Logistically, the proposed expedition was inherently different from the transport of soldiers or marines for the purposes of a military campaign. Phillip’s expeditioners were settlers not fighting forces, and they were mostly unwilling at that. And they would have to endure a voyage whose length and duration would be greater than that of any previous undertaking, whether of convicts, soldiers or settlers. When they arrived at their destination, there would be no receiving station. And they would need to be sustained and provisioned for some years before they could expect to be self-sufficient. All of these features of the expedition and many more necessitated planning and foresight of a wider dimension than had previously been required.
The principal body with which Phillip dealt was the Navy Board but the organisational structure that constituted the Georgian navy was like a multi-headed hydra. The Navy Board was actually larger and older than the Admiralty itself. It was the body responsible for the acquisition, design and re-fitting of ships as well as the supply of all sorts of naval stores. It carried out the conversion of the merchant ships assigned to Phillip at Deptford, the oldest of the Royal dockyards on the Thames. The Victualling Board, second only to the Navy Board in size and complexity, was another with which Phillip was required to deal. It maintained victualling yards and stores at all of the dockyard ports on the Thames and at Portsmouth and Plymouth. Equally important was the Sick and Hurt Board. It was constituted by commissioners who were responsible for the appointment of surgeons and the provision of medical supplies to the navy, including anti-scorbutics. Then there was the Board of Ordnance, which was responsible for the supply of armaments and munitions to the Royal Navy and the British Army. Finally there was the Board of Longitude, of which the Reverend Dr Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, was the most influential member.
Throughout the long process of preparation, Phillip’s abiding concern was the maintenance of the health of the convicts and marines during the voyage. This was a matter of professional pride but there was more to it than that. Phillip’s resolve on this issue owed much to his humanity but even more to his realistic understanding of the magnitude of the task ahead. In March 1787 after many months of frustrations, Phillip took his anxieties directly to the Home Secretary, imploring Sydney for assistance. He wrote, he said, to prevent his character as an officer from being called into question should the consequences that he feared be realised. He pointedly explained that ‘the garrison and the convicts are [being] sent to the extremity of the globe as [if] they would be sent to America – a six weeks passage’. He stressed that he had repeatedly pointed out the consequences that must be expected from the men and women being crowded on board such small ships for such a long voyage. He was anxious, he told Sydney, to avoid the possibility ‘that it may be said hereafter the officer who took charge of the expedition should have known that it was more than probable he lost half the garrison and convicts crowded and victualled in such a manner for so long a voyage’.
Experience had given Phillip a keen appreciation of the problems of sickness and disease. As a naval Officer, he had seen much of it, especially at Havana in 1762. His real fear was scurvy, a disease which on long voyages was the Royal Navy’s greatest threat. In 1783 on the Europe, Phillip was part of a convoy that saw approximately 1800 seamen affected on the return journey from Madras to Cape Town. And all sailors knew of the appalling loss suffered by Commodore George Anson in 1740–44 during his voyage around the world, when more than 1000 seamen died from scurvy and only four were killed by enemy action. Although the threat to seamen was great, Phillip knew that the threat to convicts who were confined, undernourished and ill-treated would be even greater – and never more so than on a sea voyage of unprecedented length. His persistent demands exasperated Navy Board officials, some of whom complained that each day and each week he was continuing to increase the orders for stores, implements, medicines and supplies. One senior official, Captain George Teer, expostulated to the Board that Phillip’s constant additions were so frequent that he felt ‘obliged to put a stop to his wishes still to add’.
Scurvy was both a worry and a mystery to the navy. Although its diabolical consequences were well known, its causes were not, and by the 1780s there was still no consensus about how to treat it. The disease usually commenced with listlessness and swelling gums. Without effective treatment it then progressed to rotting teeth and pain in all external and internal parts of the body. In its final stages, the gums grew putrid with a cadaverous smell, the teeth became successively yellow, black and rotten, and gangrene ensued. Contagion then spread rapidly and death soon followed, usually preceded by one or all of diarrhoea, dysentery, consumption, convulsion, trembling, voiding of blood ‘upwards and downwards’ and putrefaction of the liver, spleen and pancreas. By 1747, the Scottish physician James Lind had established, without knowing why, that oranges and lemons were the most effective antidote for scurvy. But although he published several papers on the subject, the naval medical establishment – effectively the Sick and Hurt Board – dismissed his evidence as unproven and anecdotal. It adhered to malt, wort, sauerkraut and elixir of vitriol – the first having no anti-scorbutic effect whatsoever, the last being no more than a diluted solution of sulphuric acid tempered with alcohol and spices and the others having only limited value. It was not until 1795 that the Admiralty finally acted on Lind’s findings and ordered the general issue of lime juice.
In the meantime, astute captains such as Phillip adopted an instinctive approach based on their own broad and empirical experience. Phillip had seen the benefits of oranges without knowing the medical pathology. In this respect he was ahead of his time and followed Lind rather than Cook, who had placed his faith in malt. Cook, to be fair, also adopted a regimen of fresh meats, vegetables and salad greens, as well as the drinking of water, the taking of exercise and the ventilation of bedding and sleeping quarters. Cook was remarkably successful but he did not have the added burden of carrying almost 800 convicts on six separate transport ships for whom the provision of fresh air and exercise presented practical problems. Phillip was prepared to follow Cook’s measures scrupulously, but wanted an effective anti-scorbutic. The authorities had not yet accepted Lind’s recommendations and continued to recommend malt and wort. There was nothing Phillip could do, at least while he was in England. He knew, however, that he could obtain fresh provisions including citrus fruits in Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. And he was furnished with Treasury bills to enable him to do so.
Eleven vessels were entrusted to Phillip’s overall command. Two of them – the Sirius and the Supply – were minor armed naval ships that were trifling in size when compared to large ships of the line such as the Europe, Phillip’s last command. The Sirius was nominally a sixthrate vessel because she was the flagship of the fleet and was commanded by a post captain. But at just 512 tons and carrying only ten guns and 136 men, she would not otherwise have been rated. The Supply was smaller still at 170 tons and carried just eight guns and 50 men. In her previous role, she had done little more than ferry naval stores between the Thames and the Channel ports.
Neither the Sirius nor the Supply had ever undertaken a voyage of the scale now proposed, or anything like it. Nor had any of the nine transports and store ships, which were simple ocean-going merchant vessels chartered by the navy – modest in size but comparatively newly built and seaworthy. The largest was the Alexander, which was the same length as the Sirius – just over 100 feet. Each of the transports had been inspected, surveyed and selected by naval officials following a competitive tender process. Although they were blunt-nosed, roundbodied and sailed poorly, speed was not an essential consideration and they were regarded as the best qualified to undertake the hazardous voyage. The six transports required considerable physical alteration by the shipwrights to transform them from merchant vessels built for commerce to prison ships suitable for carrying hundreds of convict men and women.
Phillip approved the introduction of three principal secur
ity measures on the transports. Thick bulkheads were constructed from side to side between decks. These were effectively walls behind which the convicts were confined. They were studded with nails. Holes known as loop holes were built into the bulkheads to enable the marines to fire at the convicts in case of unrest. There were no portholes. The hatches were also secured. This was achieved above decks by cross-bars, bolts and locks. Between decks, the hatchways were ‘rail’d around from deck to deck with oak stanchions’ to prevent access. Finally, an exercise area above decks in front of the mainmast was rendered secure on each transport. It was separated from the quarterdeck by a vertical wooden wall surmounted by iron spikes and constructed horizontally across the deck. At the base of this barricade, two small cannon were fixed in position, facing the exercise area.
Gidley King said that the transports were fitted up for the convicts the same as for carrying troops, except for the security arrangements. A letter to The Gentleman’s Magazine marvelled at the administration’s minute attention to detail, citing as one instance, ‘They now have comfortable beds. Formerly when the convicts were transported by contract to America, there were no beds.’ However, these were not beds as we know them. They were a sort of bunk each about six foot square, constructed in rows against the walls of the section of lower deck where the convicts were held. Multiple convicts occupied each of these communal sleeping spaces. As for the stowage of goods, the standard form of container was the wooden barrel, varying in size but not in proportion. Thousands of firkins, casks, puncheons, pipes, butts and hogsheads were laden on the ships. Their maintenance and repair were the responsibility of the ‘cooper’ and they were secured among the ballast deep in the ship’s holds beneath the lowest deck.
Not everything could be stored in barrels, however. Wood and coal had to be conveyed, as well as livestock, plants and seeds, tools and agricultural equipment. Ten thousand bricks were included, as well as Surgeon Worgan’s piano and 4200 bibles, prayer books, testaments, psalters and catechisms. Dogs, including greyhounds belonging to Phillip, and cats belonging to the chaplain, were also accommodated. The inclusion of greyhounds is not altogether surprising, although the number attributed to Phillip by one officer seems dubious. They were fashionable eighteenth-century accoutrements, often depicted in portraits by Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds and their imitators, sitting loyally beside their masters or peeking out from behind billowing skirts. Lieutenant Ralph Clark complained that at Portsmouth, Phillip ordered that all dogs belonging to the officers and marines should be sent ashore although ‘he himself carrys out between thirty and forty’.
Planning the voyage’s route required much consultation. Phillip studied Cook’s charts, especially those of his second voyage, and had access to charts in the Admiralty’s possession recording voyages in the Indian Ocean by English and Dutch East India Company vessels. It is a measure of the importance of the expedition, and the uncertainty of navigation beyond the Cape of Good Hope, that the Board of Longitude also provided Phillip with a chronometer. Although the sailing routes in the Atlantic Ocean were well established, and the trade winds and currents were well known, every assistance would be needed in the waters of the Southern Ocean and the far reaches of the southern Indian Ocean. In the 1780s the use of a chronometer to determine longitude was not at all widespread. Only in the 1790s did the Royal Navy begin to supply them to ships in distant waters. Even by 1802 only seven per cent of British warships had a chronometer. And they did not become standard issue until the 1840s. The chronometer given to Phillip was ‘K1’, named after Mr Kendall – the same one taken by Cook on his second and third voyages.
This rare jewel of timekeeping was one of the Admiralty’s most valuable possessions. The principle by which it determined longitude was deceptively simple, depending only on knowing the time at a place of known longitude, such as Greenwich. On a rolling deck at sea, a mechanical clock set at Greenwich time would behave aberrantly – slowing down, speeding up or stopping altogether. And en route from a cold country to a tropical zone, the clock’s parts were affected not only by changes in temperature, humidity and barometric pressure but also by subtle variations in the earth’s gravity from one latitude to another. The chronometer, however, could reliably report the time at Greenwich regardless of the ship’s location or the sea conditions or the prevailing weather and humidity. Longitude could then be established by comparing Greenwich time with the time at sea – itself determined by using a sextant to observe the altitude of the sun. Each hour’s difference between the time at Greenwich and that of the ship marked a progress of fifteen degrees to the east or west. Hence the saying ‘time is longitude and longitude time’.
Although Cook called K1 ‘our trusty friend’ and ‘never-failing guide’, it was not yet a commonly accepted substitute for celestial navigation by the lunar distance method, to which most captains still faithfully adhered. This method depended on the use of lunar distance tables published in the Nautical Almanac and updated annually. The process was not straightforward, however, and required celestial observation and trigonometrical calculation in conjunction with the use of the tables. Cook’s legendary biographer JC Beaglehole said that the ‘ordinary sea captain would take about four hours to work out the result’ using the lunar tables. Calculation was piled on calculation and adjustment upon adjustment – something that the writer Simon Winchester once described as ‘ever-more entangled filigrees of arithmetic’. Among other complications, allowance had to be made for the nearness to the horizon of the celestial object from which a reading was being taken. And further adjustments were required to counter the phenomenon of lunar parallax.
Phillip was characteristically cautious in his approach to the chronometer. He knew that, like any mechanical timepiece, it was only as good as the care taken to ensure that it was wound regularly. As soon as he received the chronometer from the Board of Longitude, he had it immediately checked by the headmaster of the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth. Then before setting sail, he specified a rigid routine for the noonday winding at sea. William Bradley, the first lieutenant on the Sirius, described the procedure as if his life depended on it:
Capt. Phillip, who with Capt. Hunter or Mr Dawes were always to be present at the winding of it at noon, and it was ordered to be the duty of the Lieutenant who brought 12 o’clock to see it done, and the officer who relieved him was not to take charge of the deck ‘til he was informed that it was done, the sentinel at the cabin door was also ordered to plant himself inside the cabin on hearing the bell ring at noon, and was not to go out to be relieved until he was told or saw that the timekeeper was wound up.
In addition, Phillip intended that while at sea, constant crosschecks of the chronometer’s results should be carried out against the readings obtained by the lunar distance method. This was to be the responsibility of Lieutenant Dawes, the unofficial astronomer to the expedition. He was not one of Phillip’s chosen naval officers but a volunteer and marine lieutenant whose credentials had been promoted by Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne. During the voyage Dawes would be assisted by Bradley and the midshipmen. The notes and comparative calculations of one of the midshipmen, George Raper, remain in existence. Alarmingly, they show frequent variations and differing results, which were naturally assumed to be the fault of the chronometer rather than any human error in the arithmetic of the young gentlemen who carried out the calculations.
In his preparation for the expedition Phillip clearly contemplated the proposed settlement’s strategic and commercial potential. He expected that the colony would in time become ‘the Empire of the East’ and a future ‘seat of Empire’. More than once he expressed the opinion that it would be ‘of the greatest consequence to Britain’. In his early months at Port Jackson he wrote a lengthy report to Sydney expressing ‘no doubt but that this country will prove the most valuable acquisition Great Britain ever made’. But there are indications that he may also have had in mind the colony’s capacity for the improvement of the human c
ondition. A gulag, where men and women simply worked and withered in useless and remote isolation, was not intended – not by the administration and certainly not by Phillip. In a private despatch to Sydney from Port Jackson he described himself as ‘serving my country and serving the cause of humanity’.
The nature of transportation to New South Wales, and its difference from the previous system, partly explains why Phillip saw himself as serving the cause of humanity. The convicts sent to New South Wales were to be used to build a settlement and establish a selfsupporting community that would serve their own as well as British interests. They were a public investment underpinned by the prospect of their intended future emancipation. In contrast, the convicts transported to Virginia and Maryland had been components in a system that was essentially a private commercial business. The only public concern was in their removal from Britain. Once the merchants had taken custody of the convicts and signed the requisite certificates and bonds, the convicts ceased to be a government responsibility and were forgotten. They were on-sold in bondage to serve the balance of their prison terms in local plantations and households, effectively as white slaves, beyond the government’s control and without its supervision.
Under the New South Wales experiment, Phillip was empowered to release the convicts whenever their good conduct and disposition to industry were deserving of favour. In each case, he was to grant them land ‘with all convenient speed’. Even the precise acreage was stipulated. Single men were to receive 30 acres and married men 50 acres. A surveyor of lands, Augustus Alt, was appointed to administer land grants. It was hoped that the convicts would be improved and reformed; that the men would become peasant farmers, the women would raise children, and the land would be settled. These goals were infused by a utopian idea of a simple rural society, without money, where convict men and women would become reborn through hard physical labour and subsistence farming.
Arthur Phillip Page 14
