SMALLPOX – DEAD ABORIGINES DON’T EAT – STARVATION & SMALLPOX – JANUARY 1788 TO JUNE 1790
‘The body of the [Aboriginal] woman showed that famine, superadded to disease, had occasioned her death. But how a disease to which our former observations had led us to suppose them strangers could at once have introduced itself, and have spread so widely seems inexplicable’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1961
1787 – Portsmouth, May 13: A large expeditionary force, eleven (11) ships commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip RN, sailed from England to invade the island continent of New Holland. See: Apollo II, Fly Me To The Moon
1788 – Botany Bay, January 20: Within thirty-six (36) hours between 8-20 January the ships of the ‘First Fleet’ were at anchor in Botany Bay, New Holland, now Australia.
HMS Supply first to arrive immediately played out her ‘seine’ trawling nets.
‘While the seine was hauling some of them [Aborigines] were present…No sooner were the fish out of the water than they began to lay hold of them as if they had a right to them, or that they were their own’. Dr John White, Chief Medical Officer, First Fleet Journal, Oxford City Press, 2011
1788 – Port Jackson, January 21: Taking Captain Cook’s 1770 charts Phillip accompanied by officers and surveyors set off in three (3) ship’s long-boats hoping to find a more defensible site.
Sydney Cove: That afternoon they sighted the towering headlands of Cook’s Port Jackson’. Rowing between them they found themselves in a vast harbour.
Phillip settled on a protected deep-water cove naming it for the Home Secretary Lord Sydney.
Botany Bay – 23 January: ‘The boat[s] returned on the evening of the 23d…it was determined the evacuation of Botany Bay should commence the next morning.
24 January: ‘I [Tench] rose at the first dawn… when the cry of “another sail” struck on my astonished ear’. Tench. ibid.
Two (2) French ships, La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, commanded by Jean-Francois La Perouse, appeared off the entrance to the bay. HMS Sirius’ deck- mounted cannon forced La Perouse back out into raging seas.
Sydney Cove – 25 January: The weather kept Captain Phillip inside Botany Bay until the afternoon of the 25th January. Aboard HMS Supply he quit Botany Bay, just before dark Supply dropped anchor in Sydney Cove.
January 26 Sydney Cove: Next morning at first light Phillip landed with a detachment of marines. A flagstaff was built and the Union Jack raised. By nightfall the remaining English ships were riding alongside Supply. See: Australia Britain by a Short Half-Head – Captain Arthur Phillip & Comte Jean- Francois La Perouse
‘Owing to the multiplicity of pressing business necessary to be performed immediately after landing, it was found impossible to read the public commissions and take possession of the colony in form, until the 7th of February ‘. Tench. ibid.
La Perouse was without doubt Governor Phillip’s most ‘pressing business’. His solution was extraordinary.
31January: To stymie the French Phillip advised Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN, his close friend and most trusted ally, he was to establish an even more isolated ‘Robinson Crusoe’ settlement. on a mere dot of an island two (2) weeks sailing time away.
On his second Pacific voyage Captain James Cook RN in 1774 had named this mere dot, two (2) weeks sailing time away, Norfolk Island.
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Sydney – 6 February: At the end of the first week of February 1788 the fleet’s two hundred and twenty-one (221) women and their fifty (50) free children were rowed ashore from what had been their home for just on a year.
7 February – Proclamation Day: The following day, in the name of King George 111 without consent of its First Peoples or entering into treaty them, with all the ‘pomp and circumstance of glorious war‘, Governor Phillip’s commissions were read.
Britain claimed ‘Sovereignty’ over New Holland ‘from Cape York in the most northern extremity….and adjacent islands….to South Cape’.
Norfolk Island,14 February: Just on dusk a week later HMS Supply slipped out through Sydney Heads and disappeared from view. See: Asleep In The Deep
Botany Bay – 10 March: La Boussole and L’Astrolabe departed for the voyage home to France. They were never seen again.
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‘Before leaving Botany Bay [25 January] Phillip had messages painted on the rocks of Bare Island near which the Fleet had been moored, to guide the ships which Phillip believed were following closely from England, around to Sydney Cove’. Bruce Mitchell, The Australian Story and Its Background, Cheshire Press, 1965
But no ships arrived. It became clear white survival would depend on appropriating foods, especially fish and the plants that for millennia had sustained local Aboriginal families. Abandoned and Left to Starve January 1788 – June 1790
‘Our customary method was to leave Sydney Cove about four in the afternoon and go down the harbour and fish all night from one cove to another. We made 23 hauls of the seine in one night’. Jacob Nagle, The Nagle Journal 1775 to 1841, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, New York ed. John C. Dann, 1988
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‘In determining the daily ration no distinction was drawn between the marines and the [570 male] convicts…the standard adopted was that of the troops serving in the West Indies’. Wilfrid Oldham, Britain’s Convicts to the Colonies, ed. Hugh Oldham, Library of Australian History, 1990‘. See: All The King’s Men – Criminals of the First Fleet
The Royal Navy Board mandated without ‘distinction…weekly ration to the marines and male convicts after their arrival in New South Wales: 7 pounds of bread or 7 pounds of flour; 7 pounds of beef or 4 pounds of pork, 3 pints of pease, 6 ounces of butter, 1 pound of flour or one-half pound of rice’. Oldham. ibid.
March: A livestock inventory revealed; ‘7 horses, 2 bulls, 6 cows, 29 sheep, 19 goats, 74 pigs, 18 turkeys, 29 geese, 35 ducks, 122 fowls, 87 chickens and 5 rabbits’. Collins. ibid
Both bulls and all but one (1) cow wandered off into the bush. The lone cow, separated from her companions, went mad was shot and eaten.
March 13: ‘The commissary made a deduction of 12 lb [5.5kg] per hundred-weight [50.8] kg of beef and 8 lb [3.5 kg] in the hundred-weight of pork (100 lb) of beef must be cut into 28 pieces and 104 lb of pork cut into 56 pieces’. Marine Captain David Collins, An Account of the Colony of New South Wales, Ure Smith, Sydney.
June: In winter fish left Sydney Harbour to spawn in warmer waters; ‘the fish caught were trifling…they [Aborigines] seem very badly off for food, not having any fish’. Arthur Phillip to Joseph Banks, 2 July 1788, Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales.
July: ‘They [ Aborigines] are now much distressed for food, few fish are caught & I am told that many of them appear on the Beach where the Boats go to haul the Seines, very weak and anxious to eat the small fish, of which they made no account in the Summer nor can we give them much assistance as very few fish are now caught, & we have many sick’.Op.cit.
August 22: There was still butter in the store-house but ‘our stock of flour bore no proportion to the salt beef and pork’.
‘These people [Aborigines] last summer would neither eat shark nor stingray; but the scarcity of fish in the winter, I believe, obliges them to eat anything that affords the smallest nourishment….they certainly are not pleased with our remaining amongst them, as they see we deprive them of fish, which is almost their only support’. Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney
September: By the end of September 1788 eight (8) of the nine (9) chartered vessels, Alexander, Charlotte, Friendship, Scarborough, Prince of Wales, Lady Penrhyn, Borrowdale, Fishburn had left for the return to England. See: Asleep in the Deep – Merchantmen of First Fleet
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October: One (1) lb of flour was deducted from the ration.
Africa – 2 October: HMS Sirius departed Sydney on a lone perilous voyage to the Cape of Good Hope. He chose the route via the Southern Oceans, Drake Passage, around Cape Horn to Cape Town, to buy urgently needed flour and medicines from the Dutch. See Proximity Not Distance Drove Britain’s Invasion of New Holland
Sydney – November: With warmer weather fish returned in numbers and trawling began again.
‘The governor went to the spot [where]…. a party of natives threw several spears….they were fired at; it having now become absolutely necessary to compel them to keep a greater distance from the settlement’. David Collins. ibid.
December – 1788: ‘We fired upon them’. Two(2) starving populations competed for the same resources but without equity.Phillip wrote that ‘unabated animosity continues to prevail between the natives and us’. Bladen
1789
‘No one in the colony caused Phillip more trouble than Major Ross. Of all Phillip’s problems, including those of the terrible famine of 1789 and 1790, probably none was so harassing as the persistent antagonism, both covert and open, which Ross pursued against him’. John Moore, The First Fleet Marines 1786 – 1792, Queensland University Press, 1987
1789 – January: The new year brought greater uncertainty and ever deepening despair to the beleaguered settlement. Convict and soldier alike displayed anxiety and depression.
A sharp rise in thieving from the government storehouse and from each other was met with escalating brutality.
‘Nine knotted leather strands at the end of a short whip; after the first few strokes the knots began to bite into the flesh at the triangle’. Jack Egan, Buried Alive, Sydney 1788-92, Allen & Unwin, 1999
Records show both men and women, tied half-naked to the back of a cart or at the triangle, were given 25, 75 – 150 – 300 – 500 – up to 700 lashes with the cruel cat- o’-nine-tails.
Major Robert Ross’ attitude towards Governor Phillip bordered on open rebellion. His aggressive stance permeated all ranks of the marine garrison. See: Rules of Engagement – Take Two – Governor Phillip & Major Ross
1789 – March 18: ‘A key was found broke in one of the locks at the public store house’. Tench. ibid.
Seven (7) marines using counterfeit keys had, over an extended period, systematically robbed the government store-house.
27 March: ‘An awful and terrible example of justice took place….Six marines, the flower of our battalion, were hanged by the public executioner…for having at various times robbed the public stores of flour, meat, spirits, tobacco, and many other articles’. Tench. ibid.
One narinem thought to be the instigator,ratted. He gave ‘king’s evidence’ against the others.
James Freeman the young convict ‘public executioner’ not yet twenty-one (21) who, a year earlier ( 29 February 1788) had been caught in a Faustian bargain – kill or be killed, put them to death. See: Catch 22 James Freeman
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1789 – April: ‘A smallpox epidemic struck the Aboriginal population round Sydney. Inexplicably, the epidemic did not affect the European population, but Phillip estimated that it resulted in the death of 50% of the local Aboriginal community. People of Australia, Macquarie Series, Ed. Bryce Fraser, 1998.
The majority of the fleet’s seven hundred and fifty (750) prisoners and their military guards came from densely populated London and urban centres of population where smallpox was endemic.
‘It is true, that our surgeons had brought out variolous [smallpox] matter in bottles’. Tench ibid.
Some of Phillip’s ‘people’ would have acquired life-long immunity by way of a prior ‘natural’ infection.
‘Not one case of the disorder occurred among the white people either afloat or on shore although there were several children in the settlement’. Samuel Bennett, Australian Discovery and Colonisation, Vol. 1 to 1800, facsimile edition, 1981
However upwards of fifty (50) under-nourished English children and infants, twenty-two (22) of these said to have been born during the voyage, would have been as susceptible as local Aborigines yet none were infected.
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‘An infectious disease which immunises those who survive, and which returns to a given community at intervals of five (5) to ten (10) years, automatically becomes a childhood disease…where a disease strikes a virgin community…old and young die indiscriminately’. William Mc Neill Plagues and People, Doubleday & Co. 1976
Captain James Cook RN and Joseph Banks, the noted Royal Society’s botanist, had disembarked at Botany Bay in April 1770 from HMS Endeavour. They stayed nine (9) days before moving north.
Both remarked on the Aborigines preference for nakedness. Both recorded detailed physical descriptions. Ceremonial scarring, old and recent battle scars were noted but no mention was made of pock-marks, the tell-tale evidence of prior exposure to smallpox.
On the Great Barrier Reef, Endeavour ran onto a coral reef and was holed below the water-line. Seventy-three (73) days were spent in the north careening and repairing Endeavour. Nakedness was again noted but no mention was made of pock-marking.
‘Since survivors from smallpox infection acquired life-time immunity, it follows that no epidemic could have occurred for the preceding 70-odd years before 1789, taking us back to near the beginning of the 18th century’. Professor Noel.G. Butlin, Close Encounters of the Worst Kind, Working Papers in Economic History, Australian National University, 1982.
First Fleet journals similarly are full of references to the nakedness of the Gadigal Peoples. None of the fleet’s physicians mention pock-marks.
But in 1789 these medicos diagnosed a familiar disease; ‘the existence of the malady which our former observations had led us to suppose them strangers could no longer be doubted’. Tench. ibid.
‘Variolous matter for use by inoculation was brought out from England in bottles with the First Fleet but it is not known whether this material was ever used. If it was, it may have been the source of the disastrous epidemic of smallpox amongst the Aborigines in 1789′. Dr Bryan Gandevia, Tears Often Shed, Child Health and Welfare in Australia from 1788, Pergamon, 1978.
The 1789 viral outbreak was highly selective. Only Aboriginal families were affected. It expressed as William McNeill described when ‘a disease strikes a virgin community the old and young died indiscriminately’.
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‘For the Sydney people to lose around 50 per cent or more of their military capability in a few weeks was a crushing blow…Galgala [smallpox] determined the shape of the next few years of conflict, if not the outcome of the [frontier] wars and was a critical factor in the British military of occupation of the Sydney region’. Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars 1788-1817, NewSouth Press, 2018
Brazil: Joseph Jefferies was born on New York’s Staten Island. He joined as crew of HMS Supply when, August -September 1787, the ‘First Fleet’ put into Rio for water and supplies.
‘Not one case of the disorder occurred among the white people…But a North American Indian…took the disease and died’. Bennett. op.cit.
When the outbreak surfaced at Sydney in April 1789 Jefferies was on Supply at Norfolk Island. The island was free of smallpox. See: Joseph Jefferies – From New York to Rio and Old Sydney Town – One, Then There Was None
Motive: Survival – the weekly ration in April 1789; ‘to every child of eighteen months old and to every grown person two pounds of pork, two pounds and a half of flour, two pounds of rice, or a quart of pease.
When the age of this provision is recollected, its inadequacy will more strikingly appear. The pork and rise were brought with us from England: the pork had been salted between three and four years, and every grain of rice was a moving body, from the inhabitants lodged within it’. Tench. ibid.
Means: ‘variolous matter in bottles’
Motive: Survival
Opportunity: nothing in storage was secure as an unknown number of counterfeit keys were still in circulation when ‘the malady…could no longer be doubted’.
‘Old and young’ Eora Aborigines‘die[d] indiscriminately’. William Mc Neill. ibid.
1790
1790 – January 1: ‘Every morning from daylight until the sunset did we sweep the horizon in the hope of seeing a sail…No communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th of May 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth.
Famine was approaching with gigantic strides and gloom and dejection overspread every countenance. Men abandoned themselves to the most desponding reflections, and adopted the most extravagant conjectures.’Tench. ibid.
Again winter was at hand. Phillip drew on the terrible example of the previous year. The death of 50% of Eora’s Peoples had saved ‘his people’ from starvation.
Governor Phillip ordered 50% of Sydney’s white population be evacuated to Norfolk Island.
Sydney, March 6: HMS Sirius departed for Norfolk Island with one-half of Phillip’s ‘people’. HMS Supply, laden with supplies accompanied the flagship.
Lieutenant Gidley King RN would return to Sydney in HMS Supply to support the now ailing Phillip.
China: Captain Hunter RN was to sail Sirius onto China. There he was to arrange a rescue mission and return to England with urgent intelligence.
Intelligence – confirmation that proximity not distance drove the invasion of New Holland; ‘but the Sirius was not destined to reach China’. Tench. op.cit. See: Proximity not Distance Drove the invasion of New Holland.
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Norfolk Island – March 19: The island does not have a safe harbour. Its extremely hostile rocky shoreline and wild weather brought disaster.
After safely landing her evacuees Sirius caught by wild winds swung on her anchor and hit a submerged reef. Efforts to free her failed. Before Sirius broke-up in ‘pounding surf’ Supply was able to take off her crew and ferry them ashore without loss of life.
Sydney – April 6: ‘We were surprised to see a boat belonging to the Supply rowing towards us. I [Tench] saw captain Ball making an extraordinary motion with his hand, which too plainly indicated that something disastrous had happened.
At six o’clock in the evening, all the officers of the garrison both civil and military were summoned to meet the governor in council’.
The quarter-master reported on the supply position; ‘Salted meats until 2nd July, flour until 20th August, rice or dried pease [dahl] until 1st October… the pork had been salted between three and four years, and every grain of rice was a moving body, from the inhabitants lodged within it’.Tench. ibid.
After a discussion, its gravity can only be imagined, it was resolved Lieutenant Henry Ball would sail HMS Supply to Batavia, modern day Indonesia.
Ball was to buy food and medicines and charter a Dutch vessel to bring them to Sydney.
Jakarta – April 17: ‘We followed her with anxious eyes until she was no longer visible…everything which zeal, fortitude and seamanship produce, was concentrated in her commander.
‘Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war’ were no more, all our labour and attention were turned on one object – the procuring of food’. Tench. ibid.
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‘Whatever might be the cause, the existence of the malady could no longer be doubted’. Tench. ibid.
Non-indigenous Australia has yet to ask the question – was the disaster that unfolded in the form of smallpox in 1789 a direct result of Britain’s under-resourced invasion of the south-eastern coast of Australia?
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…once smallpox entered the equation this changed’. Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, The British Period 1788-1870, Cambridge University Press, 2001
Motive – means – opportunity: Was it deemed necessary to the survival of English men, women and children banished 23,000 km from their homeland?
‘Not one case of the disorder occurred among the white people either afloat or on shore although there were several children in the settlement’. Samuel Bennett, Australian Discovery and Colonisation, Vol. 1 to 1800, facsimile edition, 1981
‘Truth-telling’ surely Covid 19 has shown that together Britain and non-indigenous Australia must take the forensic knife to smallpox 1789 because ‘it was a critical factor in the British military occupation of the Sydney area’. Gapps. ibid.
EPILOGUE
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London Gazette Extract 1789
Sydney Cove -1790, June 3: Six (6) weeks after HMS Supply sailed for Jakarta a ship with ‘London on her stern’ dropped anchor in an empty Sydney Harbour.
The Lady Juliana with two hundred and twenty-six female (226) convicts was first of four (4) vessels of Britain’s second fleet. Neptune, Suprize, and Scarborough the death ships of ‘Britain’s Grim Armada’ arrived by the end of June 1790.
They brought another thousand (1000) males including one hundred and fifteen (115) officers and men, first contingent of the New South Wales Infantry Corps. Along with the unmistakable shadow of ‘insurrection’.
EPILOGUE
The second fleet, also bought news of home, of friends and lovers and news of revolution – The French Revolution. That news alone changed forever the future of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples.
Tags: Aborigines, crime and punishment, First Fleet, provisions, smallpox, starvation