by Peter Grose
Collins arrived at the site of the fledgling Van Diemen’s Land colony on 16 February 1804. As a colonel, he outranked Bowen, and he did not like what he found. Collins had been part of the First Fleet that arrived in Sydney in 1788, and he had some experience with setting up colonies. He disapproved of Bowen’s choice of site for the settlement, and made three trips along the Derwent River before deciding on Sullivans Cove, 5 miles (8 kilometres) downriver from the original settlement, and on the opposite river bank. On 21 February the settlement moved to the new site, and the city of Hobart was born.
At first the new settlement in Van Diemen’s Land simply took a spill of convicts from Sydney, plus the Port Phillip Bay refugees. However, as the new settlement became established, the British sent convicts there directly. After all, it was a slightly shorter voyage from England to Van Diemen’s Land than to Sydney, and by securing another island, the British empire could be extended, and the French kept at bay. The first convicts sent directly from England arrived in Hobart in 1812. More free settlers followed in 1816. Van Diemen’s Land continued to be governed from Sydney, with a Sydney-appointed but largely independent lieutenant-governor in place in Hobart, until 1825, when it separated from Sydney and became a colony in its own right, with its own governor.
George Arthur, the despotic but tidy-minded governor of Van Diemen’s Land from 1824 to 1836, categorised convicts into seven groups. At the top of the heap were the ticket-of-leavers, who represented about 10 per cent of the convict population. Next in the pecking order were the assigned convicts, who comprised about half of the convict population. So some 60 per cent of convicts enjoyed quite a bit of freedom, and the government was spared the expense of feeding, clothing, housing and supervising them.
Just below the two groups of comparatively ‘free’ convicts came two more of Arthur’s groups. The first consisted of those employed by the government on public works such as the construction of buildings and bridges. Of slightly inferior status was a second government group, which worked in road-building gangs. These two groups together accounted for a further 20 per cent of convicts. Being sent to work in one or other of the labour gangs was often a punishment. Convicts on the gangs were generally locked up at night in desperately uncomfortable cells or barracks, and were treated badly.
The remaining 20 per cent were the incorrigibles. In descending order, they were: convicts sentenced to labour in chains (about 5 per cent); those convicted of a fresh crime while still serving their sentence of transportation, who were generally then sentenced to hard labour in a separate and harsher penal settlement; and those who had been sentenced to hard labour in a separate penal settlement, and who had additionally been sentenced to work there in chains.
A newly arrived male convict in Sydney or Hobart could expect to start his sentence by working for the government on either a public building program or a road gang. That was pretty arduous. A convict could then improve his lot by working up through the system. There were also rewards: convicts who had performed some brave act or some outstanding service could be rewarded with a reduced sentence or even a full pardon. The promised land was ticket of leave. Beyond even that nirvana, convicts who had served their term of transportation were officially free, and were said to be ‘emancipated’.
Many of the convicts passed through this system relatively unscathed: they were never flogged, nor hanged, nor made to work in chains. That was the carrot. Inevitably, there was also a stick. A convict who chose to defy the system or, worse, commit a new crime—such as absconding—would descend into a man-made hell of locked and cramped living quarters, semi-starvation and backbreaking labour, usually after ‘retransportation’ to a remote and harsher penal settlement. A flogging was usually thrown in for good measure.
While travelling down the west coast of Van Diemen’s Land on their epic circumnavigation voyage, Bass and Flinders entirely missed the narrow entrance to a very promising harbour. It was an understandable miss: they were battling typically terrible west coast weather at the time, and were naturally concentrating on surviving the waves rather than admiring the view. However, in December 1815, seventeen years later, James Kelly and a crew of oarsmen in a whaleboat from Hobart became the first Europeans to enter and explore the harbour while searching for good timber. They named it Macquarie Harbour after the then governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie. Kelly gathered a few samples of timber from around Macquarie Harbour, brought them back to Hobart, and handed them to the local merchant T.W. Birch, who had paid for the expedition. Birch was delighted.
What Birch knew was that, eleven years earlier, in 1804, the crew of the whaler Alexander had entered the D’Entrecasteaux Channel on the southeast coast of Van Diemen’s Land, and noticed some pine logs trapped in mud. The logs had clearly been in the water for years, yet they had not rotted and were not riddled by termites. They had resisted even the ferocious screw worm, or marine borer, the scourge of wooden ships everywhere. That made them ideal ship timbers. The Huon River flows into the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, so the trees came to be known as Huon pines. When it was realised that this was probably the finest shipbuilding timber in the world, as tough as oak but easier to manage, the wood was much in demand.
The Huon pine is unique to Tasmania, and what Kelly had discovered at Macquarie Harbour was the biggest and most prolific collection of Huon pines on the entire island. It was a find comparable to striking gold, or oil. The forest lined the banks of the Gordon River, which meant the logs could be cut and floated down the river for collection in Macquarie Harbour. Here was a resource ripe for exploitation.
The Huon pine was not the only attraction of Macquarie Harbour. Being on the west coast of Van Diemen’s Land, it was 300 kilometres by land from Hobart Town, and separated by high mountains wrapped in thick forest. An overland journey would be impossible. The only way was by sea. Tasmanian weather is notoriously fierce, particularly on the west coast, so a fair-sized ship would be needed to handle the wind and waves. Yet there was a treacherous sandbar across the entrance to Macquarie Harbour, which meant that any ship attempting to enter or leave could not be too big or heavy, and would need skilled sailors to manage it. Put all of this together and the conclusion was obvious: any penal settlement based there would be completely escape-proof. What better place to send absconders, recidivists and the worst of the worst?
Governor Arthur set out the policy in plain and typically despotic language. Convicts sent to Macquarie Harbour could expect ‘unceasing labour, total deprivation of Spirits, Tobacco and Comforts of any kind … the sameness of occupation, the dreariness of situation must, if anything will, reform the most vicious characters’.
In other words, there were to be no carrots, only sticks.
As we have seen, under the prevailing theories on crime and punishment in Britain and its colonies in the early nineteenth century, deterrence was the key. Hangings and floggings could take place in public, a terrifying demonstration of the consequences of flouting the law. Beyond that, the authorities set out to ‘break the spirit’ of those who refused to conform. In the enclosed world of a penal settlement, the superintendent wielded absolute power. His principal weapons were flogging and solitary confinement: flogging humiliated and weakened the offender; solitary confinement drove the victim to the edge of madness. In a cruel twist, the authorities decreed that convicts were to be flogged by fellow prisoners. That would stop them from getting too close to each other.
Insolence could lead to a flogging. So could ‘rebelliousness’ or ‘neglect of work’. Losing an item of government-issue clothing could lead to a spell on the flogging triangle. Breaking a saw, axe, spade or oar, even accidentally, automatically brought 50 lashes.
At Macquarie Harbour, floggings were an almost daily occurrence. A convict named Davies wrote about a typical flogging:
The moment it was over unless it were at Meal Hours or Nights he was immediately sent back to work, his back like Bullock’s Liver and most likely his shoes full of Blo
od, and not permitted to go to the Hospital until next morning when his back would be washed by the Doctor’s Mate and a little Hog’s Lard spread on with a piece of Tow, and so off to work … and it often happened that the same man would be flogged the following day for Neglect of Work.
This brutality was part of a conscious policy. The authorities wanted Macquarie Harbour’s reputation to strike fear into the hearts of all. They wanted to send a message loud and clear: don’t do anything that will get you sent to Macquarie Harbour. In particular, don’t try to abscond, and don’t reoffend.
Yet it was not as though those sent to the settlement were the most dangerous criminals. Only 3 per cent of the Macquarie Harbour prisoners had committed crimes of violence. Just under half the prisoners were sent there for theft of some kind, often trivial. John Mawer was sentenced to seven years at Macquarie Harbour for stealing a loaf of bread; Samuel Jones was sentenced to two years for stealing a few sheets of paper, value two pence. There was a suspicion among the convicts that prisoners were sent there because they had some badly needed skill; experienced sailors were particularly at risk.
For a Macquarie Harbour convict there would be no soft options such as assignment or a ticket of leave. The underfed, poorly clothed and housed convicts would work from dawn to dark, often in chains. There would be no concessions: everything would be done by convict hands. No animals would be used to drag heavy logs to the river bank, or pull a plough: fields would be tilled by hand, with hoes, picks and shovels wielded by convicts.
The authorities’ particular concern was that no one should escape. They chose to build the main settlement on a small island well into Macquarie Harbour called Sarah Island—named after the wife of T.W. Birch, who had funded the original expedition that found the harbour. It was generally known as Settlement Island, or sometimes Headquarters Island. Half a mile (about a kilometre) east of Sarah Island was a second, smaller island called Grummet Island, usually referred to as Small Island, which also formed part of the convict settlement. Davies, the convict who had described the flogging, wrote:
It was a perpendicular Rock Fifty Foot above the levil [sic] of the sea about 40 yards long and 8 wide—a rude stairs in the cliffs is the only road to a truly Wretched Barracks Built with Boards and Shingles (the timber quite green) into which 79 men were often confined in so crowded a state as to be scarcely able to lie down on their sides—to lay on their backs was out of the question.
The authorities deliberately set out to make Macquarie Harbour a living hell. No one—soldier or convict—would ever want to go there. And no one who went there would want to return. A convict with some classical education named it ‘Pluto’s Land’, after the Roman god of the dead. The narrow and treacherous entrance to the harbour was known as Hell’s Gates. The name may have described a navigational hazard, but it also aptly described the nightmare ahead for those who made the fateful crossing.
After receiving his sentence for theft in London in 1823, Jimmy Porter was first sent to the hulks where, according to his account, ‘Work and Usage made me often contemplate Suicide’. He was soon transferred to the convict ship Asia and, with 249 other convicts, set off on 28 August 1823 for Van Diemen’s Land.
The convicts were locked and barricaded in semi-darkness below decks, often in chains, and poorly fed and exercised. Below decks could be stifling and facilities were basic. Jimmy was luckier than most, however: his experience as a sailor proved to be his salvation. ‘The Captain released me out of irons sooner than most of the other prisoners, and I helped to work ship, being allowed the ration and grog of a seaman.’
The convict ships are a study in themselves. The British Royal Navy operated the First Fleet of convicts transported to New South Wales, so it was a government-managed affair and functioned under Royal Navy rules and discipline. But as the numbers of convicts sentenced to transportation increased, so did the numbers of ships needed, and the task of moving the prisoners halfway around the world was simply beyond the Royal Navy’s stretched resources. This was particularly true in the period between 1803 and 1815, when the Royal Navy was preoccupied by the war with Napoleon. So the task of transporting the convicts was privatised from the Second Fleet of 1790 onwards.
The system was reasonably straightforward. After a court had sentenced a group of prisoners to transportation, the clerk of the court had to find ‘a fit person or persons’ to accept delivery of the convicts and undertake to transport them to the Australian colonies. In practice, this meant finding a shipbroker who could organise the chartering of a suitable transport vessel.
At first the courts were none too picky about who was and wasn’t considered a ‘fit person’. From as far back as the Second Fleet, the bulk of the early charters were awarded through a company of shipbrokers called Camden, Calvert & King, who had been the largest slave traders in London. They already had access to ships with secure below-decks accommodation, including chains and manacles. They were ideal. As we have seen, the British government passed its first anti-slavery law in March 1807, but the more forward-looking businessmen of Camden, Calvert & King had already realised that they needed to reposition themselves in the market. Transporting convicts looked like a good fit, and they switched.
They did not keep their near monopoly for long. According to ship’s records, Jimmy Porter was sentenced on 26 April 1823. The search for a ‘fit person’ to transport him seems to have taken a little time, but by 26 July Thomas Shelton, the clerk of the Court of Sessions in the City of London, had found Joseph Lachlan, shipbroker, of Great Alie Street, Goodmans Fields,12 in the county of Middlesex, who was willing to take on the work. The two men agreed a contract, which is reproduced as Appendix I of this book. The effect of the document was to hand over ownership of the convicts and their services forthwith to Lachlan, who gave an undertaking that he would transport them to Australia and hand them and all title to them to Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane in New South Wales. The document went on to say that the convicts had been loaded on board ‘a certain ship or vessel called the “Asia” of which James Landsay13 is Master and Commander which said ship is now lying at Woolwich bound to New South Wales’. The convicts were to be transported ‘to the Coast of New South Wales or some one or other of the Islands adjacent’.
The shipbroker—not the captain, note—agreed to ‘forthwith take and receive the said Convicts and transport them or cause them to be transported effectually as soon as conveniently might be’ to New South Wales. Annexed to the contract was an eight-page list of the convicts’ names, together with where and when they were convicted, and their sentence. It was a cargo manifest, pure and simple. The document includes one remarkable clause. The shipbroker was required to ‘procure such evidence as the nature of the case would admit of the landing there of the said convicts (death or casualties by sea excepted) and produce the same to whom it might concern when lawfully called upon’. In other words, the captain would have to bring back proof that he had actually transported the convicts, and that they had arrived at the correct destination. However, he need not account for the dead.
Payment for transporting the convicts was calculated by the number loaded, not the number who arrived still breathing. The agreed fee was usually set at around £18 a head. Provisions were also calculated on the basis of convicts loaded. So the captain had a direct interest in losing a few convicts along the way. He would be paid the same whatever happened to his cargo. Further, any unused rations could then be sold on arrival at extortionate prices to the settlers in the colony.
The attrition rate was often horrific. The worst voyage was the Second Fleet, which left Portsmouth on 19 January 1790: of the 1006 reasonably healthy convicts who sailed, 267 died at sea. When the ships of the Second Fleet landed in Sydney, the captains of two of them set up a market ashore and sold a generous quantity of spare food and clothing to the residents, for what must have been a handy personal profit.
Jimmy Porter says the voyage of the Asia was uneventful until they reached th
e Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of South Africa, traditionally the last stop before Australia. The man at Asia’s wheel appears to have nodded off and let the wind put the ship into reverse. Fortunately, ‘the quick command of the Captain and the activity of the crew soon put all to right’. After replenishing supplies at Cape Town, the ship resumed its voyage. Four months and two days after leaving Portsmouth, the Asia and its convict cargo arrived at Hobart Town. They anchored off the Battery, now better known as Battery Point, the southern arm of Hobart harbour.
As was normal, the convicts remained on the ship for a few days before being taken ashore. After landing, the convicts’ names and details (including a physical description) were entered into a muster roll, which also served as proof that the ship’s captain and broker had delivered the convicts, and to the right place. It is possible to view Jimmy Porter’s original entry on the website of the Archive Office of Tasmania. Anyone so minded will discover some neat handwriting recording that James Porter, otherwise convict P324 (the three hundred and twenty-fourth convict to arrive in Hobart whose name began with P) was nineteen years old, 5 feet 2 inches (157 centimetres) tall, with brown eyes, a beer machine maker by trade, who had been tried in Kingston, near London, in March 1823 and sentenced to transportation for life. He was reported to be a native of the London suburb of Bermondsey. For good measure, the description concluded with his distinguishing marks: he was blind in the left eye, had two scars on his forehead, a dimple on his chin, a mole on the front of his neck, and a scar on the left side of his neck. An indecipherable final line of the description might read ‘pugalists [sic] on left arm’, suggesting some kind of tattoo depicting boxers. The muster entry also records that James Porter was the 109th convict unloaded from the Asia in Hobart. He had been part of a Surrey Special Gaol Delivery. His date of conviction is given as 30 December 1822.