by Peter Grose
On 27 February 1834, six weeks and one day8 after they set off from Macquarie Harbour, the convicts sighted land. The high mountains they could see on the horizon had to be Chile. They’d made it.
By any standard, this was an incredible feat. After the famous mutiny on the Bounty in 1789, Lieutenant William Bligh was rightly celebrated for sailing the Bounty’s launch some 4000 miles from mid-Pacific to Timor, thereby saving his own life and the lives of eighteen loyal members of his crew. Like the convicts, Bligh had no charts. He also had a quadrant, but no chronometer.
In terms of distance covered, even Bligh’s voyage pales before the achievement of the Frederick. The exact distance Bligh sailed was 6701 kilometres (4164 miles). The straight-line distance from Macquarie Harbour to the coast of Chile is 10,837 kilometres (6734 miles), but in fact the convicts had sailed much further because the shortest great circle route9 was not available to them. They had to deviate to the south to sail around New Zealand, and then deviate well north of the shortest route to make best use of the prevailing wind and to avoid the horrendous Antarctic Ocean weather. They must have sailed roughly twice as far as Bligh, with short rations and equally limited navigation equipment, without so much as a chart to tell them where they were. It was a staggering example of seamanship, courage, skill and daring.
Jimmy is forthcoming about the difficulties they faced. They reached land just in time: ‘The brig was getting the best of us in the leakage.’ They became so worried about the leaks that they used what little strength they had left to get their 7-ton longboat out on deck ‘in case we should have to quit the Brig’.
They could feel well pleased with themselves. They had crossed more than 10,000 kilometres of stormy ocean on starvation rations in a leaky, unfamiliar and untried ship. Here they were, thousands of miles from their oppressors, still alive, and free.
A new and better life could begin the next day.
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1 The Times of London kept up this quaint practice until 3 May 1966.
2 Usually a pair of decorated balconies towards the rear of the ship.
3 I have a fob watch from the nineteenth century, a family heirloom, marked inside: Sir John Bennett, 65 Cheapside, London, Maker to the Royal Observatory. Insofar as the Royal Observatory was the custodian of the Greenwich meridian, it is a safe bet that this watch kept good enough time to be used for navigation. In his advertising, Bennett often referred to a fob watch made by him as a ‘chronometer’.
4 Readers may wonder why John Barker was chosen as captain when he had no sailing experience and there were four experienced sailors in the crew. The answer seems to be that John Barker carried a natural authority and had obvious leadership skills. Such was his formidable personality that even the Sarah Island guards called him ‘Mr Barker’ instead of plain ‘Barker’.
5 The upper air is a different story. It tends to flow from west to east everywhere, which is why your flight from London to New York regularly takes an hour longer than the flight from New York to London.
6 Two men were required to work each pump, which they did by either winding a flywheel handle or using a rocker handle. It was hard manual labour.
7 The Campbell Islands, at roughly 52° south and claimed for New Zealand, were discovered in 1810 and only frequented by sealers and whalers.
8 Readers of a mathematical bent may wonder why the length of the journey is not six weeks and two days, given that the Frederick left Macquarie Harbour on 14 January. However, the departure date is far from certain, and the ship had to cross the International Date Line, which meant the doubling up of a day in the lives of the crew. The figure of six weeks and one day is from Jimmy Porter’s Norfolk Island journal.
9 Because the earth is round, the shortest route between two points is seldom the obvious one drawn on a standard Mercator’s Projection map. If you put a piece of string on a globe with the string running between the starting point and the end point of a journey, and pull the string tight, the string’s path is the ‘great circle route’ between the two points.
Chapter 9
VALDIVIA
Now that land was in sight, the convicts had a new problem. On landing in Chile, what story could they tell to explain who they were and how they got there? In 1834, if ten ragged and haggard seamen simply breezed into Valparaiso, or Valdivia, or any other Chilean port, without a convincing explanation, they could reasonably expect to be taken for pirates, and promptly hanged or shot. The men decided that claiming to be shipwrecked sailors might get them some sympathy, and it would also explain why they had no papers, no money, no possessions, no cargo, no obvious mission, and no one expecting them. They rehearsed their stories in preparation for the inevitable questioning. William Cheshire was less diligent than the others, leading Jimmy to wonder if he could be relied on to stick to the story.
It is hard to avoid the feeling that the Frederick itself deserved a better fate than that finally handed out to it by the convicts. Though land was perhaps as much as 60 or 70 kilometres away, they decided to abandon the leaking and sinking brig and take to the longboat. Jimmy describes the Frederick’s sorry end:
We got the long boat out with great difficulty and put what little things we had into her. As for provisions we had not more than 2 pounds [a bit less than 1.1 kilogram] of bread and meat—we dropped the long boat astern and sloop rigged her.10 We had neglected pumping the vessel ever since we sighted land, being employed at other things. We found the sooner we got out of her the better, and it was not until dark that night we could leave her, being fairly knocked up with over-exertion and little to eat. However, we took our leave of her, hove her to as she was approaching shore which we calculated about 40 miles off—and I never left my parents with more regret nor was my feelings harrowed up to such a pitch as when I took a last farewell of the smart little Frederick. The brig stood to seaward, and in the state she was in, water-logged and so much dead weight for ballast—she soon went down.
So the Frederick sank, taking with her the ship’s papers and everything else, to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
The convicts spent their first Chilean night in the longboat, under sail and heading for shore. It is impossible to say with any confidence where they made landfall. Jimmy says they rowed into a ‘large bay’, where they sheltered and gathered shellfish.
Animal lovers will be pleased to hear that all eleven souls had survived the journey from Macquarie Harbour to Chile—ten convicts and the ship’s cat. No sooner had they landed than the cat showed that independence of spirit for which cats are rightly famous and skedaddled into the bush. It spent the night there, slinking back to the camp the next morning, then promptly scarpered again, this time for good. Jimmy’s Norfolk Island journal informs us that if only they had followed the cat they would have come to the mouth of the ‘Rio Beuon’11 and a large Indian settlement, which would have ‘saved us a deal of trouble’.
The convicts killed a seal and left a few bits of it for the cat. Then they returned to the longboat to continue their search for friendly faces.
Jimmy reports that they followed the Chilean coast for some six days and nights. He doesn’t tell us whether they were travelling north or south, so we can only guess at where they were and which way they were facing. The next landmark identified by Jimmy is ‘Tweedale Point’ (‘Tweedle Point’ in the Hobart journal), which he says ‘projects a long way out to sea’. Jimmy tells us that the longboat took half an hour to round the point. When the convicts finally landed, some Chilean Indians told them that they were ‘three leagues’ (14 kilometres) from Valdivia. There is a large cape on the south side of the mouth of the Valdivia River, and the river mouth is also about the right distance from the port town of Valdivia, so it is at least a fair guess that the convicts landed on the cape at the mouth of the river, having sailed north from ‘Rio Beuon’. According to Jimmy, the local Indians were also content with the encounter. ‘We gave them a few trinkets, which pleased them much,’ he reports. ‘We to
ok our departure, and the same afternoon we reached the port of Valdivia and landed safe, hungry enough.’
The convicts were initially well received when they landed near Valdivia. The local European population readily accepted that they were shipwrecked sailors and in need of help. Five of the convicts were taken to local houses, where they were treated hospitably. The remaining five stayed with the longboat. Four hours later, all ten reassembled at the boat, and spent the night there.
They now had a plan. They had been told that there was a shipyard in Valdivia in need of skilled workers. Five were experienced shipbuilders, and they immediately hired a canoe—for nine dollars, says Jimmy—and set off up the river to look for work. That left five staying behind with the longboat.
At this point in Jimmy’s narrative the reader may feel that there is a dog in the night that has mysteriously failed to bark. What of Narcissa, Jimmy’s wife? And what of their son, now a young teenager? They were last seen near Valparaiso about 700 kilometres north of Valdivia, but surely Jimmy’s first thought after arriving in Chile would be to find out if they were still alive, where they were, and whether they had given up on him or would take him back in.
Jimmy continues:
We bid them [i.e. the shipbuilding party] farewell for we never expected to see them again, as we intended to launch our boat the next day and get under way for Valparaiso where I knew if my wife, children and friends were alive I should remain during my life and return thanks to God that I did not founder on the rocks of despair.
That, dear reader, is the last you will hear from Jimmy of Narcissa and their teenage son.
Disaster struck the next day. The longboat had been trapped by the tide and could not be launched. Jimmy and his companions responded to this setback as anyone else might have done: they partied. ‘We enjoyed ourselves very much with the Patriots, dancing and singing to the guitar,’ Jimmy writes. They probably managed to slurp down their fair share of local hospitality along the way, because the following morning they slept in. That was their big mistake.
They were woken by a bunch of soldiers who had come to arrest them and take them upriver to Valdivia to be questioned by the governor.12 They went with the soldiers in the longboat, and were promptly thrown into the same lock-up as their five fellow convicts, but kept separate from them. Jimmy used his limited Castilian Spanish to speak to one of the guards. Why had they been arrested? Apparently one of the other five had been drinking with a man called Cockney Tom, and had said rather too much about how they came to be in Chile. Jimmy already had it in for one of the five, William Cheshire, and he promptly blamed Cheshire for the debacle.
The convicts stayed in their Valdivian lock-up for three weeks before being brought before the governor. They were ushered into an elegant apartment with a large table in the centre. Governor Sanchez sat at one end of the table, while various officers of the Chilean military packed the room. A local smuggler called Captain Lawson acted as interpreter, and Jimmy assumed the role of spokesman for the convicts. He carefully went through the story the convicts had agreed upon. The governor was sceptical. Finally, Sanchez demanded: ‘Call Thomas!’ His call was answered by the appearance of Cockney Tom. The governor asked him: ‘Is everything you told me privately true?’ Cockney Tom answered with one word: ‘Yes.’ That was all Sanchez wanted to know. He declared: ‘Sailors, you have come to this coast in a clandestine manner and though you put a good face on your story I have every reason to believe you are pirates. Unless you state the truth between now and tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock, I shall give orders for you all to be shot.’
For Jimmy it must have been a moment of déjà vu. It was, after all, his third death sentence … and counting.
What happened next is a matter for conjecture. Jimmy’s two accounts tell widely different stories. Let’s start with his Norfolk Island journal. There he says he called his fellow convicts together and persuaded them that only the truth could save them. They appeared before the governor the next morning. By now Jimmy was convinced that Cheshire would try to save his own skin by betraying the others. That made it all the more urgent to come out with the real story. So, in Jimmy’s words: ‘I told him the whole of our circumstances.’ At this, Sanchez was mightily impressed and declared: ‘I have no wish to keep you confined. If you will give me your word that you will not endeavour to make your escape, I will allow you to go about on Parole of Honour.’13 The governor pointed out that there was plenty of work for them all, and in the meantime he would draw up a petition to the supreme governor in Santiago informing him that the men had thrown themselves on the protection of the Chilean authorities. Sanchez had no doubt that the response from Santiago would be favourable. Meanwhile, the convicts were free to go.
In the Hobart journal, Jimmy similarly states that they all went before the governor the next morning, whereupon Sanchez told them that ‘he scarcely knew what to do about liberating us, as he was afraid some of us might endeavour to make our escape, by which those who were left behind would suffer’. In this version of events it is John Barker, not Jimmy, who makes the successful plea. Jimmy reports Barker as telling the governor:
Sir, you need not be under any apprehension whatever of our making such an attempt; the privations we have all endured have been incredible, and our sufferings intense; therefore if, under the suspicion of our attempting such an act of ingratitude you should meditate delivering us up to the British government, I pray that you would rather do what would be a comparative act of charity, and give orders that we should all be shot dead in the palace square.
In this account, the speech from Barker reduced the governor to tears. After several minutes’ silence—in which time Sanchez presumably recovered his composure—he announced: ‘My poor men, do not think that I would take advantage over you; do not make an attempt to escape and I will be your friend; and, should a vessel come tomorrow to demand you, you will find that I shall be as good as my word.’ In other words, you’re free to go and will be safe here as long as you don’t try to escape.
Jimmy continues the narrative:
We then thanked the Governor for his humanity, and took our leave, and went in search of lodgings, which we soon procured. The next day the whole of us attended in launching a vessel of four hundred tons burthen, and shewed ourselves so active, that the owner said he would rather have us than thirty of his own countrymen, which pleased the Governor, who was there, with almost the whole of the inhabitants and a band of music. After she was launched, the seamen amongst us helped to fit her out, being paid fifteen dollars per month, with provisions on board.
The governor had undertaken to write to the supreme governor in Santiago to plead the convicts’ case. In doing so, he must have repeated the facts of their story: who they were, where they came from, and how they got there. We have no idea how what follows happened, but their story became news. The 9 May 1834 issue of the Chilean government newspaper Araucano14 carried a report of the arrival in Valdivia on 9 March of ten men who said their ship ‘had been lost on the open sea’. The men claimed to have been passengers and crew from an English brig, Mary of Liverpool, headed for Valparaiso. Their ship had hit a rock or a sandbank, they didn’t know which, and they had taken to the ship’s launch to save themselves. According to Araucano, the men’s story was pretty implausible and ‘orders were given to make a new and more rigorous investigation’.
What form this ‘more rigorous investigation’ took is not stated, but it elicited the information that the ten men were in fact criminals who had escaped from Van Diemen’s Land. The Araucano report was carefully preserved by the British consul in Santiago and forwarded to Governor Arthur in Van Diemen’s Land. This process will not have been quick (the report probably had to be sent to London first, before being passed on to Arthur), but it seems certain that by early 1835 the authorities in both Hobart and London knew exactly where to find the missing convicts.
Meanwhile, the governor ordered that the men be freed. However, he had a warn
ing for Jimmy. Cheshire had asked the governor to protect him, because he was afraid Jimmy would kill him if the chance arose. ‘I hope you in particular, Porter, will not molest him,’ the governor warned. Jimmy’s response was ominous. ‘I made no answer,’ he wrote.
The first couple of years in Chile appear to have been peaceful and fulfilling ones for the Frederick convicts—perhaps, for some, the happiest of their lives. According to Jimmy, five of them—John Barker, William Cheshire, James Leslie, Benjamin Russen and William Shiers—married local women, who bore them children. According to Jimmy, even the governor attended Barker’s wedding.
This all sounds like one of Jimmy’s more colourful stories, but there is independent evidence that he may have been telling the truth about the governor’s appearance at Barker’s wedding. In his scholarly book La Sociedad en Chile austral antes de la colonización alemana (‘Southern Chilean Society before the German Colonisation’), the Benedictine monk Father Gabriel Guarda reports two of these marriages. According to Father Gabriel, on 25 August 1834, in Valdivia, John Barker married Doña Carlota Jiminez Puga. Father Gabriel also tells us that a John Leslie (or Lesley) Sutherland was married in Valdivia to Doña Juana Pinuer and Molina. This time there is no date given. The fact that the two wives were both accorded the title doña confirms that they were from respected families.15 So Jimmy’s claim that the governor attended the Barker wedding is at least plausible. As has been noted earlier, there was a fashion for high-born Chilean women to marry Europeans, and just about any European would do, even one on the run from the law. The fact that Barker’s wedding took place almost exactly six months after the men arrived in Chile suggests that demand for marriageable Europeans must have well exceeded supply.
