of the marines going to Botany Bay, not exceeding ten to each company, which will not in the whole amount to more than forty women, may be allowed to embark with them.29

  There would be two hundred and forty-seven marines and marine officers leaving Portsmouth, and many were to feel aggrieved at having to leave their families behind.

  Among the other key appointments to the venture was Baron Augustus Theodore Henry Alt, who would be the colony’s surveyor-general. At 56 years of age Alt may have been the oldest official to sail with the First Fleet. He was born in London, the son of Heinrich Alt, a German, and his English wife, Jeanetta. He began service in the British army as a 23-year-old ensign in 1755 and served in France and Germany, fighting in the siege of Gibraltar in 1779. Alt would be one of a number of officers to marry a convict and have children with her. In Sydney he would marry Ann George, a ‘shoe binder’. She had been convicted and sentenced to seven years’ transportation as a 22-year-old in the Old Bailey in 1785 for stealing three shillings from a man whom her accomplice, Eleanor McCabe, had picked up in a pub. Henry Alt and Ann George would have two children together: Lucy was born in 1790 and a son, Henry George, was born in 1799. Ann died in 1814 in Parramatta, west of Sydney, and her husband died the following February.

  The planning of the First Fleet was, for its time, a colossal undertaking that involved the most impressive devotion to detail down to the required number of fish hooks, nails and door hinges that would be loaded on the ships and taken to help build the New South Wales settlement. Little attention, however, appears to have been given to the suitability of the convicts selected for the voyage. Many were too old or too ill, and a number of them would die while they were locked on the transports at Portsmouth waiting for the fleet to sail. It seemed that the welfare of convicts was a matter of the lowest priority.

  5

  THE CONVICTS

  COURT TO PRISONER: How old are you?

  PRISONER: Going on nine.

  COURT: What business were you bred up in?

  PRISONER: None, sometimes chimney sweeps.

  COURT: Have you any father and mother?

  PRISONER: Dead.

  COURT: How long ago?

  PRISONER: I don’t know.

  The convicts loaded onto the transports of the First Fleet were not chosen with any regard for their fitness for the long voyage or for their ability to contribute to the building of a new colony once they reached Botany Bay. Remarkably, it also appears that no consideration was given to how much of their sentences the convicts had left to serve when they were put on the fleet. More than forty per cent had been convicted either in 1784 or before,1 and since most were committed to seven years’ transportation, several hundred would have served more than half of their sentences when they arrived in New South Wales in 1788. This was to prove a major headache for Governor Arthur Phillip, who sailed with no convict records and had no way of confirming whether prisoners who claimed they had completed their sentences were telling the truth.

  Many had been condemned to be hanged for stealing food or items of clothing, but their death sentences were commuted to transportation. Only those too frail to walk were excluded from consideration, and fourteen pregnant women convicts were boarded who would give birth during the voyage. Many were old or ill when delivered from the hulks and prisons to the transports, and a number were to die before the fleet left Portsmouth.

  Almost sixty per cent of the First Fleet’s convicts had been sentenced for stealing food or other goods of relatively low value. Thirteen per cent were guilty of burglary or breaking and entering, and a further fifteen per cent had been convicted of highway robbery, robbery with violence or grand larceny. The remainder were found guilty of living off fencing, swindling, forgery or some other offence.2

  A large number of the convicts had been destined for transportation to America or Africa and had served some years of their sentence in English prisons or on prison hulks before being sent to Botany Bay. For example, 43-year-old Thomas Eccles had been sentenced in Guildford in Surrey in March 1782 to be hanged for stealing bacon and bread but ‘reprieved for service in Africa for life’.3 Eccles was in prison for five years before being transported to Botany Bay on the Scarborough.

  Twenty-one-year-old Mary Braund (who would later become better known as Mary Bryant when she escaped from New South Wales) had been found guilty of assaulting and robbing Agnes Lakeman of a silk bonnet and other goods. In 1786 in the Exeter court in Devon she was condemned ‘To be hanged. Reprieved. Transported seven years.’4 She sailed on the Charlotte to Botany Bay.

  Twenty-two-year-old Edward Pugh was convicted in 1784 in the Gloucester court for stealing a gre
at-coat and ‘Ordered to be transported to America for seven years.’5 He sailed to Botany Bay on the Friendship.

  A captain of the marines on the First Fleet, Watkin Tench, who was also responsible for censoring the convicts’ letters to their families while the fleet was waiting to sail from Portsmouth, said that fear among the convicts was a constant theme:

  The number and content of [the letters] varied according to the disposition of the writers but whose constant language was an apprehension of the impracticality of returning home, the dread of the sickly passage and the fearful prospect of a distant and barbarous country.6

  A number of the convicts, such as Thomas Limpus, had already been sent in chains to Africa and America before being sent aboard the First Fleet. On 8 October 1782, almost five years before the First Fleet sailed, 15-year-old Limpus had been sentenced in Westminster Court to seven years’ transportation ‘to some of his Majesty’s plantations in Africa’ for stealing a ‘cambrick handkerchief valued at 10 shillings’.7

  Limpus had been ‘chained two and two together’ with about forty other prisoners below the decks of the slave trader Den Keyser and sent to St Louis, in current-day Senegal, on the west African coast. With him were two other prisoners who would also find themselves on the First Fleet, John Ruglass and Samuel Woodham.

  Ruglass and Woodham had been originally convicted together at the Old Bailey in 1781 for highway robbery, having held up, with three others, William Wilson and stolen from him a silver shirt buckle, a handkerchief and some money, with a total value of one pound and four shillings.

  All three – Limpus, Ruglass and Woodham – would manage to get back to England. Limpus was later to tell the Old Bailey that, on arrival in Africa, he and other convicts were left to survive as best they could on an island off the coast. Limpus said that they were given no provisions and that, after getting work with the local governor, he had managed to find his way onto a ship working his passage back to England: