SMALLPOX SYDNEY 1789 – A VERY CONVENIENT THEORY – IT WAS THE MACASSANS STUPID
1788 -Sydney Cove, July: ‘Yesterday twenty [20] of the natives came down to the beach, each armed with a number of spears, and seized on a good part of the fish caught in the seine [trawling nets]…several stood at a small distance with their spears poised ready to throw them if any resistance was made’. Governor Arthur Phillip to Under-Secretary Evan Nepean, July 10, 1788, Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales
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‘They [Aborigines] are not pleased with our remaining amongst them, as they see we deprive them of fish, which is almost their only support’ . Governor Philip to Evan Nepean, September 1788
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Sydney- 1789, January: ‘From the intelligence of our friends and connections we had been entirely cut off, no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th of May 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961
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Sydney – 1789, April: ‘An extraordinary calamity was now observed among the natives…pustules similar to those occasioned by smallpox were thickly spread on the bodies but how a disease, to which our former observations had led us to believe them strangers could have introduced itself, and have spread so widely, seems inexplicable’. Tench. ibid.
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‘The epidemic not only killed a significant proportion of the indigenous population but also destabilised society…there is no easy answer to the fraught quest of [Aboriginal] clan boundaries in Sydney, particularly because an epidemic in 1789 caused massive disruption of the indigenous peoples in the area‘. Pauline Curby, Randwick [A History], 2010.
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‘It is true our surgeons brought out variolous matter in bottles’. Tench. ibid
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Why did Britain invade New Holland? See: Proximity not Distance drove Britain’s invasion of New Holland.
‘The voyage to and from Chilli and Peru would be Easy and Expeditious for a sailing from Port Jackson…the proximity of a Colony in that Part of the World to the Spanish settlement and the coast of Chile and Peru…makes it an important Post, should it ever be necessary to carry…war into those seas’. Captain John Hunter RN, Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, 1793, Bibliobaazar ed. 2008
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‘By a strange coincidence, smallpox reached Port Jackson at about the same time as the First Fleet’. Cassandra Pybus, Black Founders, UNSW Press, 2006
1787 England, May 13: Commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip RN the ‘First Fleet’ – a large amphibious squadron of eleven (11) ships charged with the invasion and conquest of New Holland, now Australia, sailed from Portsmouth ‘bound for Botany Bay’.
Botany Bay – 1788 January: The fleet’s 1300 English men, 221 women and 50 free children arrived at Botany Bay within thirty-six (36) hours between the 18th and -20th of January 1788.
Sydney Cove – January 26: Governor Phillip selected a ‘snug’ cove nine (9) miles north of Botany Bay deep within a vast harbour, Port Jackson, for permanent settlement naming it for Lord Sydney the then Home Secretary.
Between ‘6 am and 6 pm’ on the 6th of February the women and free children of the ‘First Fleet’ disembarked from the ships that had been home for nigh on a year.
1788 – Sydney Cove, February 7: Proclamation Day – Without consent of its First Nations’ Peoples or seeking a treaty with them, Captain Arthur Phillip RN proclaimed British Sovereignty over New Holland from ‘Cape York in the northern most extremity…to South Cape’. See: Australia – Britain By A Short Half-Head Captain Arthur Phillip & Comte Jean-Francois La Perouse
MAP
‘Up to 1,500 Macassans a year would reach [northern] Australia and they did influence the Aborigines by trading iron axes, tobacco, cloth, knives and glass. They taught the Aboriginal of those parts how to make dug-out canoes, more substantial than the simple [southern Sydney] water-craft of stringy-bark’. Stewart Harris, Treaty, It’s Coming Yet, 1979
The invaders did not find the Gadigal Peoples familiar with iron axes, knives, tobacco, cloth or glass. Yet when introduced these items were valued highly – especially the hatchet.
1770: Twenty (20) years earlier, 28 April 1770, Lieutenant James Cook RN and, Joseph Banks, the Royal Society’s celebrated botanist while voyaging in the southern oceans on HMS Endeavour, entered Botany Bay and stayed nine (9) days.
Both men made much of the Aborigines preference for nakedness. Yet neither made mention of pockmarks the unmistakable signature of a previous episode of smallpox.
Endeavour then sailed north and Cook continued to chart the entire coastline of eastern Australia.
Near Cooktown in the far north Endeavour ran onto a coral reef and was holed below the water-line.
While Endeavour underwent repair Cook and Banks spent approximately ten (10) weeks, interacting with the ‘natives’ of the area.
Again mention was made of nakedness but none of pock-marking. Banks however did note a stand-out difference.
‘Their canoes’ he wrote ‘were the only things in which we saw a manifest difference between the Southern and Northern people’.
Watkin Tench initially described the Sydney craft as; ‘despicable.. nothing more than a large piece of bark tied up at both ends with vines’.
Tench soon changed his mind. He came to value the Sydney craft for their shallow draught, superior buoyancy, speed and far better suited to local conditions than the fleet’s unwieldy heavy wooden row-boats.
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‘It is true, that our surgeons had brought out variolous [smallpox] matter in bottles’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed.L.F.Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961
1789 – Sydney, April: ‘April is the cruellest month’. Smallpox appeared among Sydney’s Eora peoples in April 1789 killing one-half of Aboriginal families.
‘Smallpox had decimated the indigenous population probably not brought by the Europeans, as first feared, but possibly introduced by Indonesian traders visiting the far northern coast of Australia’. Pybus. op.cit.
Surely hard evidence – ‘variolous matter in bottles‘ – can not be dismissed so summarily. Cassandra Pybus, an influential Australian historian’s ‘strange coincidence… probably not brought by the Europeans’ simply does not cut it.
The ‘strange coincidence’ theory seems to have come from a report of the virus’ appearance at Sumatra sometime in the 1780s.
Smallpox was endemic in England yet Tench’s evidence was unequivocal; ‘a disease, to which our former observations had led us to believe them strangers’.
On the naked body, given the way smallpox expresses; the soles of the feet, palms of the hands, face, eyes – affecting sight – attacking mucous membranes making swallowing difficult, makes its appearance a ‘coincidence’ highly problematic.
Additionally, given Australia’s great distances and challenging terrain, when added to strict protocols observed by Aboriginal Peoples when entering the country of another clan, for either peaceful or hostile purposes, make it well nigh impossible for Aborigines infected by ‘Indonesian traders’ to travel from the extreme north of the continent to its far south, to coincide neatly within the known time-frame.
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As for the difference Joseph Banks reported; ‘their canoes were the only things in which we saw a manifest difference between the Southern and Northern people’.
It is to Mary Bryant a remarkable young convict woman that we owe the description of these Carpenterian craft; ‘large canoes fitted with sails and fighting stages capable of holding 30 men each’.
The absence of similar canoes in the Sydney area provides strong evidence; ‘the tyranny of distance’ protected Aborigines in the far south of the continent from tribal incursions, welcome or otherwise, from its far north.
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1791 – Timor, March: In March 1791 Mary her convict husband William Bryant, their two (2) small children Charlotte and Emmanuel, with seven (7) male convicts stole a ships’ boat – Governor Phillip’s own cutter – escaped from Sydney and rowed to Timor. See: The Great Escape in a boat with no name
What followed was an epic tale of triumph and tragedy. Before journey’s end Charlotte aged four (4) and baby Emanuel died as had Mary’s husband.
1793 – London, May: Mary lived to stand again in the dock of the Old Bailey. In May 1793,together with four (4) remaining survivors, all were charged with ‘return before expiry’.
Queen Anne of Great Britain, the last Stuart Monarch of Great Britain, died in 1714. Although she had 17 pregnancies she out-lived all of her children and was succeeded by King George 1 (‘German George’).
King George the First made amendments to the Transportation Act in 1717/18. Among them, the labour ‘service’ of a convicted criminal, banished from ‘the realm’, could be sold for the term of his or her sentence.
If a criminal was reprieved death on condition of exile ‘from the realm’ for a given period, usually 7 years or 14 years or for life returned ‘to the realm before expiry’ of that sentence they were to be hunted down and executed. See: Pandora’s Box- The Mutiny on the Bounty and the Botany Bay Escapees
James Boswell the celebrated English diarist and lawyer fought for and, against all odds, won freedom for Mary Bryant and the surviving ‘Botany Bay Escapees’. See: Boswell Goes Into Bat for the Botany Bay Escapees
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1789 -Sydney, April: ‘A smallpox epidemic struck the Aboriginal population around Sydney. Inexplicably, the epidemic did not affect the European population, but [Governor] Phillip estimated that it resulted in the death of 50% of the local Aboriginal community’. People of Australia, Macquarie Reference Series, Ed. Bryce Fraser, 1998
The devastating consequences of the smallpox epidemic; ‘massive disruption…destabilised society’ are not in dispute.Neither are the circumstances that surround it – famine.
‘No communication whatever having passed with out native country since the 13th May, 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth…during which long period no supplies, except what had be procured at the Cape of Good Hope by the Sirius, had reached us’ .Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson,1961
Starvation pitched black and while populations against each other in a desperate struggle for survival. Abandoned and Left to Starve at Sydney Cove from January 1788 to June 1790
‘Last summer…these people…would neither eat shark or stingray, but the scarcity of fish in the winter, I believe obliges them to eat anything that affords the smallest nourishment’ Governor Phillip dispatch to Lord Sydney, 28 September 1788. Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales. Vol 1 & 2
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In America Britain’s deliberate use of smallpox as a biological weapon during the American War of Independence in America 1775-1783 remains a subject of interest.
‘Nothing instilled fear in American soldiers and civilians so much as the prospect that the British might use smallpox as a weapon war…Rumours of germ warfare at Boston had circulated as early as March 1775.Elizabeth Fenn. ibid.
In Australia its origin remains contested.Any attempt to attribute accountability is seen as ‘myth-making’. Most Australia’s historians make do with second-hand assertions; ‘thought to be smallpox’ ‘probably’ ‘possibly’ ‘strange coincidence’.
‘Galgala [smallpox] shaped the next few years of conflict, if not the outcome of the wars, and was a critical factor in the British military occupation of the Sydney region’. Stephen Gapps. ibid.
Despite the world’s current experience with Co-vid the use of smallpox as a weapon of war against our First Nations’ Peoples is still seen as mere ‘speculation’.
Even though many First Fleets’ senior naval and marine officers, including Governor Phillip himself, along with Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN, Dr. John White the fleet’s chief medical officer, Marine Major Robert Ross, Captains Watkin Tench, David Collins, Lieutenants George Johnston and William Dawes, served during America’s Revolutionary War of Independence (1775-1783), yet Australian historians pay scant attention to the ‘speckled-monster’.
‘Speculation that has taken attention away from the devastating effects on the society and culture of the Sydney people’. Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars, 1788-1817, NewSouth Press, 2018
EPILOGUE
‘The British strayed from their settlement only in armed parties….Once smallpox entered the equation this changed. Perhaps half of the [Aboriginal] population of the Port Jackson region died in a few months’. Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, The British Period 1788-1870, Cambridge University Press, 2001
‘You cannot overate the solicitude of H.M. Government on the subject of the Aborigines of New Holland. It is impossible to contemplate the condition or the prospects of that unfortunate race without the deepest commiseration. Still it is impossible that the government should forget that the original aggression was ours’. Lord John Russell to Sir George Gipps, 21 December 1838, Historical Records of Australia, Series, Vol. XX.
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mmmmm’From time to time throughout history, peoples and governments around a world have used micro-organisms as efficient and cost-effective weapons of mass destruction’. Professor H. Crawford, The Invisible Enemy, Edinburgh University Press, 2000
Sydney – 1790, January: ‘Every morning from day-light until the sunk, did we sweep the horizon, in the hope of seeing a sail’. Tench, ibid.
‘The epidemic not only killed a significant proportion of the indigenous population but also destabilised society…there is no easy answer to the fraught quest of [Aboriginal] clan boundaries in Sydney, particularly because an epidemic in 1789 caused massive disruption of the indigenous peoples in the area‘. Pauline Curby, Randwick [A History], 2010.
Despite Australia’s 2019-2022 current experience with Co-vid the use of smallpox as a weapon of war against our First Nations’ Peoples is seen as ‘speculation’ – fake news.
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1789 – Sydney – May 9: At dawn on the 9th of May 1789 a sail did appear‘ in the entrance to Port Jackson’.
‘The night [8 May 1789] carried us [HMS Sirius] by daylight in sight of the entrance of Port Jackson, and in the evening we entered between the heads of he harbour and worked up to Sydney, where we anchored before dark after an absence of 219 days – 51 of which we lay in Table Bay Cape of Good Hope, so that, we had only been 168 days in describing that circle’. John Hunter Journal, Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, 1793, Bibliobaazar ed. 2008
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By year’s end, [General] Thomas Gage had turned over his command to Sir William Howe, but talk of germ warfare had failed to subside instead, the evidence mounted’. Professor Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782, 2001
The lives of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples stand testament to the ‘massive [biological disruption [that] destabilised their society’.
POSTSCRIPT
Proximity not distance drove Britain’s invasion of New Holland.
‘The voyage to and from Chilli and Peru would be Easy and Expeditious for a sailing from Port Jackson…the proximity of a Colony in that Part of the World to the Spanish settlement and the coast of Chile and Peru…makes it an important Post, should it ever be necessary to carry…war into those seas’. John Hunter Journal, Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, 1793, Bibliobaazar ed. 2008
Captain Hunter in HMS Sirius had departed Port Jackson for Africa and the Cape of Good Hope on the 2nd of October 1788 He was to buy food and medicines from the Dutch at Cape Town in the hope of saving the Sydney settlement from disaster.
Hunter the fleet’s principal navigator took Captain Cook’s 1770 charts. He chose to sail a leaky Sirius into the Southern Oceans, guiding her through ‘islands of ice’ through tumultuous Drake Passage, around Cape Horn to Cape Town.
Just ‘before dark…having circumnavigated the globe Sirius returned to Sydney Cove with some medicines and 127,000 pounds of flour.As Hunter sailed up the harbour he was astonished to see black bodies lying along the shoreline.
‘Captain John Hunter, commander of the Sirius, wrote in his journal that initially the tribes of the Port Jackson region met the settlers of the First Fleet with almost unrelieved hostility.
‘You cannot overate the solicitude of H.M. Government on the subject of the Aborigines of New Holland. It is impossible to contemplate the condition or the prospects of that unfortunate race without the deepest commiseration. Still it is impossible that the government should forget that the original aggression was ours’. Lord John Russell to Sir George Gipps, 21 December 1838, Historical Records of Australia, Series, Vol. XX.
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Tags: Aborigines, canoe, First Fleet, Invasion, mary bryant, smallpox, starvation