THE GREAT ESCAPE FROM SYDNEY COVE
1792 – March, Cape Town: ‘They [Botany Bay escapees] had miscarried in a heroic struggle for liberty after having combated every hardship and conquered every difficulty’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. F.L. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961.
1792 – Cape of Good Hope, March: Captain Tench, aboard HMS Gorgan en-route from Sydney to England with returning ‘First Fleet’ marines stranded at Sydney Cove since January 1788 was astounded when some of eleven (11) convicts who the previous year (March 1791) had escaped from Sydney, sailed into Table Bay, aboard Hoonwey a Dutch vessel as prisoners of Captain Edward Edwards RN . See: HMS Gorgan and the Botany Bay Escapees
The Admiralty had given Captain Edwards command of HMS Pandora and sent him to Tahiti where the Bounty mutineers had settled. He was to bring them to England to face court-martial. See: Pandora’s Box
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In April 1789 Lieutenant Fletcher Christian RN led a band of mutineers against William Bligh RN captain of HMS Bounty.
A few weeks after leaving a lengthy and lusty stop-over on Tahiti, in mid ocean, the rebels had turned on their captain.
Bligh and 17 crew were forced off Bounty into a longboat with so little food and water Fletcher Christian was sure all would perish.
For 42 days they rowed and drifted towards land Bligh proved a harsh taskmaster. He was however a skilled celestial navigator. No doubt his knowledge of the position of land in relation to certain fixed stars saved most of their lives.
In June 1789 the castaways reached the port of Coupang, West Timor. William Van Este, Timor’s Dutch governor though seriously ill, made Bligh and his men welcome offering them shelter, food and clothing.
Bligh was able to alert London of their survival and the whereabouts of Fletcher Christian and the mutineers – Tahiti.
The Mutiny on the Bounty became the most titillating, lurid maritime story of its day and filled Britain’s newspapers. Outraged the Admiralty demanded justice and responded with cruel Captain Edwards and HMS Pandora.
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1787 – Portsmouth England, 13 May: The ‘First Fleet’, a large squadron of eleven (11) ships, commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip RN – had sailed from England on 13 May 1787 – bound for Botany Bay, New Holland now Australia.
1788 – Botany Bay, January 20: Within 36 hours between 18 – 20 January 1788 the fleet anchored in Botany Bay. See: Lieutenant William Dawes and the ‘Eternal Flame’
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Although a convoy with a complement upwards of 1500 souls – 1300 men and 200 women was sold and, continues to be regarded so,Britain’s first ‘convict’ transportation fleet was a ‘blue – scarlet’ amphibious invasion fleet.
‘Four [4] companies of Marines …213 Marines commanded by Major Robert Ross…landed with the first Europeans to settle in Australia, and twenty-five [25] regiments of British infantry served in the colonies between 1788 and 1870.’ Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, Kangaroo Press, Sydney 1961
The fleet’s five hundred and eighty (580) male convicts, were rationed as ‘British troops serving in the West Indies’.
The transports Alexander, Prince of Wales, Charlotte, Scarborough, Friendship, Lady Penrhyn with three (3) supply ships Fishburn, Golden Grove, Borrowdale were crewed to a strict formula according to tonnage.
Together they would have been manned by approximately 440 merchant seamen. By September 1788 all except Golden Grove had departed for home.
‘Famine was approaching’. When the last of the transports left Governor Phillip ordered Captain John Hunter RN of HMS Sirius prepare and strengthen his ship for a lone voyage to the Cape of Good Hope.
Phillip had been assured ships and supplies would ‘shortly follow’ the ‘First Fleet’ but none arrived. See: Abandoned and Left to Starve January 1788-June 1790
1788 – Africa, 2 October: HMS Sirius departed at the beginning of October 1788. Captain Hunter sailed via the Southern Ocean following the route of Captain Cook’s 2nd voyage (Resolution Adventure) July 1772 – July 1775.
followed the southern route taken by
1790 – Sydney Town: The arrival of Waaksamheyd, a Dutch ship from Jakarta, in December 1790 brought detailed news of Captain Bligh’s success to the stranded survivors of the ‘First Fleet’.
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Two hundred (200) Royal Navy personnel crewed the king’s ships, HMS Sirius (150) HMS Supply (50). Officials (20) physicians (8) and one (1) newspaper correspondent travelled in nine (9) charted vessels.
Of the fleet’s two hundred and twenty-one (221) women, thirty-one (31) were marine wives. One hundred and ninety (190) female prisoners could best be described as camp-followers.
Many younger prisoners, certified free of venereal disease, were chosen specifically to satisfy the sexual needs of commissioned officers, both naval and marine,whose wives were not permitted to accompany them.
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‘The troops sent to garrison the colonies participated in the great struggle at the heart of the European conquest of this continent…British troops…fought in one of the most prolonged frontier wars in the history of the British Empire, and for the first half of their stay were probably more frequently in action than the garrison on any other colony besides that of South Africa.Peter Stanley.
Botany Bay: Captain Phillip did not like what he saw. The wide open bay would he knew be difficult to defend and fresh water appeared scarce.
Port Jackson, January 21: Next morning armed with Captain Cook’s charts from his visit in April 1770 he set off with surveyors to find Cook’s ‘Port Jackson’.
The scouting party set off in three (3) small cutters. Towards evening, dwarfed by its towering headlands, they rowed rowed into what Phillip described as; ‘the finest harbour in the world’.
Here’ he wrote ‘a thousand sail of line may ride in the most security’.
Sydney Cove: A ‘snug cove’ with a stream of fresh running water,where ‘ships can anchor so close to the shore that, at a very small expense, quays may be made at which the largest ships may unload’ was ideal for permanent settlement.
Botany Bay, 23 January 23: Phillip returned to the initial beach-head with news the ‘First Fleet’ had found its home. He ordered the ships ‘evacuate’ to Sydney Cove next day.
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RRRCaptain Phillip did not like what he saw. The wide open bay he knew would be difficult to defend and fresh water appeared scarce.Port Jackson, January 21: Next morning Phillip armed with Captain Cook’s charts from his visit in April 1770 set off with surveyors to find Cook’s ‘Port Jackson’.
The scouting party set off in three (3) small cutters. Towards evening, dwarfed by its towering headlands, they rowed into what Phillip described as; ‘the finest harbour in the world here’ he wrote ‘a thousand sail of line may ride in the most security’.
RRRRRSydney Cove: He selected a ‘snug cove’ where ‘ships can anchor so close to the shore that, at a very small expense, quays may be made at which the largest ships may unload’.
Botany Bay, 23 January 23: Phillip returned to the initial beach-head with news the ‘First Fleet’ had found its home. He ordered the ships ‘evacuate’ to Sydney Cove next morning.
24,January: ‘Astounded’ in the early hours of the 24th January, two (2) French ships La Boussole and L’Astrolabe , commanded by Comte de la Jean- Francoise La Perouse, arrived at the entrance to Botany Bay.
26Their unexpected arrival caused panic because the previous day an approaching storm had prevented the raising of ‘English Colours’ at Sydney Cove.
‘International law had developed the doctrine of discovery…Raising the flag was one of the actions recognised as an assertion of a prior claim against other colonial powers eyeing off the same land’. Larissa Behrendt, Settlement or Invasion, The Honest History Book, edited by David Stephens & Alison Broinowski, New South Wales University Press,2017
Sydney Cove, January 25: ‘Foul weather’ held up HMS Supply’s departure until mid-afternoon. Governor Phillip reached Sydney Cove on night-fall.
Saturday 26: At dawn Phillip landed with a few sailors and marines. A tree was brought down and a flag-pole built from which ‘English Colours’ – the Union Jack of Queen Anne – was raised.
‘Three volleys were then fired’ Phillip claimed England’s victory over France ‘the band played the first part of God Save the King between each volley‘.RRRRR
23 rrrrrrPhillip had ordered the English fleet follow him as soon as the foul weather abated. Their exit from Botany Bay was difficult and dangerous putting both ships and lives at risk.
Not until 8 pm that night- 26th – did the remaining fleet anchored alongside Supply.See: Only Men ? aside from seagulls how many white birds were on the ground at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 – Nonerrrrr
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‘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 1788’. Tench. ibid.
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1791 – Sydney, March: Two years later – 28 March 1791 – convicts Mary and William Bryant their baby Emanuel and daughter Charlotte ,born during ‘First Fleet’ voyage baptised at Cape Town by Chaplain Richard Johnson now aged three (3) years, with seven (7) trusted companions, oars muffled on their stolen row-boat – Governor Phillip’s cutter – slipped silently out through towering Sydney’s towering Heads into the open sea.
When
Although the convoy was sold and continues to be regarded as Britain’s first transportation fleet, with a complement upwards of 1500 souls – 1300 men and 200 women, it was a ‘blue – scarlet’ amphibious invasion fleet.
Two hundred (200) Royal Navy personnel crewed the king’s ships, HMS Sirius (150) HMS Supply (50). Officials (20) physicians (8), newspaper correspondent (1) travelled in nine (9) charted vessels.
Its five hundred and eighty (580) male convicts, were rationed as ‘British troops serving in the West Indies’. See: Convict Transportation – The Hulks Act & How The Mindset of Chattel Slavery Came To Australia in 1788
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The transports Alexander, Prince of Wales, Charlotte, Scarborough, Friendship, Lady Penrhyn with three (3) supply ships Fishburn, Golden Grove, Borrowdale were crewed to a formula. Together they would have been manned by approximately 440 merchant seamen.
Of the fleet’s two hundred and twenty-one (221) women, thirty-one (31) were marine wives. One hundred and ninety (190) female prisoner could best be described as camp-followers.
Many younger prisoners, certified free of venereal disease, were chosen specifically to satisfy the sexual needs of commissioned officers, both naval and marine,whose wives were not permitted to accompany them.
1788 – Botany Bay, January 20: Within 36 hours between 18 – 20 January 1788 the fleet anchored in Botany Bay. See: Lieutenant William Dawes and the ‘Eternal Flame’
RRRRRRccccc24/3/23Captain Phillip did not like what he saw. The wide open bay he knew would be difficult to defend and fresh water appeared scarce.Port Jackson, January 21: Next morning Phillip armed with Captain Cook’s charts from his visit in April 1770 set off with surveyors to find Cook’s ‘Port Jackson’.
The scouting party set off in three (3) small cutters. Towards evening, dwarfed by its towering headlands, they rowed into what Phillip described as; ‘the finest harbour in the world here’ he wrote ‘a thousand sail of line may ride in the most security’.
Sydney Cove: He selected a ‘snug cove’ where ‘ships can anchor so close to the shore that, at a very small expense, quays may be made at which the largest ships may unload’.
Botany Bay, 23 January 23: Phillip returned to the initial beach-head with news the ‘First Fleet’ had found its home. He ordered the ships ‘evacuate’ to Sydney Cove next day.ccccccc
RRRRRRcccccc January 24: ‘Astounded’ in the early hours of the 24th January, two (2) French ships La Boussole and L’Astrolabe , commanded by Comte de la Jean- Francoise La Perouse, had arrived at the entrance to Botany Bay.
24/3Sydney Cove: Although two (2) days before Governor Phillip had found a snug cove the where ‘ships can anchor so close to the shore that, at a very small expense, quays may be made at which the largest ships may unload’, the ideal site for permanent settlement he had failed to raise England’s ‘colours’.
‘International law had developed the doctrine of discovery…Raising the flag was one of the actions recognised as an assertion of a prior claim against other colonial powers eyeing off the same land’. Larissa Behrendt, Settlement or Invasion, The Honest History Book, edited by David Stephens & Alison Broinowski, New South Wales University Press,2017
26 Sydney Cove, January 25: ‘Foul weather’ held up HMS Supply’s departure until mid-afternoon. Governor Phillip reached Sydney Cove on night-fall.
Saturday 26:: At dawn Phillip landed with a few sailors and marines. A flag-pole was built ‘English Colours’ – the Union Jack of Queen Anne – was raised.
‘Three volleys were then fired’ Phillip claimed England’s victory over France ‘the band played the first part of God Save the King between each volley‘.
23 rrrrrrPhillip had ordered the English fleet follow him as soon as bad weather abated. Their exit from Botany Bay was difficult and dangerous. Not until 8 pm that night- 26th – did the remaining fleet anchored alongside Supply.See: Only Men ? aside from seagulls how many white birds were on the ground at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 – Nonerrrrr
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‘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 1788’. Tench. ibid.
23 -Monday, 28 December: Men, marines and those convicts fit enough to work under the lash began landing. The following ten (10) days were a whirlwind of activity preparing the tent settlement.
Marines, albeit with a reluctance urged on them by Major Robert Ross their commanding officer, supervised the convicts at work.
‘No one in the colony caused Phillip more trouble than Major Ross [and] the persistent antagonism, both covert and open, which Ross pursued against him’. John Moore, First Fleet Marines, Queensland University Press, 1987
February 6: Between 6 am and 6 pm the thirty-one (31) marine wives and one hundred and eighty-nine (189) women prisoners and the free children of both were rowed ashore from what have been home for just on a year.
February 7 – Proclamation Day: ‘The 7th of February was the memorable…spit and polish day…on which Phillip’s commission was read to the public’. Moore. ibid.
February 10: Wedding Day On a sparkling February morning Mary Braund and William Bryant both from Cornwell, who sailed to their exile in the transport Charlotte, stood dressed in their best with four (4) other couples.
Rev. Richard Johnson the fleet chaplain, who had baptised Charlotte their daughter at Cape Town, performed the first of many marriages he was to celebrate in European Australia. See: Four Weddings and many a Funeral
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1790 – 1 January, Sydney: ‘ No communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th May 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth. We had now been two years in the country, and thirty-two months from England in which long time no supplies [from England] had reached us. From the intelligence of our friends and connections we had been entirely cut off. Tench. ibid.
1790 Marine Captain Watkin Tench, whose ‘First Fleet’ Journal informs this narrative, greeted 1790 with intense trepidation. See: Abandoned and Left to Starve from January 1788 to July 1790
1790 – 6 March, Norfolk Island: In order to save the Sydney settlement from starvation and with; famine was approaching with gigantic strides’ Governor Phillip had his two (2) warships HMS Sirius and HMS Supply, evacuate 50% of ‘his people’ to Norfolk Island. See: Smallpox – Dead Aborigines Don’t Eat
1790 – China: HMS Sirius was to continue onto China for help. But Sirius caught by fierce winds, on the 19th of March, swung on her anchor. She, struck a submerged reef and sank.
The crew, one hundred and fifty (150) Royal Naval personnel were saved, but stranded on Norfolk Island. Earlier (February 1788) a satellite settlement had been established there to prevent La Perouse and his men settling there. See: A Band of Brothers and Mortal Enemies.
1790 – Sydney, April: Lieutenant Henry Ball RN, Captain of HMS Supply, returned to Sydney with the devastating news. HMS Sirius was lost and all hope of a China rescue gone.
1790 – Jakarta, April: With Sydney on the edge of complete collapse Phillip had no option but to send his lone ship HMS Supply on a three (3) month voyage to Batavia, modern day Jakarta.
There her captain, Lieutenant Henry Ball, was to buy tons of food and medicines and hire a large vessel to bring them to Sydney as soon as possible.
Governor Phillip’s decision was a desperate one. Not only would the Sydney and Norfolk Island settlements be cut off from each other. Both were completely isolated from the outside world. There was no escape
Without Supply there could be no trawling for fish, the Englishmen’s only source of protein. The measure of Phillip’s desperation is clear by the ration issue.
‘per week to every child more than eighteen months old [and] every grown person two & one-half pounds of pork, two & one-half pounds of flour, two pounds of rice, or a quart of pease…under eighteen months old, same quantity of rice and four, and one pound of pork…salted between three and four years.. rice a moving body from the inhabitants lodged within it’.
1790 – 17 April – Batavia: Although the monsoon season was fast approaching HMS Supply set out for Jakarta in mid April. Tench turned to Virgil’s Aeneid; ‘Truly did we say to her ‘In te omnis domus inclinata recumbit’ – ‘Thou the support of all [t]his tottering house’. See: Missing in Action HMS Sirius & HMS Supply
‘HMS Supply, captain Ball, sailed for Batavia. We followed her with anxious eyes until she was no longer visible….Everything which zeal, fortitude, and seamanship could produce, was concentrated in her commander’. Tench. ibid.
1790 – July, Batavia: Supply reached Jakarta in July 1790 where Lieutenant Ball RN, with assistance from Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN, who was to return by ‘any means’ to England with an ‘Anon’ covert letter of immense importance, negotiated the charter of a Dutch ship Waaksamheyd and arranged an early sailing date with Deter Smidt her master.
Midshipman Charles Ormsby stayed in Jakarta to audit the quantity and quality of provisions and supervise their loading. Many of his working party, eleven (11) seamen, like one-half of Captain James Cook’s crew on his Endeavour voyage, contracted malaria and were buried there. See: Captain Cook -Caught Short
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1790 – 17 December, Sydney: Six months later – 17 December 1790 – Captain Smidt sailed Waaksamheyd into Sydney Harbour loaded with tons of supplies.
William Bryant, a Cornish fisherman before his tangle with the law, had long planned an escape. A few weeks after Waaksamheyd’s arrival Bryant sounded Smidt out.
At the time Governor Phillip and Smidt were at logger-heads engaged in acrimonious negotiations over a price to re-charter Waaksamheyd and have her retrieve the Sirius crew from Norfolk Island and take them home to England.
Phillip was driving a hard bargain, so when Bryant approached Smidt he found a sympathetic ear. The Dutchman studied Will Bryant’s escape plan that entailed a very daunting task.
Will’s plan was to row an open boat, with Mary his wife and seven (7) trusted companions to Timor, a distance of 3,254 miles (5,200 km). A task made even more daunting as William and Mary had two (2) small children Charlotte and baby Emanuel.
Bryant was buoyed however when Smidt related the story of Captain William Bligh RN. The previous year (1789 in mid-ocean) Captain Bligh and eighteen (18) crew, had been forced off HMS Bounty at gun-point, by a group of mutineers led by Lieutenant Fletcher Christian RN, Bligh’s second-in-command.
The Bounty men in an open row-boat that, like the Bryants, had no protection from the weather, survived a similar distance – 6705 kms – to Timor.
In preparation Mary began to collect and hide food-stuffs. Will stashed hooks, hand-lines and nets. Deter Smidt supplied a compass, quadrant, two (2) guns with plenty of ammunition and detailed charts of the Great Barrier Reef.
1791
Most important of all Smidt gave Bryant Waaksamheyd’s projected sailing date so the escapees could use the excitement and commotion of his own departure to cloak their flight.
1791 Bryants
1791- 28 March, Sydney: At midnight on 28 March 1791, with oars muffled on their stolen boat – Governor Phillip’s cutter – the ‘Botany Bay escapees’ set out for Timor in what Tench came to recognise as ‘a heroic struggle for liberty’.
1791 – 28 March, Norfolk Island: At first light Captain Smidt sailed Waaksamheyd down the harbour and set his course for Norfolk Island to retrieve Captain John Hunter, the Sirius crew and take them home to England.
Meantime William Morton, the escapees’ navigator, set his course due north. Look-outs were posted, strict attention was paid to Smidt’s charts and further north, along the Great Barrier Reef, dangerous coral outcrops were skirted.
The escapees landed when and where they could to collect fresh water, rest and repair make-shift sails and caulk their leaky craft. In the far north – at Cape York and Arnhem Land – they were challenged and chased out to sea by Aborigines in large craft equipped with sails and out-rigging.
Northern Aborigines had modelled their boats on those of the Macassans who each year visited the area to harvest the sea-slug a delicacy they traded with the Chinese. See: A Very Convenient Theory – Smallpox – it Was the Macassans Stupid .
1791 – 5 June, Coupang West Timor: Exhausted, hair bleached, skin scorched and weathered by wind, salt and sun, all eleven (11) escapees reached the Dutch trading post of Coupang on Timor Island at the beginning of June. The locals, familiar with tales of shipwreck, accepted them without question.
The long-bow of coincidence also helped the escapees. Two (2) years earlier (14 June 1789) another group of Englishmen, Captain William Bligh and survivors of the Bounty mutiny, had arrived at Coupang in similar condition, telling a similar tale.
‘Between Holland and England war was so frequent it was virtually a sporting fixture’. Despite this William Van Este, Timor’s Dutch governor, although seriously ill, made Bligh and his men welcome offering them shelter, food and clothing.
1791
1791 – June. Timor: Likewise in June 1791, when the Botany Bay castaways reached Coupang, Governor Timotheus Wanjon, who succeeded his father-in-law, was also generous to these ragged newcomers.
One, James Martin wrote; ‘the governor behaved extremely well to us, filled our bellies and cloathed double with every [thing] that was wore on the island’.
Governor Wanjon probably believed the British government would pick up the tab for these shipwrecked souls as had been done for Captain Bligh and his men.
Timorese women delighted in Charlotte and baby Emanuel, they treated Mary with great kindness as she settled down to care for her family. When recovered sufficiently the men found work but with work came money and rum.
It was Will Bryant, with so much to lose who proved the weakest link. Drunk, he was overheard boasting of the escape. When Governor Wanjon learned that a Dutchman – Deter Smidt – was implicated, with international protocols in mind, felt obliged to arrest them.
There are conflicting stories as to whether their confinement was reasonable or oppressive. One version has them allowed to shop and mingle with the locals. Another has them confined in a castle. But even if their situation had been more or less congenial it was not to last.
The previous year (1790) the Lords of the Admiralty gave Captain Edward Edwards RN command of HMS Pandora and orders to hunt down, arrest and bring the Bounty mutineers to England for court-martial.
Lieutenant Fletcher Christian RN, instigator of the mutiny had fled Tahiti for Pitcairn Island where HMS Bounty was destroyed. Fourteen (14) mutineers stayed at Tahiti living happily with the locals.
Edwards arrested them and made preparations to return to England. He ordered a cage be constructed on Pandora’s deck. The mutineers were treated with savage brutality. Starved, shackled to its floor, sealed in by a heavy hatch. See: Pandora’s Box and the Botany Bay Escapees
Pandora
1791 – 29 August, Great Barrier Reef: After leaving Tahiti on her passage to England one night Edwards took Pandora, too close to the shore-line. A storm blew up she ran aground on a coral reef and sank.
But for the heroism of two (2) crewmen Joseph Hodges and James Moulter, who defied Captain Edwards, all the caged prisoners would have drowned. Hodges and Moulter broke in, cut though their irons and helped them scramble into life boats.
1791 – 17 September, Timor: Pandora’s survivors, more dead than alive, reached Coupang in mid September 1791 and life changed for the escapees from Botany Bay.
‘We told him [Edwards] we was prisoners and had made our escape from Botany Bay. He told us we were his prisoners’.
1792
1792 – 12 March, Africa: Captain Edwards with his surviving crew and assorted prisoners arrived at Cape Town from Batavia. Will Bryant iam and baby Emanuel died of malaria and were buried at Jakarta. Before journey’s end six (6) more of the original eleven (11) would not see England again.
EPILOGUE
1792 – 7 July, London: James Boswell appeared at the Old Bailey in July 1792 to defend Mary Bryant and her four (4) companions. Charged with ‘being at large within the kingdom before expiry of sentence’ a charge that under the Transportation Act 1717-18 – merited death. See: Boswell Goes Into Bat For the Botany Bay Escapees
Tags: Bryant, Captain Edwards, charlotte bryant, convicts, emanuel bryant, escapees, First Fleet, HMS Sirius, mary bryant, provisions, Waaksamheyd, william bryant