The Fatal Shore
Page 91
49. Conditions and medical officers on the Royal Admiral: see Bateson, Convict Ships, p. 43.
50. Ibid. pp. 45–46.
51. Ibid., pp. 160–65. Massey’s Journal Book, 1796, typescript extract at Ab. 93, ML, Sydney. Beyer was on his third voyage to Sydney, he had been Captain Anstis’s surgeon on Scarborough in the Second Fleet
52. Fitzpatrick to Rev. Charles Lindsey, re conditions on Hercules and Atlas, Pelham Papers, Add. Ms. 33107, pp. 200–203, BL.
53. Fitzpatrick to Pelham, ibid, p. 341ff.
54. Shaw CC, p. 114. Macquarie to Bathurst, Dec. 12, 1817, HRA 1x:510.
55. Fitzpatrick to Baldwin, Pelham Papers, Add. Ms. 33105, BL, p. 242ff.
56. Redfern to Macquarie, HRA viii:275ff.
57. Figures from Bateson, Convict Ships, Appendix 7b.
58. As merchantmen, most transports had been designed to squeeze as much cargo space as possible from the tonnage laws that governed the payment of harbor dues up to 1835. The rule of thumb in this tonnage calculation assumed that a hull’s depth was half its beam. Hence the owners sought to fool the tax man by building ships as narrow and deep as possible. This was fine for cargo, but terribly uncomfortable for convicts, as narrow hulls were less stable than beamy ones and rolled violently. As free emigration to Australia began to take hold in the 1830s, so the quality of convict shipping declined—for it was much more profitable for owners to take paying passengers than to accept government charters.
59. John Boyle O’Reilly, Moondyne, pp. 186–89.
60. George Prideaux Harris to family, n.d. [Jan. 1804], BL, Add. Ms. 45156, p. 9v.
61. Alfred Tetens, Among the Savages of the South Seas, p. xxii.
62. John Gorman, Log-book, untitled Ms. 1524, NLA, Canberra.
63. Mellish, “A Convict’s Recollections of New South Wales,” p. 49.
64. Charles Cozens, The Adventures of a Guardsman, p. 98.
65. Ibid., pp. 95–96.
66. Ibid., pp. 103–4.
67. John Gregg, Journal on convict ship York, 1862, Ms. 2749, NLA.
68. William Coke to his father, Apr. 20, 1826, Coke letters, D.1881, DRO.
69. Ibid.
70. Tetens, Among the Savages, p. xxiii.
71. Ibid., p. xxiv
72. T. Holden to parents, DDX/140:12, LRO.
73. John Smith, Surgeon’s log on transport Clyde, Ms. 6169, NLA, Canberra.
74. Murray to Smith, Sept. 13, 1838, encl. in Ms. 6169, NLA, Canberra.
CHAPTER six Who Were the Convicts?
1. William Blake, “Vala, Night the Ninth,” in The Complete Writings of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, London, 1966, pp. 359–60.
2. J. L. Hammond and B. Hammond, The Village Laborer, 1760–1832, p. 239; G. Arnold Wood, “Convicts,” JRAHS, vol. 8, no. 4 (1922), p. 187.
3. See C. M. H. Clark, “The Origins of the Convicts Transported to Eastern Australia, 1787–1852,” HS, vol. 7, no. 26 (May 1956), pp. 121–35, and vol. 7, no. 27 (June 1956), pp. 314–27; and see also Lloyd L. Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia.
4. C. M. H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History, 1788–1850, pp. 406–8.
5. Robson, Convict Settlers of Australia, Appendix 4, table 4(e). I have rounded off the percentages.
6. Ibid., Appendix 4, table 4(d).
7. Ibid., Appendix 4, tables 4(b) and (1).
8. Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty, p. 291. For her discussion of class language, see pp. 281–304.
9. Ibid., p. 295.
10. Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 3, p. 381.
11. Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis, pp. vii-xi.
12. Edward P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, pp. 59–66.
13. Fraser’s Magazine, June 1832, pp. 521–22, cit. in J. J. Tobias, Crime and Industrial Society in the 19th Century
14. Eclectic Review, vol. 2 (April 1854), p. 387, cit. in Tobias, ibid.
15. Himmelfarb, Poverty, p. 397.
16. Ibid., p. 399. “Ragged-schools” were charity schools for pauper children.
17. Petition from S. Nelson to Home Secretary, Ms. in NLA, Canberra. Isaac Nelson survived the voyage and—gentle soul—became one of the first schoolteachers in Australia, under the Rev. Richard Johnson.
18. On the wreckers’ assumption of their traditional “rights,” see John G. Rule, “Wrecking and Coastal Plunder,” in Hay et al., eds., Albion’s Fatal Tree, pp. 181–84.
19. Peter Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales, vol. 2, p. 234.
20. Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 4, pp. 25–26.
21. G. Parker, Life’s Painter of Variegated Characters, 1789, cit. in Eric Partridge, Dictionary of the Underworld.
22. Partridge, ibid.
23. On Barrington, see HRA 1:1–4 and ADB entry.
24. Dickens, Oliver Twist (London: Penguin Books, Penguin Classics, 1966), pp. 390–91.
25. Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, pp. 411 and 467.
26. Peter Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of England, 1833, chapter 4.
27. Thomas Holden, letter to parents, 1812, DDX 140/7:13, LRO.
28. On Muir’s trial and those of other “Scottish Martyrs,” see Anon., The Political Martyrs of Scotland Persecuted During the Years 1793 and 1794 (Edinburgh, 1795).
29. Ibid.
30. Lauderdale’s objection was that the 1703 Act under which Muir and Palmer had been convicted limited their punishment to banishment, not transportation. Banishment meant only “exclusion from a community,” whereas transportation “implies that exclusion executed in a compulsory and commonly ignominious Manner, always aggravated by Confinement and … the obligation of laborious Servitude.” Lauderdale et al. to Dundas, Dec. 14, 1793, WI/5007 in Whitbread Papers, Bedford.
31. Gerrald to Margarot, 1794, Ms. at Ag. 14, ML, Sydney.
32. Muir to Moffatt, Dec. 13, 1794, Ms. in ML, Sydney
33. Thomas Fyshe Palmer, A Narrative of the Sufferings of T F Palmer, p. 35.
34. Palmer, letters dated Apr. 23 and May 5, 1796, ML, Sydney.
35. Thomas Muir, “The Telegraph: A Consolatory Epistle,” unpublished Ms. at Am. 9, ML, Sydney. “Telegraph” here means a semaphore
36. Hill and Newton to Cooke, Mar. 12, 1797, Rebellion Papers 620/29:58 and 196, SPO, cit. in Shaw CC, p. 170.
37. Hugh Reid, statement in summary of evidence on Marquis Cornwallis mutiny, HRA 1:657–58.
38. Hunter to Portland, Nov. 12, 1796, HRA 1.674–75.
39. Irish convicts in Australia: HRA x:203–4. Hunter to Portland, Mar. 3, 1796, HRA 1:555–56.
40. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol 1, pp. 380–81, and vol. 2, p. 57.
41. Hunter to Portland, Feb. 15, 1798, HRA 1:131.
42. Number of Irish convicts in New South Wales in 1798: T. J. Kiernan, “Transportation from Ireland to Sydney 1791–1816” (M.A. thesis), p. 59.
43. James Carty, ed., Ireland from Grattan’s Parliament to the Great Famine, 1783–1850 A Documentary Record, p. 69.
44. Cornwallis to Major-General Ross, cit. in Carty, Ireland, pp. 95–96.
45. Shaw CC, p. 170.
46. Kiernan, “Transportation,” Appendix II, p. 29. Opinions differ, however, on the number of “politicals” in these Irish shipments. George Rude, in Protest and Punishment (1978), takes the stringently reductionist view that only 241 Irish were “politicals.”
47. Hunter to Portland, Jan. 10, 1798, HRA 11.118.
48. Elizabeth Paterson to Capt. Johnson, Feb. 10, 1800, in Ms. Ap. 36:5, ML, Sydney.
49. King to Cooke, July 20, 1805, HRA v.534.
50. Hunter to Portland, Mar. 20, 1800, HRA 11:223.
51. Irish Conspiracy Papers, HRA iii.575 et seq. and 582–83.
52. Samuel Marsden, “A Few Observations on the Toleration of the Catholic Religion in New South Wales,” Ms. 18, Marsden Papers, ML, Sydney.
53. Hester Stroud, deposit
ion to Marsden, Irish Conspiracy Papers, HRA 111:641.
54. Joseph Holt, “Life and Adventures of Joseph Holt …,” Ms. in ML, Sydney, pp. 293–95. I have corrected the distractingly erratic spelling and some of the odder punctuation of this passage.
55. King’s court of inquiry into Irish insurgents: Oct. 1, 1800, HRA 111:650–51.
56. Elizabeth Patterson to “Mrs. B.,” Oct. 7, 1800. Bentham Papers, Add. Ms., BL, pp. 423–24.
57. King to Portland, HRA 111:8–9.
58. Punishment of Father O’Neil: HRA 111:759. Irish efforts to get a priest to the colony, and King’s eventual permission to Father Dixon to say Mass and administer the sacraments: King to Hobart, May 9, 1803, HRA iv:82–83.
59. “Situation shocking to Humanity”: King to Transport Commissioners, HRA 11.532.
60. On Hassall’s description of the start of the Irish rising at Castle Hill, see Castle Hill Rebellion Papers, Bonwick Transcripts, vol. 1, box 49, pp 234–35, ML, Sydney.
61. Major George Johnston refuses to parley with Paterson: HRA iv:570.
62. Johnston to King, encl. 4 in King to Hobart, Mar. 12, 1804, HRA iv:568.
63. John Grant, Journal, pp. 47–48, Ms. 737, Grant Papers, NLA, Canberra.
64. King to Hobart, Apr. 16, 1804, HRA iv:611.
65. “Occasionally removed from one Settlement to another”: King to Hobart, Apr. 30, 1805, HRA v:305. Poteen stills. HRA v:571
66. George Rude, Protest and Punishment, p 249.
67. Leslie C. Duly, “Hottentots to Hobart and Sydney: The Cape Supreme Court’s Use of Transportation, 1828–1838.”
68. On Canadian protesters see Rude, Protest and Punishment, pp 42–51 and 82–88.
69. Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, p. 76.
70. Thompson, English Working Class, pp. 347–48.
71. Cook to Churton, Jan. 20, 1831, copy in “The Exile’s Lamentations,” MS at A1711, ML, Sydney, and cit. in Clune, The Norfolk Island Story, p. 157.
72. Thompson, English Working Class, p. 250.
73. Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude, Captain Swing, p. 262.
74. Ibid., pp. 245–46.
75. Richard Dillingham, letter to parents, Sept. 29, 1836, Dillingham Papers, Ms-CRT. 150.24, Bedfordshire County Record Office.
76. Peter Withers, letter to brother, Ms letters in TSA, Hobart.
77. James Backhouse and G. W. Walker, A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies, Appendix J, letter 3.
CHAPTER SEVEN Bolters and Bushrangers
1. Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, in New South Wales, p. 141. Some of the “Chinese travellers,” he found (Account, p. 138), believed that China was only a hundred miles to the north of Parramatta, and separated from Australia by a river. Others were not so sure, but they had gone along “on account of being over-worked, and harshly treated … [T]hey preferred a solitary and precarious existence in the woods, to a return to the misery they were compelled to undergo.” The China myth, Phillip correctly thought, was “an evil that will cure itself” (Phillip to Nepean, Nov. 18, 1791, HRA 1:309). For Collins’s views on it and the Irish who held it, see Collins, An Account of the English Colony at New South Wales, vol. 1, pp. 154, 162–63, and vol. 2, pp. 54–55, 57. In 1791, according to John Hunter [An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, pp. 563–64), no less than forty of them were missing in the bush.
2. Hunter to Portland, Feb. 15, 1798, HRNSW 111:359. Collins [Account, vol. 2, p. 57) adds that the Irish imagined this colony of whites to lie some 300 to 400 miles southwest of Sydney.
3. King to Hobart, May 9, 1803, HRA iv:85. King to Hobart, enclosure of Govt. & General Order dated March 1803, in Aug. 7, 1803, HRA iv:337.
4. On Mary Bryant, see ADB, vol. 1, pp. 173–74; C. H. Currey, The Transportation, Escape and Pardoning of Mary Bryant; and F. A. Pottle, Boswell and the Girl from Botany Bay. For the voyage, see James Martin, Memorandoms. This is an edition of Martin’s own “Memorandoms,” acquired by Jeremy Bentham and preserved in his papers in the British Library. Martin had been sentenced to 7 years’ transportation at the Exeter Assizes for stealing “16½ lb. of old Lead and 4½ lb. of old Iron property of Lord Courney powdrum cacle near Exeter.” He had struck up a friendship with the Bryants both on the hulk and on Charlotte, and escaped with them from Sydney Harbor. When, after his adventures, he returned to London, he wrote down an account of their sufferings on the epic small-boat voyage. It found its way to Jeremy Bentham, who was collecting evidence of the injustices and failures of transportation for his Letter to Lord Pelham (1802) and A Plea for the Constitution (1803), reprinted as Panopticon Versus New South Wales (1812). However, there is no reference to James Martin or his “Memorandoms” in Bentham’s published works.
5. Collins, Account, pp. 129–30.
6. John Easty, “A Memorandom of the Transactions of a Voyage from England to Botany Bay in Scarborough Transport,” entry for Mar. 28, 1791.
7. All quotations are from the account of the voyage in Martin’s “Memorandoms.”
8. Tench, Account, note to p. 108.
9. On Boswell and Mary Bryant in England, see Pottle, Boswell and the Girl from Botany Bay.
10. For Parsons’s satire on Boswell’s imagined affair with Mary Bryant, see Pottle, ibid., and Brady, James Boswell: The Later Years, pp. 464–65.
11. Hunter to Portland, Jan. 10, 1798, HRNSW 111:346.
12. Baudin to King, May 9, 1803, HRA iv.151
13. Macquarie to Bathurst, May 16, 1818, HRA ix:793.
14. Memo to Lt.-Gov. Arthur on Bass Strait sealing, May 29, 1826, at reel 600, NSWA, Sydney.
15. Hobart Port Regulations, Apr. 13, 1830, CSO 1/445:1922, TSA, Hobart.
16. On the sandalwood trade and escaped convicts in the Pacific, see Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches, pp. 119ff., 129ff.
17. Cook EL, pp. 177–78.
18. Hunter to Portland, Jan. 10, 1798, HRNSW 111:345 Collins (Account, vol. 2, p. 35) gives an account of the seizure of the Cumberland.
19. On the seizure of the Harrington, see Sydney Gazette, May 22, 1808.
20. The Australian, Feb 23, 1827, cit. in Crowley, Doc. Hist., vol. 1, pp. 349–50.
21. On the piracy of the Cyprus, see Arthur to Murray, Sept. 11, 1829. TSA, CON 280:31; John West, The History of Tasmania, p. 425ff.; Lloyd L. Robson, A History of Tasmania, p. 150. The version of the ballad “The Cyprus Brig” is from Gary Shearston’s recording Bolters, Bushrangers and Duffers, CBS #BP 233288. The Cyprus episode forms an important part of the narrative of Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life
22. On James Porter and the voyage of the Frederick, see Porter’s “Memoirs,” typescript of an unpublished Ms. at MSQ 168, Dixson Library, Sydney. All quotations of Porter are from this source. General outlines of the voyage are given in the rare Anon., “Narrative of the Sufferings … of the Convicts Who Piratically Seized the ‘Frederick,’ ” ca. 1838 (copy in ML at 910.453/29A1), and in West, History of Tasmania, p. 429ff.
23. SC1837–38 (11), “Papers Delivered in by John Barnes, Esq.” (B, “List of Prisoners Who Absconded from Macquarie Harbour …”).
24. Pearce’s origin, physical appearance and deeds have been, due to his subsequent history, the subject of much journalistic fantasy. The one reliable study is Dan Sprod, Alexander Pearce of Macquarie Harbour. Primary sources are. (1) “Narrative of Escape from Macquarie Harbour” (the “Knopwood Narrative,” based on Pearce’s interrogation after capture by the Rev. Robert Knopwood), Ms. 3, Dixson Library, Sydney; (2) manuscript in National Library of Australia, Ms. 3323, ff. 1–5; and (3) deposition made before Cuthbertson at Macquarie Harbor and entered in SC 1837–38 (ii). Except where noted I have taken all direct Pearce quotes from (3).
25. For the chronology and route of Pearce’s escape, see Sprod, Alexander Pearce, pp. 64–81.
26. “Knopwood Narrative.”
27. W. S. Sharland, “Rough Notes of a Journal of Expedition to the Westward …,” in Ta
smanian Parliament Legislative Council Papers, 16, 1861, as Survey Office Reports, 1861, 1, p. 6.
28. “Knopwood Narrative.”
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. For Pearce’s second escape from Macquarie Harbor, with Cox, see Sprod, Alexander Pearce, pp. 99–106, based on evidence of John Barnes to SC 1837–38 (11), Appendix 1, 56(d).
32. Barnes to SC 1837–38 (11), Appendix 1, 56(d), p. 316.
33. Pearce’s “Bisdee” confession, Jun. 20, 1824, in Sprod, Alexander Pearce, p. 105.
34. On the emergence of Van Diemen’s Land bushrangers and their relative immunity from capture and prosecution, see Robson, Hist. Tas., Chapter 6, esp. pp. 79–83.
35. West, Tasmania, p. 364.
36. On Brown, Lemon and Scanlan, see Paterson to Castlereagh, May 7, 1818, HRA 111:685–86; Robson, Hist. Tas., p. 80; and Charles White, History of Australian Bushranging, vol. 1, pp. 3–4
37. Macquarie’s proclamation: May 14, 1814, HRA viii:262 and 264–65. Davey’s proclamation of martial law: West, Tasmania, p. 360, and Robson, Hist. Tas., p. 81.
38. Petition to Davey by Humphrey, Sept. 30, 1815, CON 201:79. Robson, Hist. Tas., p. 88.
39. Howe to Davey, CSO 1/223:5399, a contemporary copy of Howe’s lost original. I have amended the spelling and punctuation slightly, for clarity’s sake. Davey mentioned in dispatches that the original was “written in blood,” presumably that of a sheep or a kangaroo Of course there were few inkwells in the Tasmanian bush, but one may still admire Howe’s dramatic gesture.
40. Wylde to Macquarie, encl 2 in Macquarie to Bathurst, Jul. 17, 1821, HRA x:512–15.
41. Ibid.
42. Macquarie to Bathurst, Jul. 17, 1821, HRA x:509.
43. On Brady, see ADB entry and bibliography; Robson, Hist Tas., pp. 141–44; George Boxall, The Story of the Australian Bushrangers, p 41ff; and White, Australian Bushranging, vol. 1, pp. 40–53.
44. John Barnes, testimony in SC 1837–38 (11), Minutes, p. 41.
45. The Australian, Nov. 11, 1834.
46. T. L. Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, vol. 1, p. 9.
47. Bourke to Goderich, Mar. 19, 1832, HRA.