by Peter Grose
No contemporary drawings exist of the Frederick. The only representation available is an etching engraved in 1952 by the Australian artist Geoffrey Ingleton and titled The Brig Frederick Departs from Sarah’s Island, Macquarie Harbour, Van Diemen’s Land. The 114th of 150 prints from the etching is held by the National Library of Australia. The ship in the etching carries square-rigged sails on both masts. This predominance of square-rigging would have made the Frederick awkward to handle unless the wind was directly behind. The etching also shows a large gaff-rigged sail behind the main mast. For all the etching’s considerable grace and attention to detail, it is scarcely an accurate historic record of the Frederick’s departure. For a start, the ship is under full sail whereas we know that winds were strong that day and that only two sails were ‘flown’.
A brig was a formidable fighting ship. An armed brig might carry between ten and eighteen guns. Ships of the brig class were both fast and manoeuvrable, which made them the popular choice of pirates. So John Barker and his ragtag crew had the advantage of a well-designed and well-constructed wooden sailing ship which could, in theory, take them anywhere in the world. However, it was no holiday cruise ship. Accommodation would be cramped and uncomfortable, and the output from the galley, or kitchen, would be unlikely to trouble the Michelin inspectors.
It is not absolutely clear how and when the idea arose that the convicts might seize the Frederick and sail away to freedom. In one version, given by Jimmy Porter years later but prudently left out of his two journals, the idea had been hatched around the time construction began. The original plan was a mass escape, with 50 or 60 convicts, but the opportunity never arose. The ship was well behind its construction schedule, the weather was as bad as usual, and the window of opportunity never opened.
However, there is evidence of some astute forward planning. John Barker took surreptitious lessons in open-sea navigation from William Philips, a fellow Sarah Island convict who had been a fisherman in Cornwall and had sailed with the East India Company. Barker also used his gunsmith’s skills to convert some old musket barrels into improvised pistols. As a result, the remaining convicts were armed. Making the pistols alone must have represented many weeks of skilled work, not to mention weeks of careful scrounging. Barker also thoughtfully provided the convicts with a makeshift tomahawk.
In all the planning, one key question must have been: once they’d commandeered the Frederick, where would they pilot it to? The convicts who took the Cyprus had finally chosen to head north, after a detour to New Zealand, and had finished up in China. Perhaps that was the best bet? At some point Jimmy must have piped up and said something to the effect that he had a wife and son in Chile, he could recommend it as somewhere not under the thumb of the British, and the winds between Van Diemen’s Land and the South American coast were generally favourable, unlike the winds between Van Diemen’s Land and China. Why not go there?
By 11 January 1834 the Frederick’s construction had advanced sufficiently for the brig to put to sea. At ten that morning the largely completed ship and its motley crew set off for the last time from Macquarie Harbour. There were sighs of relief all round. By dusk they had sailed a full 23 miles (37 kilometres), as far as the harbour entrance. There they anchored. Captain Taw ordered Jimmy Porter and William Cheshire to go ashore and bring back some potatoes from an abandoned farm. David Hoy and two soldiers went with them.
The convicts had agreed among themselves that if there was a chance (in Jimmy’s words, ‘a slant of wind’) that the ship could be seized then and there, those still on board the Frederick were to go ahead. They would signal the convicts in the shore party that they had seized the ship by hoisting the ship’s ensign flag upside down. In the event, there was no signal, and Jimmy and the rest of his party returned impassively to the ship.
The wind then picked up and swung around to the northwest, meaning it was blowing squarely into the harbour entrance and causing a heavy swell. Crossing the bar was difficult enough at the best of times. But sailing a 140-ton vessel through a passage only 70 metres wide straight into the wind, and into the teeth of a substantial swell, would be impossible. The Frederick remained at anchor near the harbour entrance for a day and two nights, waiting for the weather to improve. Then, rather than continue to toss about, Taw ordered the crew to up anchor and take shelter behind Wellington Head, about 2 miles (3 kilometres) away. So at about nine o’clock on the morning of 13 January the Frederick anchored for the last time in Macquarie Harbour, about 300 metres off Wellington Head. All remained quiet until the evening.
At this point it is only fair to warn the reader about the sheer difficulty of working out what actually happened in Macquarie Harbour that evening. The accounts in Porter’s two journals were each written with diametrically opposed intentions. The journal written in Hobart was intended to sell the idea that Jimmy was a poor, misled, contrite dupe, more of a well-intentioned bystander than a scheming criminal. The Norfolk Island journal is an exercise in self-aggrandisement in which he portrays himself as ringleader and plotter-in-chief. Fortunately we also have the accounts of David Hoy and First Mate Tait of the Frederick. From these four accounts it is possible to piece together some kind of sensible narrative.
What seems clear from the various accounts and from subsequent events is that the convicts were determined to avoid violence. So bluff, stealth and subterfuge would have to be the order of the day. The most urgent task was to get the soldiers and McFarlane out of the way. Jimmy suggested to the sergeant and one of the soldiers that they might take the opportunity to do a little fishing while everybody waited for the weather to improve. They concurred. Captain Taw gave permission for them to take the whaleboat and try their luck. Jimmy then feigned a stomach cramp and remained behind. Jimmy’s chosen sergeant and soldier plus McFarlane set off in the whaleboat, armed with hooks, lines and bait. Three down, two to go.
Jimmy decided that his irresistible singing voice would be the best hope of completing the task non-violently. He suggested to the two remaining soldiers that they might like to accompany him below decks to the forecastle (or fo’c’sle).7 There he would treat them to a few beautifully rendered songs. The two soldiers agreed, but only one followed Jimmy below decks. The other remained on the deck, sitting on the windlass, the heavy winch used on sailing ships to raise the anchor. Three convicts—Benjamin Russen, James Leslie and William Cheshire—stayed on deck to keep an eye on him. The others went below to listen to Jimmy.
With only one soldier to charm, Jimmy launched into the song ‘The Grand Conversation Under the Rose’.8 This long and frankly turgid ballad was composed at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. From the British point of view it was slightly subversive, and therefore popular in immediate post-war austerity. It praised Napoleon, and lamented the sufferings of returning British soldiers, whose reward for risking their lives was poverty and indifference. It must have been literally music to the ears of the solitary soldier. At one point Jimmy struggled to remember the words, but William Shiers kindly prompted him, and the performance continued.
Then came the signal to strike. Benjamin Russen, one of the three convicts remaining on deck, stamped on the wooden floor above Jimmy and his six fellow convicts. Shiers immediately put an improvised pistol to the solitary soldier’s head. In Jimmy’s words: ‘He was quiet directly.’ Up on deck, James Leslie and his two fellow convicts now captured the heavily outnumbered second soldier.
Jimmy and Shiers rushed up the stairs and onto the deck, leaving the other five convicts below to guard their soldier. Once on deck, they sealed the hatch and, for good measure, weighed it down with an anchor. Shiers set off to capture the mate Tait. He returned to the deck with Tait under guard, where they joined Jimmy, James Leslie, and Leslie’s prisoner, the fourth soldier. At this point Jimmy opened the hatch again to allow the five convicts down below to rejoin their triumphant mates on deck. He then ordered Tait and the soldier to go down to join the other soldier, and the convicts resealed the hatch. So two
soldiers and Tait were now sealed below decks. However, that created a new problem. The ship’s gun store was also below decks, and the soldiers could move around down there without being detected by those up on deck. If the soldiers had thought and acted quickly enough, they might have rearmed themselves. The convicts crept aft and gingerly went below decks to the gun store. This had to be done with great stealth, but luck was with them. They removed all the muskets and ball cartridges without interference, and brought them up on deck. They now had a near monopoly on arms aboard the Frederick, and a large measure of control of the ship.
That left Captain Taw, David Hoy and the steward Nichols still aboard the Frederick and not captured by the convicts. Taw and Hoy were in the captain’s cabin, drinking rum. There seems to be universal agreement that Taw was staggering drunk, a not unusual state of affairs. There is some dispute over the whereabouts and actions of the steward Nichols. The version that follows is from David Hoy. It largely matches Jimmy Porter’s Norfolk Island account.
According to Hoy, two convicts, one of whom was William Shiers, burst into the captain’s cabin. Shiers put a pistol to Hoy’s head and said: ‘We have the vessel, and if you don’t give yourself up we will blow your brains out.’ Hoy tried to wrestle the pistol away from Shiers, while Taw did his drunken best to wrestle with the other convict, who was armed with the tomahawk and possibly a musket.
Hoy kept calling out to the soldiers for help, but his shouts understandably went unanswered. According to Jimmy, the convicts on deck then opened the skylight and looked down into Taw’s cabin. There they saw Shiers wrestling with Hoy, and a general melee. Finally Shiers broke away from Hoy, while the other convict escaped Taw’s drunken clutches, and the two convicts raced up the cabin stairs towards the deck. They did this, in Jimmy’s words: ‘Before we could render him [Shiers] any assistance.’ In Hoy’s version, the steward Nichols was standing at the foot of the stairs but was either unable or unwilling to do anything to block the convicts’ passage, and the two convicts reached the deck unscathed.
Hoy, who knew the ship inside out, now tried to open up a passage through the bulkhead between Captain Taw’s cabin and the soldiers’ quarters next door. He managed to get a glimpse into the soldiers’ living space but saw neither soldiers nor guns there, so there was no point continuing. Meanwhile, the convicts were shouting from the deck above: ‘Come up and save your lives.’ They called to Hoy and Taw by name, telling them if they did not give themselves up they would be shot.
Hoy now tried another ploy. He called out to the convicts that if they would lay down their arms and go back to their duties, the whole affair would be forgotten and there would be no repercussions. This didn’t go down well with the convicts, who shouted back that they had their freedom, and they would rather die than give it up.
It is not uncommon for a drunk to peel off his coat and offer to fight every man in the bar, and Taw proceeded to do more or less that. He asked Hoy where Hoy’s pistols were. Hoy replied that they were in his sea chest. Taw announced that he had only a musket, but that they must sell their lives dearly. Hoy went to open his sea chest to find his pistols, when one of the convicts fired through the open skylight, sending a musket ball through the chest, near the lock. Hoy stepped back, whereupon a second musket shot went through the chest about 8 inches (20 centimetres) from the first.
Hoy nevertheless managed to open his sea chest and grab his pistols. He shouted that he intended to shoot the first man he saw through the skylight. The convicts shouted back that if those below came up on deck and surrendered, no harm would come to them. This rather fruitless back-and-forth shouting match is said to have continued for about an hour and a half. Then the convicts began to lose patience. Some wanted to shoot Hoy and Taw there and then. Others advised caution; they did not want blood on their hands. Finally, one called out: ‘Bring along the pitch pot [hot tar pot] and let us empty it down on them.’ At this point Taw and Hoy conferred, and agreed that it would be ‘a wilful waste of life’ if they held out any longer. They, together with the steward Nichols, agreed to surrender. The Frederick was now totally in convict hands.
That still left the fishing party on the loose, and possibly armed. According to Jimmy, the prearranged signal for the whaleboat to return was a musket shot fired from the deck of the Frederick. There had, of course, already been two musket shots fired by the convicts at Hoy’s sea chest, so the signal had been well and truly given. Nevertheless, the convicts decided to fire off a third musket shot, which produced the required result. The whaleboat came alongside.9
The fishing party were told that the brig had been seized. They were ordered to tie the whaleboat securely to the Frederick and to lower the ship’s dinghy (known as the ‘jolly boat’), usually suspended from the stern. The fishing party did as they were told, while an armed convict stood guard to prevent them from coming aboard the brig. Jimmy Porter, John Barker and William Shiers then escorted Taw and Hoy back to their cabin,10 where the two men collected their clothing. They had already been told they would be put ashore while the brig sailed away.
Not all was sweetness and light. As Jimmy records in his journal: ‘We allowed them to take anything they wanted—they wanted a pistol and some ammunition from us to protect them from the blacks (as they wished to make us believe), but we begged to be excused!!!’ Having collected their clothing, Taw and Hoy climbed back on deck under the watchful eyes of the armed and triumphant convicts. At this point, Barker ordered Hoy to hand over his watch. According to Jimmy, Taw was also ordered to hand over his watch. Hoy also had a small pocket compass, which would come in handy if he and the other non-convicts tried to make their way across country to civilisation. Shiers, out of earshot of Barker, ordered Hoy to hang onto it. Hoy had complained earlier of feeling ill, so Shiers gave Hoy a bottle of spirits wrapped in a shirt, and told him to keep it out of sight. Hoy did as he was told.
Tait and the two soldiers were now ordered up from the forecastle, where they had remained, and joined Hoy and Taw on deck. All non-conspirators—Captain Taw and David Hoy, the mate Tait, the steward Nichols, the free man McFarlane, and the four soldiers—were ordered into the jolly boat, and the convicts instructed them to ‘pull for the shore’. Meanwhile, six armed convicts untied the whaleboat, and two convicts rowed it towards the shore, following in the wake of the jolly boat, while the other four stood guard. When the jolly boat reached the beach, the convicts in the whaleboat told the occupants to go ashore. They then ordered the men on shore to push the empty jolly boat back into deeper water—in Jimmy’s words, ‘to prevent them from rushing upon our boat’. The convicts took the jolly boat in tow, and headed back to the brig.
Ten convicts, well armed, now had complete charge of the Frederick and its two small boats. All nine non-conspirators had been put ashore with ample clothing but no arms and no supplies. And not a drop of blood had been spilt.
The convicts treated themselves to a good dinner. The settlement’s remaining provisions were on board, enough to last nineteen men for three months, so there was plenty to go around. The next morning they brought all the provisions up on deck and divided them equally, the same share for the nine men ashore as for the ten men aboard the Frederick. David Hoy explained what followed:
Saw a boat the next morning come from the brig to the shore; went towards the boat but was told not to come near, or they would not land what they had got for us; they landed some provisions, and different articles belonging to the military, such as knapsacks, coats, &c; this was between 6 and 7 in the morning. The boat returned a second time with some flannels, some dressing and a pair of shoes. Shiers was in the boat the second time; I had been asking all along for the boat, but was told we could not have one till the brig went over the bar, when they would send one, with some more provisions, to the pilot’s house; we went to the pilot’s house the same day the boat came; but no boat was sent to us; nor did we receive anything more from the ship.
The convicts had handed over 181 pounds
(82 kilograms) of meat, 261 pounds (118 kilograms) of biscuits, and 61 pounds (28 kilograms) of flour; there had been plenty of potatoes and cabbages growing at the pilot’s house near the entrance to the harbour, and these were shared out too, along with a live goat, an iron pot, two or three tin pannikins, and an axe. The convicts awarded themselves the same rations, without the goat. There were ten mouths to feed ashore (nine men and a goat), and eleven to feed on the Frederick—ten convicts and the ship’s cat.
If we are to believe Jimmy, there was then an emotional farewell worthy of the most sentimental Victorian melodrama. Jimmy reports Hoy as declaring: ‘I thank you for your manly conduct throughout, and particularly for your kindness to me on account of my illness. I know you have but little provisions to cross the wide ocean, and likewise a vessel that is not Seaworthy for such a voyage—and may God preserve you in your perilous undertaking.’ Jimmy adds his own bit of equally improbable melodrama:
We thanked him and pulled off our hats amid the loud cheers of all on shore wishing us a Pleasant Voyage. I cannot express my feelings at that moment—my heart expanded within me and I believe it was the happiest moment of my life. We observed Mr Hoy wiping his eyes. We felt for him and that was all we could do in our situation.
Sounds like pure soap opera.
Hoy could not recall the exact date when the Frederick sailed out of Macquarie Harbour, but he was inclined to think it must have been either 15 or 16 January 1834, four or five days after the initial launch of the brig. Jimmy puts the date at 14 January, which fits the facts better. Whatever the date, it was certainly an emotional moment for Hoy (if perhaps not for the reasons Jimmy gives). The Frederick had been his pride and joy, though he rightly worried that it was not seaworthy, and it was certainly not ready for any long sea voyage. It showed signs of leaking, for instance. He watched wistfully as the Frederick cleared the bar safely and turned southwest, away from Macquarie Harbour and towards the fierce winds of the Antarctic Ocean. He never saw the ship again.
