ANALYSE THIS
‘On 1 April 1776 [‘whereas the transportation of convicts to H.M. Colonies in America is found to be attended with various inconveniences’] Lord North moved to bring in a Bill to authorise for a limited time punishment, by hard labour, of offenders who were liable to transportation’. Wilfrid Oldham, Britain’s Convicts to the Colonies, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1993
1775- April, America: Conflict between England and her American colonies – the War of Independence (1775-1783) – brought a sudden halt to convict transportation to America.
‘Convict transportation in its original manifestation [Geo.1 C.11-23-29] was a uniquely American phenomenon.’ Anthony Vaver, Bound With An Iron Chain, The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 convicts to Colonial America, Pickpocket Publishing, 2011
England’s gaols, previously short-term holding pens for convicted criminals,reprieved death and commuted ‘for transportation to America’, were quickly overwhelmed.
During eight (8) years of conflict approximately 10,000 prisoners were held over.
1776 – 23 May, England: The Hulks Act – 16 Geo. III, c 43 – received Royal Assent on 23rd May 1776. Lord North’s Bill was a game-changer. It changed the status of prisoners sentenced ‘for transportation’.
The legislation introduced a legal distinction that applied only to those criminals reprieved death on condition they be ‘transported out of the realm…beyond the seas’. See: April Fools Day
Deemed ‘Servants of the Crown’ until expiry of the term of sentence, their ‘service’ was for the ‘nation’, thereby ensuring ‘its original [1717-18] manifestation [remained] ‘a uniquely American phenomenon’.
The Hulks Act allowed male prisoners be confined on de-commissioned warships moored along London’s River Thames. Badly maintained and overrun with rats no vessel was water-tight.
Space was extremely limited men were housed six (6) to a mess. At the insistence of John Howard a prominent prison reformer a Commission of Inquiry was set up to examine living conditions on the hulks.
As a result of its intervention some improvements were made. Men now slept only two (2) to a bed although the quantity of food increased, quality remained poor.
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‘Britain’s decision in 1786 [Act 24 Geo. III C. 56/C74] to occupy New South Wales [Australia] was partly to compensate for the loss of the American colonies to which unwanted convicts (some 50,000 before the Declaration of Independence in 1776) had been sent; and partly to protect Britain’s control of the sea route to Asia via the southern Oceans’. Professor Martyn Webb, University of Western Australia, cited Oxford Companion to British History,
1786 – October, London: Captain Arthur Phillip RN was selected to command the ‘First Fleet’ and lead Britain’s thrust into the ‘southern Oceans’. Humiliation drove the invasion of New Holland.
Britain’s defeat in the American War, was in no small part due to France. French money men and munitions – tipped the balance in favour of General George Washington’s rebel Patriot inexperienced militia.
‘As Sir James Harris, the foremost diplomat of the age and then British ambassador at the Hague, put it: ‘Our wealth and power in India is their great and constant object of jealousy; and they will never miss an opportunity of attempting to wrest it out of our hands’. Cited, Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip, Sailor Mercenary Governor Spy, Hardie Grant Books, 2013
Now King Louis XVI’s eyes turned to New Holland and ease of access to India.
Captain Phillip’s primary objective, getting to ‘New South Wales’ before the French, was known to very few. Front and centre of those in the know was Evan Nepean, Under-Secretary to Lord Sydney head of the Home Office.
To this end a large squadron of eleven (11) vessels would sail across 13,000 miles (21,000 km) of ‘imperfectly explored oceans’ to establish military and naval bases on the south eastern coast of the island continent of New Holland at Botany Bay.
And Britain had a battalion – eight hundred and fifty (853) male ‘servants of the Crown’ bobbing about on the Thames.
‘The administration gave no consideration to the date of expiry of sentences, and several of the First Fleet [convicts] had been tried as early as 1781 and 1782. As seven [7] years transportation was the most common sentence, many had already served five-sevenths of their time on embarkation, and six- sevenths on disembarkation at Sydney Cove. Dr John Cobley, Crimes of the First Fleet, Vol. 1, Angus and Robertson, Sydney
1787 – 25 April, London. Far from giving ‘no consideration to the date of expiry’ the administration’s decision was as cynical as it was appalling.
‘It is our will and pleasure…with all convenient speed to the convicts so emancipated….To every male shall be given 30 acres of land, and in the case he shall be married, 20 acres more; and for every child with them…a further quantity of 10 acres’. George III to Captain Arthur Phillip, 25 April 1787.
1787 – 6 January, Portsmouth: More dead than alive the first of five hundred and eighty-three (583) male prisoners boarded from the hulks at the beginning of January 1787. Dirty hungry covered in lice, sick with ‘putrid gaol fever’ – typhus, ‘the flux’ – dysentery, many had the ‘Scourge of Mankind’ syphilis.
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On the hulks, for five (5) days a week, six (6) men shared a daily ration of 4 & 1/2 lbs of ‘second flour’, 1/2 lb of ‘rough meat’ usually an ox cheek and 3 pints of rice.
The remaining two (2) days each group shared, 3 pints of oatmeal made into gruel – porridge, 5 lbs of bread and 2 lbs of cheese. In addition four (4) days a week each man was issued one (1) quart of ‘small beer’.
It took months to ready the fleet. Some prisoners died before the ships left Portsmouth. Their bodies were simply tossed overboard and seen floating in the Thames.
But for those convicts who survived to make the voyage ‘to Botany Bay’ conditions changed radically and so especially for male prisoners taken from the hulks.
‘In determining the ration no distinction was drawn between the marines and the [male] convicts…Apart from the allowance of spirits the standard adopted was that of troops serving in the West Indies. Wilfrid Oldham, Britain’s Convicts To The Colonies, Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1993
Captain Arthur Phillip RN, like Captain James Cook RN before him, carried ‘secret instructions’. His eyes were fixed firmly on his ‘secret’ task – establishing command of the ‘southern Oceans…to protect Britain’s control of the sea route to Asia’.
But Sir Charles Middleton, presiding over the Navy Victualling Board, was not in on the ‘secret’. Middleton resisted Phillip’s strenuous efforts to obtain the meat and vegetables he knew were needed to build-up the health and vitality of his convict combatants.
Phillip denied foods necessary to keep scurvy at bay and strengthen his troops – marine and criminal – appealed to his ‘handler’ Evan Nepean.
‘Evan Nepean at the Home Office acted as intermediary and persuaded Middleton to give way’. Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet, Britain’s Grim Armada, 1993
A humiliated Middleton determined to exert his influence. As, on the voyage of 15,000 miles (23,000 km) parade-ground drilling would be out of the question, he rated their operational status between ‘stand to’ and ‘stand down’ .
While the full standard ration was to be issued on disembarkation Middleton decreed; ‘two-thirds of the [standard ration] of troops serving in the West Indies’ would be sufficient during the voyage.
Oldlham details ‘two-thirds’:
bread or biscuit – 7 lb (3.17 kg)
beef salted – 4 lb (1.8 kg)
pork salted – 2lb (907 g)
dried peas – 2 pints (1.1 litre)
oatmeal – 3 pints (1.7 litre)
butter – 6 oz (170 g)
cheese – 3/4 lb (350 g)
vinegar – 1/2 pint (284 ml) issued on Saturday
enlisted men only 3 and one-half pints (2 litres) of rum @ 1/2 pint per day
1787 – 13 May, Portsmouth: At 4 am on the 13th May 1787 the armed squadron – warships HMS Sirius and HMS Supply – six (6) troop transports – Alexander, Charlotte, Prince of Wales, Scarborough, Friendship, Lady Penryhn – three (3) stores-ships – Borrowdale, Fishburn Golden Grove – known in Britain and Australia as the ‘First Fleet’ – with a complement of 1500 souls , one-half common criminals, set sail from Portsmouth for Botany Bay.
Friendship and Lady Penrhyn – carried most of the fleet’s one hundred and ninety – three (193) women convict camp- followers so can be described as ‘convict transports’. A number woefully inadequate for their intended ‘Service’; to gratify the sexual needs two hundred (200) Royal Navy personnel and two hundred and forty-five (245) marines.
The remaining troop transports carried five hundred and eighty (580) male convicts and their military guards both available to satisfy whatever ‘Service’ their commander saw fit to enforce. See: John M’Entire – Death of A Sure Thing
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1788 – 18 January, Botany Bay: At 2.15 in the afternoon HMS Supply the first ship arrived off Botany Bay. An hour or so later her trawling nets (seine) were deployed setting the scene for what was to come for Australia’s First Peoples. See: Smallpox – Dead Aborigines Don’t Eat
1788 – 18/20 January, Botany Bay: Within thirty-six (36) hours, between 18- 20 January, eight (8) months after leaving England, the entire fleet lay safely at anchor in Botany Bay. See: Australia – Britain By A Short Half-Head
1788 – 26 January, Port Jackson: A week later the convoy sailed nine (9) miles (14 km) north – through towering headlands guarding Sydney Harbour – to a sheltered, eminently defensible anchorage in Sydney Cove deep within Port Jackson.
‘[Where] The main battle was about having enough to eat’. Don Watson, The Story of Australia, 1984
There the Robinson Cruscos of the ‘First Fleet’ waited and waited and waited; ‘the misery and horror of such a situation cannot be imparted, even by those who have suffered under it’. Marine Watkin Tench, Sydney’ First Four Years, ed. F.L. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961 See: Abandoned and Left To Starve – Sydney Cove – January 1788 to June 1790
1790
1790 – 1 January, Sydney Cove: ‘We had now been two years in the country, and thirty-two months from England, in which long period…we had been entirely cut off, no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th May, 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth’. Tench. ibid.
Chine: In March 1790 HMS Sirius on her way to China to arrange rescue struck a submerged reef off Norfolk Island and sank. Her crew one hundred and sixty (160) were stranded on the island.
Jakarta: In mid April 1790 HMS Supply sailed for Batavia, modern day Jakarta, to buy urgently needed food and medicines leaving the harbour empty of English ships.
Starving English men women and children were now completely isolated with no hope of escape or means of communicating with the outside world. See: Missing In Action HMS Sirius & HMS Supply
1790 – April, Sydney: ‘Per week to every child of more than eighteen (18) months old and to every grown person; pork – two (2) pounds, flour – two and one-half (2 ½) pounds, rice two (2) pounds or a quart of pease.
When the age of this provision is recollected, its inadequacy will more strikingly appear. The pork and rice 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.
EPILOGUE
1788 – 7 February, Sydney Cove: Without the consent of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples or, entering into treaty with them as required by international law, Governor Captain Arthur Phillip RN on the 7th of February 1788 ‘raised English colours’.
With all the ‘pomp and circumstance of glorious war’ Britain claimed sovereignty over; ‘this fifth great continental division of the earth on behalf of the British people’. Historical Records of New South Wales
Government knowingly sent criminals who had ‘already served six-sevenths of their time’ to invade, occupy and dispossess Australia’s First Peoples.
Then ‘emancipated with all possible speed’ they had their villainy rewarded with land – lots of Aboriginal land. See: A Cracker-Jack Opinion – Your Land is My Land – Cape York to South Cape
Tags: colonies, convicts, crime and punishment, First Fleet, provisions, the hulks, transportation, victuals