by Peter Grose
The authorities had one more weapon: exile. This came to be known as ‘transportation’, and it was regarded as the second most severe punishment after hanging. From around 1610 onwards, a criminal could be spared execution and instead sentenced to a period of transportation to a distant colony, usually for a multiple of seven years. So sentences of transportation for seven or fourteen years, or for life, became part of the process of deterring and isolating criminals. In 1717 the British parliament passed the Transportation Act. Its fuller title was An Act for the further preventing Robbery, Burglary, and other Felonies, and for the more effectual Transportation of Felons, and unlawful Exporters of Wool; and for declaring the Law upon some Points relating to Pirates. There was an additional sting: escaping and returning to Britain before completing the term of exile was a capital offence. So criminals sentenced to transportation might have temporarily escaped the noose, but the shadow of the hangman still loomed over them.
At first, English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh convicts sentenced to transportation were sent mostly to the American colonies, usually to Virginia and Maryland, but smaller numbers also went to Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, even genteel New England. There is some dispute over the numbers, but the generally accepted figure is 52,000 criminals transported to the American colonies between 1610 and 1776. Some sources put the number as high as 120,000, but the higher figure probably includes indentured labourers9 as well as convicts.
It is worth examining the strong connection between the practice of transportation and the widespread practice of slavery. The slave trade, sadly, continues to this day. However, it was beginning to go out of favour in Europe and its colonies by the middle of the eighteenth century. Despite this, it was not until the early nineteenth century—25 March 1807, to be precise—that the British parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. And it was not until 1 August 1834 that the stronger Slavery Abolition Act came into force, making slave trading a criminal offence in Britain and its colonies. Slavery flourished alongside transportation to the American colonies. It is no coincidence that the largest group of the transported convicts—some 22,000 of them—ended up in the plantation colonies of Virginia and Maryland, where slaves were crucial to the local economy.
The British government even saw a glorious opportunity to solve the problem of criminality while making a modest profit. They took to ‘selling’ convicts by the boatload. Shipowners, captains and even shipbrokers paid as much as £500 for the privilege of taking a load of prisoners across the Atlantic. The captain had to enter into a bond with the British government, undertaking to ensure that the criminals he transported got to their destination to serve their sentence. On arrival, the convicts’ new owner simply sold his ‘passengers’ as indentured labourers to the highest bidder. Women were sold as domestic servants. Lest anyone should think this was government-sponsored slavery, pure and simple, the British government wrapped up the purchase price of the convicts as reimbursement on behalf of the prisoners for gaol fees, clerks’ fees, fees for the granting of a pardon (such as the commuting of a death sentence) and a whole lot of other bureaucratic flannel for what was in reality a straightforward commercial transaction.
For the colonists, transported criminals had one big advantage over regular slaves: they were cheap. A male slave might cost as much as £44. An unskilled male convict cost about £13, while women convicts were regularly sold for £7 to £14. Prices were higher for semi-skilled male convicts (around £14), and skilled males could fetch as much as £25. This was still cheaper than an unskilled slave, who would fetch about £35.10 Furthermore, a slave was for life, whereas a transported convict might expect to walk free in as little as seven years. This largely accounted for the convicts’ lower prices. The convicts worked alongside the slaves, carrying out the same tasks.
The convicts were often transported in former slave ships. The voyage lasted about six weeks and was an unmitigated horror story. Some captains set out to maximise their profits by failing to feed or water their charges. This turned out to be a short-term view: the convicts fetched a better price if they arrived in good condition. A sentence of transportation meant that the government confiscated not only the prisoner’s freedom but also his or her work capacity, which could be sold for profit. It was perfect: no need to go to the expense of staffing a hulk or prison, and no need to pay for the prisoner’s upkeep. Best of all, there would be a gigantic wall of impassable ocean between the prisoner and home, so he or she posed no threat to the decent and God-fearing folk who remained behind.
The British government’s win–win situation came to a jarring halt in 1776, when the American colonies rebelled and threw the British out. The newly independent Americans had never liked the idea of importing droves of British criminals into their neighbourhoods, and they made it very clear that they had no intention of accepting any more. So what was England to do? Whatever it was, it had to be done soon, or the prisons would overflow. For a while criminals were sent to ‘hulks’, decommissioned merchant and naval vessels anchored in harbours or rivers and no longer fit for use as freighters or fighting ships. But the existing hulks were rapidly filling, and overcrowding was becoming rife. There had to be another solution.
Between 1768 and 1771 Captain James Cook had made his epic voyage to the southern oceans, in the course of which he ‘discovered’ Australia and claimed it for the British Crown. Of course, the Aboriginal people had ‘discovered’ and settled in Australia as much as 80,000 years earlier, and an assortment of Dutch, Portuguese and even other English navigators had ‘discovered’ the same land mass more than a hundred years before Cook. However, they had done nothing about it, so Australia, or New Holland, or whatever anybody cared to call it, looked like a wide-open space crying out to be filled. The British government decided to populate it with criminals. Which is how it was that on 13 May 1787, eleven years after the American colonies had successfully closed their gates to transported British criminals, a fleet of eleven ships under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip and carrying around 775 convicts set off from Portsmouth for Botany Bay.
The intention was to establish a self-sufficient colony, and to do this before the French could do the same. The British planned to build their settlement entirely with convict labour: there were no free men aboard the fleet, only convicts and their soldier and marine gaolers. Some 200 convict women sailed with the fleet.
The race to keep out the French turned out to be a close-run thing. Four days after the bulk of the First Fleet arrived in January 1788, two French ships under the command of Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse, sailed into Botany Bay, without convicts but with the intention of claiming the territory for France. The British received them with great courtesy and a simple message: too late, mate, we got here first. The French had to be content with having the Sydney suburb of La Perouse named in their honour. On the opposite side of Botany Bay is the suburb of Sans Souci, a French rendering of the common Australian reassurance ‘no worries!’11
There was plenty to worry about in the fledgling colony. It was quickly apparent that Botany Bay was shallow and offered poor anchorage. Worse still, the soil around Botany Bay was low quality and unsuitable for agriculture, and there was a shortage of fresh water. Finally, the local Gadigal clan were understandably suspicious about the sudden arrival of strangers.
So, time to move on. Phillip formed a scouting party and set off northwards in three open boats to look for a more suitable site. The scouts reported a fine harbour only 12 kilometres to the north, with a source of fresh water. The fleet upped anchor and set off for Port Jackson, or Sydney Harbour as it is better known.
Now that the sea voyage was over, Arthur Phillip ceased to be a mere captain of a Royal Navy vessel and became Governor Phillip of the newly founded colony of New South Wales. He wisely realised that his domain would be ungovernable unless it was governed reasonably fairly. So he agreed that marines and male convicts should have the same rations:
each week they received 7 pounds (3.2 kilograms) of beef or 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) of pork, 3 pints (1.7 litres) of dried peas, 6 ounces (170 grams) of butter, either 7 pounds of bread or 7 pounds of flour, and either an additional pound (450 grams) of flour or a half a pound (225 grams) of rice. Given that the convicts were expected to carry out hard physical work, it was hardly an adequate diet. Women received two-thirds of the men’s rations, and children usually one-third.
With great difficulty, the colony survived. Ships arrived infrequently with meagre fresh supplies. Nevertheless animals bred; crops sprang up; so did buildings, first for the officers, then for the soldiers and marines, and finally for the convicts. Streets were laid down, and bridges built. Arthur Phillip proved to be an enlightened and visionary man.
Still, this was a prison, pure and simple. The convicts were hemmed in by an inhospitable landscape where they faced starvation and might expect to encounter hostile locals. If they chose instead to escape by sea, the fourth wall of their prison was a wide and lethal ocean. They were poorly fed, and driven to work hard. Discipline was tough. A man could be flogged until all the flesh had been cut from his back for ‘insolence’. Convicts who fell foul of authority worked in labour gangs, weighed down by brutal leg-irons.
The first free settlers arrived in Sydney on 16 January 1793, aboard the transport ship Bellona. There were twelve in all: a Dorset farmer, Thomas Rose, with his wife, niece and four children, a married couple accompanied by their adult nephew, and two other single men (one of whom promptly married the niece). Several of them had been crew on the First Fleet. Each had been promised a free passage to the colony, a grant of land when they got there, free farming tools, free convict labour, and two years’ provisions. The government kept its word. Thomas Rose’s family received a grant of 120 acres (49 hectares), the married men received 80 acres each, and the single men 60 acres each.
As more settlers arrived, all of them claiming a grant of land and free convict labour, a system sprang up that had much to recommend it. Before the free settlers arrived, the convicts worked for the government. They cleared land, built roads and houses, and did their best under supervision as farmers. In general, if they had a skill they were invited to use it. So farmers farmed, stonemasons chipped stones, blacksmiths forged, bakers baked, tanners tanned, brickmakers made bricks and in the fullness of time a solitary convict architect began drawing plans.
The convicts were largely free to move about the colony, as long as they did their work and stayed out of trouble. This made possible a remarkably liberal prison policy. Most of the convicts had been sentenced to be transported for a fixed term, usually seven or fourteen years. At first they were simply the property of the government, there to be ordered about, flogged when thought necessary, and worked hard. The arrival of free settlers gave rise to a system known as ‘assignment’. A convict would be assigned to a free settler who, in return for supplying the prisoner with food and a roof over his head, had the free use of his labour. If the convict displeased the settler by not working hard enough, or giving cheek, or trying to run away, the settler would report him to the authorities, who would then discipline him—with the lash, or with a spell in the work gangs. Meanwhile, the settler received a replacement convict. The settler was responsible for making sure the convict behaved himself, worked hard, and didn’t abscond.
Beyond this, a well-behaved convict could apply for a ‘ticket of leave’. This was a much freer arrangement than ‘assignment’. Rather than being tied to one settler, which in practice amounted to being chosen by the settler with no say in the matter, a ticket-of-leave prisoner could choose his settler. He would still have to work, and not abscond, but it was possible for the convict to negotiate his working conditions. With freedom of choice, a convict might now demand a little pay, or better rations, or better accommodation, or even a tolerant attitude to petty misdemeanours. Tickets of leave created a market for the convict’s labour. Convicts could marry, and set up home. Better still, once his sentence had been served, the newly freed convict could apply for a grant of land. It was not automatically given, but it was an enticing possibility.
The threat posed by the French remained high in the minds of Governor Phillip and the new colonists in the early years of the colony. In particular, there was a fear that they would occupy Norfolk Island, a lonely rock in the mid-Pacific about 1600 kilometres from Sydney. Why would anyone want Norfolk Island? In the 21st century, it is hard for us to think of wood as a strategic resource. But from the sixteenth century onwards, oak in particular was the uranium of its day. Ships were built with wood, and ships were essential for winning wars, trading and colonising. Strong wood meant a strong nation. In 1588, when a Spanish armada set out to invade England, one of King Philip II’s orders to his ambassador was to ‘leave not a single tree standing in the Forest of Dean’. The Forest of Dean, on the border between England and Wales, was a primary source of oak, which was a famously superb shipbuilding material and one of the essential elements in England’s rise as a world power. James Cook, when he passed by Norfolk Island, had noted dense forests of tall, straight Norfolk Island pines. Ideal for ship masts and crosstrees, he thought.
So Governor Phillip was under orders to secure Norfolk Island as quickly as possible, before the French got it. As early as March 1788, with the Sydney settlement barely two months old, Phillip sent Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to Norfolk Island in a single ship, the Supply, with a party of fifteen convicts. As a military foraging exercise, this turned out to be a complete waste of time. Norfolk Island pine proved to be brittle and totally unsuitable as ship’s timber. The island was more promising as a place to grow a flax-like plant imported from New Zealand, but this proved difficult to weave. Finally, Norfolk Island became slightly more successful as a farm, supplying desperately needed fresh vegetables for Sydney. As a strategic asset it was a failure. Given the distances involved, as a farm it was not much better. However, it established an important precedent: the Sydney settlement could act as a base on the far side of the world for enlarging the British colonial empire. The convicts were an ideal workforce: trapped and unwilling, but with little choice other than to obey. They could do the hewing and hacking, build the roads and bridges, raise the crops, erect the buildings, all on the cheap. But before Britain’s interests could spread, the continent needed to be secured.
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9 Indentured labourers either offered themselves or were forced into a fixed-term contract with a particular employer. The whole practice was supposed to have been outlawed along with the abolition of slavery in the early nineteenth century. The fact that this practice ended almost 200 years ago will probably come as news to workers today with term contracts in the ‘gig’ economy.
10 These numbers are far from certain. Currency equivalence is difficult to calculate at the best of times, and historical rates going back this far are nigh on impossible. The early British colonies used foreign currencies such as Spanish dollars as well as British pounds, and even bartered goods like rum when normal currency wasn’t available. However, we know from probate records (slaves were property, after all) that a healthy slave in mid-eighteenth-century America cost an average of US$700, which would be about US$25,000 at today’s prices. Slaves weren’t cheap.
11 La Pérouse and his two ships remained in Botany Bay for six weeks, unmolested by the British. They sailed on 10 March 1788, and were never heard from again. The wrecks of both ships were finally identified in 2005 on a reef off Vanikoro, one of the Solomon Islands. They probably fell victim to a tropical storm. There is a final irony to this story. A sixteen-year-old Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte had volunteered for the La Pérouse mission. He was rejected. One can only wonder how different European history might have been if he had sailed with the expedition and perished with the rest of La Pérouse’s crew.
Chapter 3
EXPANSION
George Bass, a ship’s surgeon, and Matthew Flinders, a Royal Navy officer and traine
d navigator, met on the HMS Reliance on their way to Australia. They arrived in Sydney in 1795 but it was not until 1798, ten years after the settlement of Sydney, that they sailed from Sydney in the sloop HMS Norfolk, and circumnavigated Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen’s Land. Until their voyage, nobody knew for sure whether Tasmania was an island or part of the mainland. Now everybody knew that it was separated from the mainland by Bass Strait, named in honour of its discoverer. This made Van Diemen’s Land an ideal site for a convict settlement. If Sydney was escape-proof, Van Diemen’s Land was even more so. However, it also created a legal problem. Both Cook and Phillip had claimed the mainland for the British crown. If Van Diemen’s Land was a separate and substantial island, it would have to be claimed separately.
Nevertheless, there was a five-year delay before the next move.
In October 1803 a party of 300 convicts under the command of Colonel David Collins arrived directly from England at Port Phillip Bay, the site of the present city of Melbourne, and began setting up a new colony. Around the same time, 23-year-old Lieutenant John Bowen established a settlement on the Derwent River, on the east coast of Van Diemen’s Land. His original settlers included 21 male and three female convicts, plus a party of marines to guard them, and a handful of free settlers. Young Lieutenant Bowen was not in charge for long. Things had not worked out well at Port Phillip Bay. It turned out to be another Botany Bay, with poor anchorage, poor water supplies and poor timber. Collins decided it had to be abandoned. He and his party of soldiers and convicts packed up and headed south to join Bowen on the banks of the Derwent River.
