by Graham Seal
flanel Shirt 1
Belts 2 flanel compforter
1 anchifes pocket
2 caps
2 purs
1 comb
2 Cotton shirts and Looking glass 1
4 needles and thread
6 anks
He had also received from Myra while in gaol at Portsmouth a box of food and personal items. In it were
Three Spice loaves – 2 lbs Cheese
One Pork pie – one mince pie
2lbs sugar – 2 tea 2 do.
Packet of Spice – quire of paper
4 books – 1/2 doz pidoz pipes
Bottle of Tobacco – parcel of Tobacco
Old favourite Tobacco pouch
Thread needles Buttons &c
Three bottles of ink & pens
2 Fig cakes – Apples oranges and lemons
Bottle of pickels 11/4 lbs Bacon
Alfred sends his little pocket knife
Most of the food was long gone by now and would not have been of much interest to a seasick man in any case. After a day or two of mal de mer, William might have looked at his gaunt and strained features in the looking glass. But the shirts, handkerchiefs, purses, comb, sewing gear and scarf would not have been of much use at that time. No doubt he would find good work for them when he finally did reach Western Australia. In the meantime the tobacco pouch and pipe would have been his only comfort.
Myra had done her best with the meagre resources available to her. Accompanying the box she had written:
I have sent you all that I possibly could and am only sory that it is not in my power to send you more.
She had received a letter from William.2 After reading it Myra visited William’s sister, Elizabeth. She donated ‘two of the smallest spice loaves’ to the cause of William’s diet and also gave Myra a shilling towards the cost of sending the loaves. Myra then went to William’s other sister, Rebecca, with the letter but ‘she could not do anything towards it’.
This must have angered Myra, though she almost manages to hide her hurt, going on to tell William that she had also visited Emma who had ‘sent the other spice loaf and mince pie’. Mindful of William’s soul, and no doubt prompted by her pious husband, Elizabeth had also sent a bible and a religious pamphlet. Elder brother John donated two books. A friend, it seems, had contributed an ounce of tobacco and Myra had also walked to Sheffield in hope of finding a clasp knife to send. Unable to do so, young Alfred had presumably donated his ‘little pocket knife’ to whatever might have been his father’s greater need.
As well as the expenses involved in obtaining these items, the postage costs from Sheffield to Portsmouth were severe. She writes:
If Saturday had been pay day I might perhaps have been able to get a trifle more for you.
Already she was finding it hard to make ends meet. Myra had paid 4/6 for transport of the box to Bristol and John was going to pick up the cost of mail from there to William in Portsmouth Prison. Altogether an expensive undertaking, especially so for a family that had lost its chief breadwinner and was now to be at least partly dependent on the charity of relations, some of whom were clearly not Myra’s friends. Although Myra was in work, she also had the task of managing the children and coordinating communication with her ‘Dear husband’, now torn away from home, family and country and transported across rough seas to a very different place.
While Surgeon Saunders had the responsibility for the health, food and discipline of the gaolers and the gaoled aboard the Norwood, Mr William Irwin had the care of their education, their morals and their souls. Irwin was an experienced convict ship voyager, this being his sixth passage as a religious officer. He wasted no time in establishing the means by which he would take care of the religious, moral and even the intellectual lives of his charges. The main instrument of his office was the ship’s weekly journal, titled Norwoodiana.3 The first issue, for the week ending 27 April 1867, stated, using the royal plural that ‘We desire to elevate the moral sentiments, and arouse the intellectual faculties of those amongst whom we circulate’.
This inaugural edition of Norwoodiana established the basic structure of the following 10, plus one supplement, that would appear remorselessly each week of the long voyage out. There was an introductory article, usually on some improving topic, by Irwin himself, followed by information about Western Australia, the ship’s progress during the week, snippets of news and announcements of the social and entertainment events. Sometimes there were poems and later various pseudonymous contributions, notably ‘Adventures in India’ by ‘An Old Soldier’ that appeared at some length from Issue 4 until the end of the voyage. Many of the issues even aspired to pictorial dimensions, with better or worse drawings of Gage Roads, Fremantle, Aborigines and, as the ship neared its destination, an emu.
As with the more practical responsibilities and methods of Dr Saunders, Religious Instructor Irwin also had his regime to superimpose upon that laid down by the surgeon. There were bible readings, a choir, poetry readings (Wordsworth) and amateur dramatics (Hood and even Shakespeare). News of these frequent events was spiced up with various articles by Irwin on charity, home, self-respect and other such moralising topics, all aimed at providing the convicted with firm guidelines on their future careers in the Swan River and, if they were lucky and industrious enough, afterwards.
The pages of Irwin’s periodical reveal a pompous but right-minded man who took the safekeeping of souls very seriously indeed. Even the entertainments provided for the passengers and – if only incidentally – for the convicts were described in a mixture of serious prose and what may have passed at the period for lively wit. Describing an amateur performance, presumably by the passengers, held on 7 June, Irwin writes:
On Friday afternoon of the 7th inst; a novelty was produced in the shape of a ‘Nigger Entertainment (a la Christy’s Minstrels)’ on the upper deck. The performers appeared in appropriate ‘Nigger’ attire, their visages and hands having undergone the operation of ‘Corking’.
Several songs were sung with the accompaniments (ordinarily imagined to be indissolubly connected with Ethiopian Serenaders) of Bones, tamborine, banjo, Pipe and Concertina – and some dances of a very energetic and sole inspiring character were performed. The entertainment was enlivened by some excellent conundrums and witticisms, and everything considering there had been little or no rehearsal passed off remarkably well.
While the witticisms and conundrums may not have been the usual entertainment of William Sykes and his fellow transports, William certainly witnessed this performance and even thought it worthy of mention in his sparse journal.
7 niggers friday night
What William and the other convicts made of this uplifting activity, often couched in what to most of them would have been obscure phrases such as ‘rude Boreas’ and ‘piscatorial pastimes’, is difficult to know. Presumably, like William, they related well to the blackface minstrel show, long a popular form of entertainment. But there is little evidence that any of them contributed to the pages of Norwoodiana. We hear only about a small selection of their activities and attitudes through the eyes and the words of Irwin himself. Probably most were either totally unimpressed. Some would have been scornful of Irwin’s well-meant but sanctimonious efforts, which included such exhortations as
Attention is particularly directed to the careless manner in which many of the hammocks are slung for the night. The lashings should be carefully examined and tested every time the hammock is slung. Several lately have given way & some narrow escapes of serious consequences experienced.
Despite these almost inevitable characteristics in someone of Irwin’s time, place and station, there are hints that he harboured some progressive, even faintly radical, views. In one article on the freedom of the press, Irwin passionately declared the rights of what would now be called the fourth estate: ‘We owe no allegiance to those in power beyond the respect and esteem they seem anxious to deserve and our columns are open to all without favour of a
ffection … The only censor we acknowledge is Common Sense – the only influence we bend to, is good taste.’
Irwin also had strong views on the damaging nature of the game laws, an increasingly common stand among the middle classes of the time. William Sykes would have read with considerable interest and perhaps some bitterness the article Irwin wrote in Norwoodiana 2, titled ‘A Step in the Right Direction’:
We beg to inform our Norwoodian readers that the restrictions which have hitherto existed upon our constitutional rights and liberties are now to a certain extent removed inasmuch as, that worst of all offences (to the landed proprietor) is, or may now be, considered at an end, and the almost capital crime of poaching done away with. This modification of the Game Laws (laws under the injustice of which the people of England have suffered so long)…
But despite these evidences of progressive attitudes, Irwin shared the prevailing views of his contemporaries with regard to the indigenous occupiers of the land to which the Norwood was bound. In response to queries about the existence or otherwise of Aborigines in Western Australia, Irwin hastened to assure them, in accordance with the prejudice of the period, that
the ‘blackfellow’ is still very numerous and not likely to become extinct for a length of time, if, what appears to be a law of nature – the savage in course of time succumb to their whiter but more civilized brother and the vices and evil habits which he adopts so much more readily, than any good white man may try to teach him.
The religious instructor followed this with what purported to be but was in fact a hopelessly inaccurate short vocabulary of the local language.4 If the new arrivals were to have any conversation with the native Mooro, Beeloo and Beeliar people of the Perth region, they would have to conduct it in pidgin English or sign language. But the voyagers, their ignorance barely lit by Irwin’s well-intentioned attempt at education, were not to know this.
Between them, Surgeon Saunders and Religious Instructor Irwin erected an efficient regulation of time, space, attitude and behaviour for those in their charge. What they did, when, how and where they did it were all controlled by an elaborate network of rules designed to make each convict continually aware that he was a number rather than a name. It was the perfect preparation for those who were on their way to years, decades and lifetimes of administrative and judicial direction of their every waking – and even sleeping – hour.
8 A Weight of Woe
the outlandic Ocan the tropic the medary island the cannary Island the peak of tinereff along the coast of affrecca and other peak mountains
From the diary of William Sykes aboard the Norwood, May 1867
With all these carefully prepared constraints upon her cargo the Norwood ploughed on towards the extremities of the earth. William Sykes recorded some of the highlights. From their vantage point at the other end of the ship’s hierarchy, Saunders and Irwin dutifully filled in log books. Together they tell the story of this voyage to incarceration, misery and desolation.
After the first few days and nights of rolling swells and seasickness, the company aboard was quickly settled into the prescribed routines. Such clockwork regulation, combined with the inevitable monotony of day after day of empty sea and sky, soon took its toll. Saunders reports the first trouble within two weeks. Not a convict but one of their guards was insubordinate. This established a pattern of insubordination, pilfering and threatening language that was shared by both the guards and their charges.
William Sykes does not appear in either Saunders’s or Irwin’s records. He was either too well behaved or too clever to be caught. Perhaps he took part in Irwin’s reading and writing classes. Although he had been taught the basics of literacy at Sunday School and Day School, William was no scholar. Regardless, he set down those incidents that impressed him for one reason or another. His diary, unlike the surgeon’s log, registers Easter, perhaps prompted by the sermonising and moralising of Irwin, who was assiduous in carrying out his responsibilities. The Canary Islands and Tenerife were only glimpsed off the weather beam on 11 and 12 May but William was impressed enough with the sight to accord it a place in his chronicle.
Between Easter and 21 May there is a long silence in William’s shipboard journal. He may have been in the same shattered state as most of the passengers and convicts, the result of seasickness. Seasickness sounds like a fairly mild, almost trivial, discomfort but it is a profoundly disturbing and unpleasant experience to which most sufferers would prefer death. True seasickness is depressing and disabling and it takes some time to recover from a serious bout. When William did begin again on the single sheet decorated with a flower impress that we are calling his diary, he laboriously inscribed his first observation:
Caut a shark on the 21st of May
It was a bad omen. The diary goes on to tell us of
a Death the same Day a funeral the 22nd.
James Smith had been ill when he came aboard. Saunders treated him as best he could but it was soon obvious to the doctor that the man was dying. He took his time. Saunders’s log records his progressive weakening and ‘sinking’ each day up to his last, mentioned by William. Irwin dutifully recorded Smith’s death at 6 pm on Wednesday, 22 May. Smith was buried hastily at sea, the tropical clime making rapid disposal of the corpse a priority.
The City of Shanghai, a clipper bound for England, hove to the day after Smith’s burial and took letters for what had once been home. William may have written to Myra, though he probably did not. He had already proved a fickle and irregular correspondent, as Myra would hint in later letters. Coming across another ship in these well-traversed sea lanes was not as unusual as might be thought, but it is unlikely that many passengers, voluntary or otherwise, would have been prepared with letters ready.
One life is extinguished, another takes its place. On 26 May William noted:
A birth
Saunders recorded it also, with some satisfaction as deliverer of the baby to the wife of one of the guards, Francis Lindsey. William’s diary continues:
Crossed the line the same day 26
which was Sunday
Irwin was pleased to be crossing the Equator on God’s day, making mention of it in his Sunday service. Whether or not the sailors carried out their rather less reverential ritual of Crossing the Line, a mock initiation of voyagers into the court of King Neptune, a parodic ceremony traditionally enacted at the crossing, no one tells us. In fact, except for suspicions that a couple of sailors stole bottles of ‘medical Comfort Wine’, we hear almost nothing of the ship’s 39 crew members from Sykes, Saunders or Irwin. Although the convicts, their guards and the other passengers were carefully counted in the Norwood’s manifest,1 no one bothered to name or even number the mariners. The convicts and their keepers were, as effectively as possible, segregated from the sailors, their shantying and their customs. We know from other sources, short-and long-haul ditties, that sailors on the Australia run worked their ships with the traditional shanties for hauling ropes: ‘Blow the Man Down’, ‘Reuben Ranzo’, ‘Heave Away My Johnny’ among others. The convicts may even have heard the old favourite ‘Goodbye, Fare Ye Well’ drifting into their cramped quarters from time to time, an unwelcome reminder of their fates:
It’s now we are hauling right out of the dock
Good by fare ye well, goodbye fare ye well.
Where the boys and the girls on the pierhead do flock.
Hurrah me boys, we’re bound to go.
They give three cheers while the tears downward flow,
Good by fare ye well, goodbye fare ye well … 2
But at least there was an extra tot of wine and special rations for all as a commemoration of what was, as well as the centre of the globe, the halfway point of the three-month voyage.
The telegraphic terseness of William’s diary now becomes almost poetic in its notations of the maritime geography traversed by the Norwood as she ran down the west coast of Africa:
the outlandic Ocan the tropic
the medary isla
nd the cannary
Island the peak of tinereff
along the coast of affrecca
and other peak mountains
8 days brees. Steady wind 2 June
good wind 3 making preparation
for ruff wether
By 4 June, somewhere in the vast ocean between the landmasses of Africa and South America, the Norwood was opposite Rio de Janeiro – or ‘Eugener’, as William rendered the unfamiliar name of Brazil’s major port:
4 oppisit Eugener
Brassil out of the tropic 6 fair
wind not much of it …
Unlike those ships that brought earlier generations of the cast out to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, those bound for the Swan River no longer put into Rio and Cape Town for fresh supplies and respite from the sea. Instead, they picked up the Roaring Forties for a fast passage east, across the Indian Ocean to the Western Australian coast, a trick the old Dutch East Indiamen had learnt well in the previous centuries of trading to the Dutch colony of Batavia (now Indonesia). But it was always a dangerous run in those days. It was fatally easy to miscalculate a ship’s position. The rugged Western Australian coast is littered with the wrecks of VOC (Dutch East India Company) ships, some carrying treasure and some bequeathing tales of blood-crazed savagery and legends of castaways mingling with the Aborigines, centuries before the gaol at Botany Bay was founded.
The coast remained treacherous in 1867, but improvements in timekeeping and navigation made it much easier and safer for Master Bristow to determine where he and his ship were on the great empty Indian Ocean and to set a course for Gage Roads outside Fremantle.
There were still dangers though. A few days after William recorded the ‘fair wind’, he wrote in his diary:
