Sydney Town was still without a leader. Colonel William Paterson, in Port Dalrymple, had been summoned to fill the void but was procrastinating. It was a period of turmoil and uncertainty for the population, with corruption increasing. For Tommy and Darby there was extra emotion. James Dixon, their Catholic priest friend, came and told them that his family in Ireland had successfully petitioned for his release. He was returning home on the next ship. The two men were excited for him. It also gave them hope.
11.
Miss Thompson
NORFOLK ISLAND, 1807
Maria was nervous. Her thoughts were jumping from one thing to another. Excitement? She suspected so. She was off on a huge adventure, leaving this convict colony of Norfolk Island, the only home she had ever known, for a sea voyage of more than 1,500 miles to Van Diemen’s Land (today’s Tasmania), the southernmost part of the colony of New South Wales. It was further away than she could imagine.
Her big brother, Nicholas, had left the island about five years earlier on the Buffalo. He was only twelve at the time, but memories of how handsome he had looked in his sailor’s uniform came back to her. He liked being called a ‘free settler’ when he applied for the job, saying it made him feel quite grown up. He had confided in Maria that he was nervous. And excited. Maria wondered if she would find him again at her final destination, Risdon Cove in Van Diemen’s Land.
Her Norfolk Island home was a remnant volcano with steep cliffs on all sides, forcing ships to stay at a distance from the shoreline. A safe anchorage could not be built close to shore so she would have to get into the whaleboat on the beach and be rowed out to the ship waiting beyond the reef. Maria was almost thirteen, but Elizabeth, her sister, was still young, just eight years old, and tended to wander off. Maria knew this responsibility would test her. She adjusted the small cloth satchel on her shoulder, full and heavy with fruit picked from the orchard and a few extra clothes for the two of them. The government man had promised more clothes when they got to Risdon Cove. He said they would need them in the new town, which he said was much colder than the mild climate of Norfolk.
Elizabeth was becoming nervous from the wait. Maria put a reassuring arm around to help calm her and told her the story of their parents, with baby Nicholas, arriving on Sirius in March 1790. While unloading stores, Sirius had been wrecked the very next Friday at noon on the reef, near Point Ross. She pointed towards the southeast end of Slaughter Bay, trying to describe the treacherous reef and huge swells of that fateful day. It was not too hard to imagine. Many times they had both come to the shore to watch the power and force of the pounding waves. Both parents said they had seen the sinking of the Sirius as a sign they were going to stay on Norfolk forever. Maria was glad today’s sea was calm.
Not long after Nicholas had left, Norfolk Island Government officials relayed that Lord Hobart in England had called for the removal of the military, settlers and convicts from Norfolk Island to the settlement in Tasmania, by force if necessary. Norfolk had become too expensive to support. Farmers and their families were vocal in their defiance, and were unable to understand the reasoning of people so far away. They could not and would not just leave their home.
‘How can they!’ Maria’s father, William Thompson, had often yelled across the dinner table, usually after a few nips of rum. He would loudly reply to himself, ‘I’ll tell you why they can’t.’ He would say that he and their mother had done their dues and more than paid for the sins of a lifetime ago. They had spent years building this solid home, complete with a barn and animal stalls, established an orchard, cleared acres of hilly terrain of trees and thick undergrowth, and planted hedges to enclose those fields. Had not their crops been mostly successful? He had seen three of his children born here, buried friends and neighbours, and had tried to live the best life he could, despite the often cruel and unjust punishments so easily dispensed by the military.
Each of the four children had seen their father’s back welted and scarred from two lashings. He had told his children how on the first occasion it was himself and their mother, not long married and still in Sydney Town, who had been quite drunk and very insolent to the guards and perhaps deserving of a little punishment. He knew that those whom the guards thought might be troublemakers had been first on the list to be sent to Norfolk. It was perhaps the reason they had been sent.
In the early years the migrating birds they sometimes killed, when food was scarce and they were starving, had stopped coming. William was discovered by the military hiding some fish he had caught and intended to share with just his family. The outcome was fifty lashes, by a whip of nine strands of leather. Each strand of leather was knotted along its length to give extra bite. It had ripped the skin from his spine, caused extreme pain and taken a long time to heal. Maria’s mother, whose name was also Maria, had used hog’s lard, spread on the coarse, broken fibre from the flax plant, to soothe and help heal the wounds. Maria thought his back still looked like ‘buffalo’s liver’.
Sometimes William would tell them all stories of how the colony was started. How the convicts had built the roads, storehouses, and cleared a quarter of the island. How the sown crops had been carefully tended, specifically to yield more than the islanders could use. The surplus was much needed in the hungry town of Sydney. He talked of the pine trees they felled, enormous trunks, unfortunately not strong enough for masts as first thought, but wonderful for making houses and furniture. The three Thompson children knew the story of the flax plants that grew wild here. They were supposed to be good for making sails but this type of flax was also a disappointment and turned out to be almost useless. William was sometimes aggrieved by the unfairness of decimated crops, particularly the wheat, maize and cabbages. Rats, caterpillars, constant salt-laden winds and drought had frequently denied them the best of yields, but still the family had remained off stores for years. He was very proud of that.
‘I am proud of us all, Jerry,’ Maria’s mother, using his nickname, would say.
William, who was accompanying the two of them, would be of little use, Maria’s mother had told young Maria. He was still angry at having to leave Norfolk and distracted by the need to start again, make a new home, clear land and plant crops for the family. William and his wife were both over fifty years of age and were not certain they had the energy to do this all over again. The older Maria had, for a long time, been showing the younger Maria how to run a household, including how to cook. The government official had promised a temporary house and food in Sydney. It would be up to young Maria to run the home, a task she now felt confident to do.
It suddenly occurred to Maria that her mother would also be wrenched from all that was familiar. She had come from London, on one of the first eleven convict ships to come to Sydney Cove. Her voyage had been on the Lady Penrhyn, which had carried only women convicts. She had been Maria Hamilton then but often people called her Maria Hambleton, probably due to misunderstanding her broad cockney accent. She had told the younger Maria of the baby quilt she helped make on the voyage out. She had been a lace maker by trade so her needlework was very good, and she had done quite a bit of work on it though she struggled with the very poor light and swaying ship. Maria was glad her mother had taught her to sew.
William had come with the same fleet. His ship, Alexander, carried only male prisoners. He had come from Durham, in England too. Both Maria’s parents had been found guilty of theft and given seven years’ transportation. Life had been extremely difficult in England for the common people and Maria’s mother often told of how they, and many others, had resorted to stealing and other crimes as a means to survive. They had been caught.
The two had married just two months after arriving in Sydney Town and this island home had been the first chance for both of them to make a real and proper life for themselves, a chance to be productive and rear their children.
Before stepping into the boat, Maria turned to her mother, who was temporarily staying behind with Maria’s younger brother, Willi
am. They would see the last of the year’s harvest gathered and also continue to petition for compensation for the loss of their home and land. They hoped to get at least eight pounds for it. This would also give Maria’s father time to assess their new allotment at Risdon Cove, erect a house and have some plantings ready on their arrival.
Maria hugged her mother tightly but let go quickly lest the tears fall. She waved goodbye to her brother, took Elizabeth by the hand, and the two stepped into the boat.
‘We’ll see you two, soon,’ she called as two large sailors pushed the whaling boat into the sea. Her father sitting in front of them and facing the stern looked solemn and kept his eyes fixed on his wife. The beach receded as the whaling boat was rowed out beyond the reef to the waiting ship. Adventure and uncertainty had begun.
12.
Anne Kennedy
SYDNEY TOWN, 1809
On 25 June 1809 the convict transport brig Experiment II, with sixty Irish convict women on board, arrived in Sydney Cove. It had sailed from Cork, Ireland via Rio de Janeiro in 155 days. The women were told to gather their few possessions and be ready to go on deck at the beckoning of the bosun.
The ship had sailed well. Captain Joseph Dodds and the crew had no complaints; it had been a good run.
The women had been preening and sprucing themselves for the past few days in anticipation of their arrival at Sydney Cove; bathing, mending clothes, trying to tame unruly hair and cleaning shoes. Needles and cotton had been handed out to enable them to mend their clothes. After the amount of time they been in captivity these were no easy tasks. However female convict ship inventories did provide additional material for female convicts to better attire themselves. The women on board had been well looked after. They had arrived in good health and all had survived. Deeming them low risk, the Captain had given them ample time on deck. Accordingly their cheeks had a healthy glow.
At 146 ton, Experiment II was a relatively small transport ship. It boasted a crew of twelve, with eight small-calibre mounted guns that had been installed for defensive purposes. In addition to its cargo of convict women it brought much needed supplies of wheat, tea, sugar and rum to the colony. Even though Experiment II was a small ship, in fact the smallest convict ship ever deployed to New South Wales, she had completed the journey in a very good time.
Below decks the tension was building to fever pitch in anticipation of the day ahead. The reasons for transportation were now irrelevant. This would be one of the most important days in each of the women’s lives. They had been warned that they would be paraded on deck as soon as the local men arrived on the brig’s deck. Then it would be a lottery as to which man would make a claim. A convict woman had no choice in the matter. A woman might be selected as a domestic servant, a mistress or a wife. The worse alternative was not to be chosen and to be taken to the Female Factory at Parramatta, which was a den of iniquity.
As Experiment II made its final run to the cove the women were secured below the main deck. While they had no vision of the events happening topside they could feel and hear the groan of the ship’s timbers as it worked its way down the harbour. There was a low-pitched gurgle from the hull as the brig cut through the water. Following a number of tacks the ship’s momentum continued to slow.
The vessel was now hardly making headway. The women heard a shout up on deck, ‘Anchors away!’, and all momentum suddenly ceased. Experiment II had reached Sydney Cove. The women huddled under the main deck, looking up at the shaft of light and waiting for the hatch to open.
For Anne Kennedy this day had been a long time coming. For almost two years Anne, and some of her fellow travellers, had languished in Newgate Prison, in Dublin. The prison was in a ruinous state and overcrowded. Ten to fourteen women were kept in each small cell, with barely room for each to sit. Anne’s cell had been on the second floor, accessible only by a dark, narrow staircase and corridor. The walls of the prison were made of small stones and bad mortar, and were damp and cold. The cells were poorly ventilated. The common room was where the prisoners could stretch their legs for a short time each day. Those charged with felonies and petty offences mingled indiscriminately with more hardened criminals.
Anne recalled it was a Tuesday when about twenty female inmates, including she, had been taken to the great dock of the Grand Canal Company in carts and loaded onto a ship. Other female convicts, from different parts of Ireland, were also brought aboard. The ship left Cork on 21 January 1809 with a large West India convoy.
The women had all been uneasy and unsettled during the first weeks at sea. To fill the endless hours the women talked and told stories. At night they sang Gaelic ballads and laments, and sometimes, when the sea was calm, and their emotions were positive, they danced a jig in the tight quarters below deck.
Anne told some of the women stories of her early life on the farm with her parents and siblings. Farm work, though exhausting, had made her strong and fit. However, like many, her family were tenants of absentee English landlords who had no compassion for the people who worked the land. Like other croft farmers they lived in extreme poverty.
She had made the decision to stay with her aging parents to help on the farm. When they both passed, there was no longer a reason for her to remain on the farm but there was nowhere else to go. Should she marry and stay trapped in the same system of poverty as previous generations? Her heart told her there must be other options.
In turn, Anne listened to the stories of others. Most were similar, sad and harsh. For a lot of the women the decision to commit a crime was easy. Stealing a few potatoes could stave off continual hunger or something small could be exchanged for food. Even arrest could perhaps provide a means as a way out of their miserable existence. Perpetrators of these misdemeanours took the enormous chance that their conviction would be relegated to transportation to one of the colonies. The promise of a better life in a new land. Anne knew when she committed her crime she was launching herself into the great unknown. She had not quite considered what it would be like to spend an extended time in prison, but now, having crossed the equator, seen Rio de Janeiro and sailed great oceans, she knew it was something she could never have anticipated.
Anne had been careful to dress herself to the best advantage in order to attract a man of substance. She did not want to get off to a bad start, as it was likely to be irredeemable.
During the voyage, Anne had been careful to stay away from the crew of Experiment II. A number of the girls had formed relations with crew members and were now showing the effect with distended bellies. Unless the crewman also disembarked, which was unlikely, these girls were going to be at a significant disadvantage over the next few hours.
Anne had seen the giant sandstone cliffs of New South Wales as Experiment II sailed up the coast and had wondered what lay behind them. In twenty-four hours where would she be? Well, she was about to find out.
As Anne stood waiting she could hear the growing clamour of men talking loudly from the deck above her. The volume was gradually increasing as the men’s anticipation and excitement grew. The captain was shouting at them to calm down. But all that did was raise the noise level. It was a rare event when a ship arrived with sixty women to the gender-imbalanced colony. The men wanted the women up on deck.
Suddenly the talking ceased and the grate to access the deck was thrown open with a large clang. It was all quiet: the women could have heard a pin drop.
‘Lassies, up on deck!’ shouted the bosun.
The only noise now was the sound of the women’s shoes as they fell upon each step of the ladder. One by one they ascended like cattle to the slaughter. They were very apprehensive.
Anne felt a jolt through her body. Well this is it, she thought as she rechecked her few belongings and tied them into a more secure bundle. She had brought them safely this far and did not want to lose them now. In her bundle she had a few keepsakes and extra clothes. In addition to the bundle she was required to take her bedding up on deck. Depending on where she ended
up, bedding was mandatory.
Anne was happy to be last up on deck. There was no rush. She had no desire to be ogled at and manhandled by the expectant and randy men up on deck. She hoped for the best.
It was now her time to scale the ladder to the upper deck for the last time. She took each step slowly, making sure she did not miss one and tumble back down to the floor below. Carrying her bundle was easy but the bedding made the journey much more awkward and difficult. As she reached the top step the morning light dazzled her. She closed her eyes to give them time to adjust to the brightness of the day. After a few moments she opened her eyes and took in the surroundings.
The sun was above the eastern horizon. The men were mostly grouped at the bow of the vessel. Anne made the decision to move as far away from them as possible. Accordingly she worked her way to the back of the women already there and placed her bedding on the deck.
It was meant to be a winter’s day and though it was cool it was not an Irish winter’s day. The sky was blue and clear of any clouds. She liked the feel of the place.
By this time there was a swarm of people milling around the deck. In addition to the sixty convict women and the crew about eighty men were on board looking at what was on offer. She could detect the level of conversation was pretty basic, discussing the pros and cons of each of the women in front of them. She thought it disgusting and belittling.
Captain Dodds brought some calm and order to the proceedings. First he separated the convict women from the men. He had the women gather at the stern of the brig and the men towards the bow. However, on such a small brig there was still little room separating the two groups as the convicts nervously gathered.
A few of the men had proffered a bottle of rum to him to gain an advantage by promoting themselves up the list. However it was always the military that had first choice. The rum profferers were second and then men like Tommy O’Neil made up the balance.
The Tailor and the Shipwright Page 10
