Arthur Phillip

by Michael Pembroke

  Cape Town was the last outpost of European civilisation before the fleet would embark on the final leg to New South Wales. The little ships lay moored in Table Bay from mid-October until 12 November 1787. Phillip and his officers took lodgings in the town while the convicts remained on board, as did the merchant captains, some of whom held drinking parties and quarrelled excessively. It was a difficult, fractious time. Although there were some lighter moments, the period was marked by a sense of foreboding and a sense of urgency. English naval ships and East Indiamen had been calling at Cape Town since the seventeenth century to rest their sick and replenish their provisions en route to and from India. It was well known that Dutch hospitality was frequently grudging and rarely generous. And prices were invariably high. Phillip experienced this himself on the Europe’s return journey from India in 1783. And on this visit the Governor, Van de Graaf, used the excuse of a recent drought which he said had reduced the amount of grain that could be supplied to the fleet. Phillip sent Gidley King to the Governor for permission to purchase food and livestock. It took a week of repeated applications, explanations and judicious perseverance before the Governor and Council would accede to Phillip’s request.

  Although Van de Graaf complained of a shortage of grain, Phillip’s own enquiries of local traders revealed a different picture, entitling him to be sceptical. He wrote to Stephens at the Admiralty to say that, contrary to what had been represented to him, he had ‘found on enquiry that the last year’s crops had been very good’. Ultimately the fleet was supplied with 80,000 pounds of flour, 60 bushels of wheat and 800 of barley, as well as 18,000 pounds of bread. As to livestock and wine, permission was freely given but Phillip and his senior officers were dismayed by the avarice of the Dutch merchants who charged double or treble their usual prices. There was nothing they could do.

  Cape Town represented a very different civilisation from the one whose gaiety and charms had delighted Phillip’s officers in Rio de Janeiro. There was little liveliness in this Dutch settlement and no exuberant festivals; the prevailing atmosphere seemed fearful; and unlike Rio de Janeiro there were very few churches – only one for the Lutherans and one for the Calvinists. The immense flat-topped pelmet of Table Mountain formed a bleak and forbidding backdrop to what appeared to be a neat and excessively ordered township that was much buffeted by winds; so windy in fact that Table Bay proved to be an unsatisfactory harbour. For Phillip’s officers, Cape Town suffered by comparison with Rio de Janeiro. It did not seem at all picturesque and beautiful or ‘abounding with the most luxurious flowers and aromatic shrubs’.

  It was a cruel place as well. The thousands of slaves who constituted the economic foundation of the colony moved about the streets in fear. Their daily lives were governed by a Dutch ‘Slave Code’ that imposed a severe and unforgiving regimen. And in full view near the massive pentagonal fort that dominated the township was the site where punishments and executions were carried out each fortnight. Collins, who had a professional interest as the judge-advocate for New South Wales, viewed the instruments of execution with horror. There were wheels and crosses for ‘breaking’ criminals, a spiked pole for impalements and gallows for hanging. In Great Britain at that time the usual means by which the state took the life of a convicted felon was by hanging. The last person to be broken on the wheel was a Scot in 1604 and it was hardly ever practised before then. Impalement was unknown. The barbarism of the Dutch was unsettling. Its grim reality was evident when Phillip and his officers took lodgings. The mutilated body parts of a Malay slave who had run amok with a machete and been captured and broken alive on the wheel were still on display in the township, contributing to the prevailing sense of menace.

  Once the supply of provisions was secured, the remaining time at Cape Town became a constant bustle. As one midshipman wrote home ‘this is the last port … [and] it is right to take every advantage of it’. Phillip devoted himself to laying on as many provisions and as much livestock as could possibly be added. The ship’s carpenters were kept busy refitting the ships’ lower decks to accommodate more and more animals. Convicts were moved from one ship to another to allow more space for livestock and supplies. The ships had always been crowded but they now became thoroughly congested. Hundreds of animals were brought on board including large animals such as horses, cattle and pigs, as well as sheep, goats, geese, ducks and hens. And some officers found room for further livestock intended for their private use or consumption. On the decks of the Sirius alone, there were six cows, two bulls and sundry sheep, goats, pigs and hens.

  The reluctant gardener Francis Masson, who had first come to Cape Town in 1772 and was part of Sir Joseph Banks’ plans for the horticultural and agricultural development of New South Wales, was unwilling to join the expedition. But he at least assisted Phillip with the collection of flora. When the fleet departed, Masson wrote to Banks to say that ‘Phillip’s Cabbin was like a small Green House’. He informed Banks that as well as trees and plants from the Cape of Good Hope, Phillip was also taking many plants from Brazil including some rare medicinal species. They included ‘Ipecacuana’, presumably Psychotria Ipececuanha, whose dried root powder was highly regarded in Brazil as a treatment for dysentery and as an emetic, and ‘Julapa’, which must have been Mirabilis Jalapa, another medicinal plant whose powdered dried flowers were used by Brazilian Indians as snuff for headaches and as a root decoction to wash wounds and treat skin afflictions. Masson also referred to ‘Cactus Tuna’ on which cochineal insects were breeding. This must have been prickly pear (Opuntia), a genus in the cactus family, sometimes referred to by its Spanish name ‘tuna’. Grape vines, about which Phillip was rightly optimistic, were also added. In time, the grape would turn out to be an outstanding success. Stockdale attributes to Phillip the percipient observation that ‘In a climate so favourable, the cultivation of wine may doubtless be carried to any degree of perfection; and should not other articles of commerce divert the settlers from this point, the wines of New South Wales may, perhaps, hereafter be sought with avidity and become an indispensable part of the luxury of European tables.’

  When all was finally done, Phillip took his ships to sea again on 12 November, heading north out of Table Bay, past Robben Island with its melancholy history and back into the South Atlantic. In the first week the sailing was inconclusive as the contrary winds and currents off Cape Agulhus slowed the fleet considerably. Then when the ships finally emerged and headed southeast, Phillip announced that he was changing the sailing arrangements. This came as a surprise to his officers, especially his most senior officers Major Ross and Captain Hunter. Some complained later of Phillip’s secrecy. But in fact, Phillip had planned the alteration before the fleet’s departure from Portsmouth and Sydney had authorised it in advance. Thus, approximately 100 leagues east of the Cape, Phillip moved to the Supply, taking with him the chronometer, Gidley King and Lieutenant Dawes. Also joining them were six artificers and a few convicts with carpentry and trade skills. He left Hunter behind in command of the Sirius with its great cabin stuffed with seedlings and plants and its menagerie of animals taken on board in Cape Town. He ordered the better sailers in the convoy – the Alexander, the Scarborough and the Friendship – to accompany him, if possible. But if they could not keep up, Lieutenant Shortland, the government agent for the transport ships, was instructed to make his own way with them as best he could. The Sirius would lead the remainder of the convoy. Phillip hoped to make haste, unencumbered by the wallowing store ships and slower transports. His objective was to arrive at Botany Bay a fortnight ahead of the rest of the convoy.

  All were now aware that they were leaving the known world for a state unknown. And some of them engaged in melancholy reflection, poignantly contrasting what lay ahead with what they were leaving behind. Looking back later, Collins wrote that ‘The land behind us was the abode of a civilised people; that before us was the residence of savages. When, if ever, we might again enjoy the commerce of the world was doubtful and uncertain.’<
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  The potential for ignominious disaster could not have been lost on Phillip. At a future date, Jeremy Bentham, the British philosopher and social reformer, who had a vested interest in his own prison design known as the panopticon, would parody transportation to New South Wales, highlighting the uncertainties of convict exile. He illustrated his point with an imaginary sentence imposed by an imaginary judge: ‘I sentence you, but to what I know not – perhaps to storm and shipwreck – perhaps to infectious disorders – perhaps to famine – perhaps to be massacred by savages – perhaps to be devoured by wild beasts. Away – take your chance – perish or prosper – suffer or enjoy: I rid myself of the sight of you!’ In the next five years, Phillip would encounter almost everything that Bentham foretold – shipwreck, disease, famine and Aboriginal attack, though there were no wild beasts. But before reaching New South Wales, the fleet had to cross an unknown and unfamiliar ocean.

  The Southern Ocean is the largest stretch of unbroken water on earth. It extends continuously around the globe separating America, Africa and Australia from Antarctica. Nowhere else does the sea roll uninterrupted around the world, nor the winds have such an unimpeded range. The zone that lies between approximately 40°S and 50°S is known as the Roaring Forties. In those latitudes the continuous flow of air in a westerly direction across the surface of the ocean is disturbed only by the southern extremity of South America. Without any wind from the opposite direction, the ocean current, powered by a consistent westerly wind, becomes continuous. And waves, which develop with the strength and consistency of the wind, almost never dissipate. The convergence of wind and current creates a perpetual swell that rolls inexorably towards the west coast of Tasmania then known as Van Diemen’s Land. In mid-ocean, the ever-present swell sometimes combines with local waves, borne out of gales and generated by storms, to create waves of extraordinary length and unmanageable height ‘extending well over a mile in length and achieving a vertical frontal face just before it breaks’. Wave heights of 60 feet are not uncommon. On rare occasions freak waves of considerably greater height occur.

  Into this treacherous ocean, Phillip ran down the 40th parallel of latitude on the diminutive Supply, endeavouring to keep within a few degrees either side. He knew from his study of Cook’s expeditions that this must bring him to Van Diemen’s Land, which lay between the latitudes of 40°S and 44°S. But the route due east along the 40th parallel was little known to Englishmen. This was the southern route to the East Indies, known since 1610 as the Brouwer Route after Hendrik Brouwer of the Dutch East India Company. The Brouwer route required ships to stay on an easterly course after rounding the Cape of Good Hope and sail with the westerlies ‘for a thousand miles’ before turning north for Bantam at the western end of Java. Whatever the precise meaning to the Dutch of ‘a thousand miles’ at that time, it became generally recognised that the islands of St Paul and Amsterdam were the marker points beyond which ships should change course and head north and northeast. These islands are almost precisely in mid-ocean, approximately halfway between the continents of Africa and Australia and nearly 2000 miles from either coast. Although the Brouwer route was of interest to the British, it remained a largely Dutch preserve, convenient for the Dutch trade to Java, but not particularly well known and hardly ever used by the British. India was Britain’s principal possession in south Asia and the passage along the East African coast, passing Madagascar on the inside or the outside, was the orthodox and commonly used route. It was the one that Phillip had himself taken on the Europe in 1783. That is not to say that some British ships of the East India Company did not venture along the southern route. In 1622 the Trial did so and suffered the misfortune of sailing so far east that she was shipwrecked on a reef near the Montebello Islands of Western Australia. She was not the only one, but such adventures were isolated and infrequent.

  This uncertainty of navigation was nervously reflected by Gidley King when in early December he noted in his journal that their situation in fog was perilous ‘as no Ship ever ran in this parallel of Latitude before, so far to the Eastward’. He was more or less right – except perhaps for stray ships of the Dutch and English East India Companies and the seventeenth-century voyages of Tasman, Vlamingh and Dampier. He would not have known of the secret French expedition led by de Kerguelen that landed on the West Australian coast in March 1772. By any yardstick, this was a route less travelled, still exploratory at least beyond St Paul and Amsterdam, and quite unlike the relative security of an Atlantic voyage or the well tried passage to India – for which navigators had many precedents and much accumulated information. On his second and third voyages, Cook had sailed in different waters closer to the Antarctic landmass. On this voyage, Hunter chose to take the Sirius a little further south than Phillip, hoping for even stronger winds. But in the latitudes in which Phillip and Hunter both sailed, they were in unfamiliar waters without wholly reliable charts and could not know what lay in front of them. They would only know that they had reached Van Diemen’s Land when it was sighted. On this leg of the voyage, the sailor’s proverbial adage that ‘it is better to trust a good lookout than a bad reckoning’ must have had a particular significance for the hapless seamen who were compelled to follow Phillip and Hunter.

  As the Supply sailed before the westerly winds, pushing further and deeper east into the unknown, Kendall’s chronometer and Maskelyne’s lunar table calculations were in frequent use. As often as possible, their results were anxiously compared one against the other and dutifully averaged. The differences between the ‘time-keeper’ and the ‘lunars’ were a constant subject of consideration. In these unfamiliar waters, latitude was not the issue. It could be gauged with reasonable approximation by the length of the day, the height of the midday sun or the position of known guide stars above the horizon. The real problem was longitude – knowing how far to the east the ship had sailed. That is why Phillip was entrusted with Kendall’s chronometer. Sometimes tempestuous weather caused matters to go awry. In mid December 1787, after days of strong gales and heavy seas, Gidley King’s journal recorded with alarm that ‘the Time Keeper was not thought of till about 6 o’clock in the Evening’. The next day Dawes could not conceal his anxiety when he wrote that ‘some very good altitudes were taken, from which the longitude of the ship was found – (supposing that the Time Keeper had not stopped)’. In fact, it had stopped and was down about an hour, something that added yet another layer of complication and necessitated ongoing adjustments to the readings derived from it. It was later alleged, contentiously, to be ‘useless for the rest of the passage’.

  On the Sirius, Hunter had to get by without a chronometer as he sailed across the Southern Ocean. This he did with great success. Sailors know the satisfaction gained when navigation by celestial observation leads with pinpoint accuracy to a ship’s arrival at the anticipated destination at the very time that was predicted. Hunter was entitled to be satisfied, a fact reflected in Collins’ subsequent words of admiration when describing the sighting of Van Diemen’s Land. Looking back a decade later, he wrote, ‘Nothing could more strongly prove the excellence and utility of lunar observations, than the accuracy with which we made the land on this long voyage from the Cape of Good Hope, there not being a league of difference between our expectation of seeing it, and the real appearance of it.’

  But it was not plain sailing, not for the Sirius or the Supply or for any of the merchant vessels. For many days during the journey across the southern Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean the ships experienced heavy gales and huge seas. For a great deal of the time the wind blew hard, generally ranging from the northwest to the southwest, sometimes veering around from the south bringing cold and misery. Severe gales were frequent and squalls were common. For day after day in late November, mid December, the week before Christmas and again until 3 January 1788, storms battered the ships. Gidley King recorded that from 18 to 24 December the very heavy sea that was running kept the Supply ‘almost constantly under water and renders the sit
uation of everyone on board of her, truly uncomfortable’. In the language of professional sailors accustomed by training and temperament to making weather observations muted by their objectivity, the seas at various times were heaving – running very high – frequently irregular. Sometimes they were the most confused and tumbling seas ever seen. Occasionally they were prodigious or mountains high. At least once they were a rage all over as white as snow.

  In the big seas and constant swells that confronted Phillip’s fleet, the most critical situation was in the troughs, in the valleys between the waves. If a ship wallows, losing some of her way at the bottom, she runs the risk that she will not have the speed to outrun the following sea. If the sea overtakes her, a mass of breaking water will crash over the stern. If that occurs, the ship will be ‘pooped’ as the sailors say. More likely than not, she will slew around, presenting her broadside, and the next sea will overwhelm her, turning her on her beam-ends, carrying away her masts and rigging and consigning all on board to a watery grave. On the crests of the waves the danger is different. As the crest breaks and curls, streaming in a white cascade down the leeward side of the wave, the air is filled with flying spume, the wind shrieks and the ship simply slides, practically rudderless, barely in control.