A Far Distant Land: A saga of British survival in an unforgiving new world (The Australian Historical Saga Series Book 1)

by David Field

  A FAR DISTANT LAND

  The Australian Historical Saga Series

  Book One

  David Field

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  MORE BOOKS BY DAVID FIELD

  1

  Botany Bay, 1788

  Second Lieutenant Daniel Bradbury, New South Wales Marine Corps, leaned back against the starboard gunwales of the Lady Penrhyn, eyes front, trying to ignore the chaos all around him. The women were on deck for a brief period of fresh air, prescribed by ship’s surgeon Arthur Smyth and they were celebrating their temporary release from the convict hold by dancing and singing bawdy songs. The older ones — or those who were visibly pregnant with children they had not been expecting when they set sail from Portsmouth eight months previously — rested where they could on the decks that heaved gently on the southerly swell that was driving the incoming tide into the bay in which the ship lay at anchor.

  Daniel looked across the deck, through the moving throng of women in their shapeless convict sacks, to the port side, where Private McEnery stood leering. Strictly speaking, First Lieutenant Johnston, the only other officer assigned to the vessel, should have been standing in his place, but Daniel felt sure that if he were to count the women on deck, as standing orders decreed that they must, every hour, he would find at least one of them unaccounted for. She would no doubt be below decks with Lieutenant Johnston, and Daniel should by rights report him. Dereliction of duty and fornicating with a prisoner were both serious offences, but George Johnston was senior to him and, besides, Daniel had seen what they did to marines by way of punishment. He had no wish to be the means by which a fellow officer was flogged to the point of near extinction, his back laid bare to the spine by the evil ‘cat’ whose thongs ended in lead tips.

  Daniel looked to his left, over the stern of the vessel, at the land on which they had not yet set foot, for good reason. Down to the very shoreline was a thick mass of tangled vegetation. Beyond the vegetation, in the shallows, were sharp rocks and at low tide it was obvious that this same rock formation jutted out well into the broad bay in which they were anchored. Their fleet commander, Captain Phillip, had been rowed north two days previously — only the day after the Lady Penrhyn had limped in behind the rest of the fleet — in search of a better anchorage. He was expected back at any time, since he had taken with him only three small rowing boats and a handful of marines.

  Daniel spotted movement in the thick undergrowth a few yards back from the shoreline, as two brown-skinned, near-naked men slid further back into the vegetation, carrying what looked like long spears. The natives were clearly aware of the arrival of the eleven vessels now lying at anchor and they looked far from friendly. Captain Phillip had issued orders that they were not to be harmed in any way unless they offered physical resistance to any landing and Daniel was hoping that he would not have occasion to take the life of any of them.

  He was forced to look back inboard when an angry fight broke out among a section of the women. There were at least ten of them involved, so far as he could make out, and he waved an instruction across the deck for Private McEnery to join him in defusing the fray. Two more privates appeared through the hatch that led to the companionway, alerted by the noise, and together they began pulling women from the struggling pile at the foot of the main mast.

  Daniel drew his sword and shouted for everyone to remain where they were.

  ‘The rotten cow stole my comb!’ a large woman protested.

  ‘That’s right — she bin stealin’ food an’ stuff ever since we come on board!’ complained another.

  Daniel looked down at the object of these accusations — the woman who had been at the bottom of the pile. She was no more than twenty-five years old, insofar as it was possible to tell beneath the grime of eight months that covered her face. There was blood running down to her chin from several nail gouges on her cheeks. ‘Get up,’ Daniel ordered.

  The girl shook her head in defiance and bits of sawdust and straw flew out of her long black locks. ‘I ain’t been stealing, as God and the Holy Mother are my witnesses!’ she protested.

  ‘We can arrange witnesses closer to hand than that,’ Daniel replied. He looked down towards the stern, where his eyes came to rest on two older women who had been watching quietly, seated on coiled ropes. ‘You two!’ he called out to them. ‘Take this young woman to the foc’sle and search her for the comb she’s accused of stealing, then bring her back here.’

  Two minutes later, they returned, the greyer of the two women shaking her head.

  ‘She ain’t got no comb, sir,’ the woman told him.

  The girl smiled up at him with near perfect teeth. ‘Now didn’t I just say that?’

  ‘She’s a lying cunny!’ one of her original accusers screamed and the women around her began yelling their agreement.

  ‘Silence!’ Daniel ordered, his hand on his sword hilt. He turned to the three privates who had been a silent audience to what had been transpiring. ‘Take all the women below — except this one. I have further questions of her.’

  Amid curses and yells of protest, the rest of the women were bundled down the companionway and secured below decks in their wooden caged ‘messes’.

  Daniel instructed the young woman to accompany him to the stern and invited her to sit on one of the rope coils. He looked down at her with a stern expression. ‘Name?’

  ‘Mary Murphy — sir.’

  ‘And were you stealing?’

  The girl rolled her eyes in supplication as she replied, ‘Haven’t I already sworn before God and the Holy Mother that I’m innocent? And me a good Catholic girl that was brought up never take the holy names in vain.’

  ‘You sound Irish,’ Daniel said, a little nonplussed to find such a pious young girl among a boatload of foul-mouthed, violent women.

  ‘That’s because I am,’ Mary replied with a twinkling smile. ‘All the way from County Fermanagh, where me mother — God rest her blessed soul — was a washerwoman to the Bishop.’

  ‘Why would all those women falsely accuse you of stealing?’ Daniel asked, intrigued.

  ‘Because I’m not like them,’ Mary replied. ‘I don’t swear, I won’t lie with the guards for extra rations, and I say me prayers every night before I lay down to sleep.’

  ‘Do they bully you, like they were doing just now?’

  ‘All the time, sir. They steal me food, they pull me hair and — worst of all — they mock me prayers.’

  ‘How did a sweet thing like you come to be on a convict ship?’

  Mary looked down. ‘No one’s called me a sweet thing since me long-dead intended died in the potato famine that drove me to London to seek me living as a nursemaid. I had two little sisters as well, you see, and I was fully wise to how to bring up weans. And that’s how I came to be here, in a manner of speaking. But you’ll not be interested in a tale of a poor innocent girl done wrong,
will ye now?’

  ‘Go on,’ Daniel invited her.

  ‘Well, like I said, I was working as a nursemaid to this charming family in Chelsea. They had a lovely little boy — Jamie his name was — and it was like he was my own. Anyway, the master of the house, he wanted more from me than looking after his only child. One evening while the lady of the house was away visiting, he tried his luck with me, if you know what I mean. I told him no and thought that would be the end of it, but he hid one of his wife’s best jewels under the bed in me room, and then called in the constables to search the house. I was taken up, and the jury didn’t believe me, but the old judge took pity on me — and here I am.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Daniel said, nodding in sympathy, ‘and I’m willing to bet you’re not the only one on board this vessel who’s been the victim of that sort of injustice. I can only express my concern at your misfortune, but I can’t make the law go backwards.’

  ‘At the end of the day,’ Mary said, ‘it may be for the best. I’d have spent me life just as a servant to some fancy household or other, but out here in this new land — well, who knows? I might find a husband or something, or at least a strong man to protect me and give me little ones. The worst thing is that I’ll never see poor Jamie again — it was like he was me own, and he cried when they took me away with me hands tied in front of me.’

  Just then there came the sound of cannon fire from the Supply, which Captain Phillip had converted into his flagship a week out from landing because it had proved to be the fastest vessel in the fleet. Other vessels fired answering shots and the master of the Lady Penrhyn, William Sever, interrupted their conversation with important news: ‘The Captain’s returning. Please God we can at long last tread dry land.’

  Daniel escorted Mary to the companionway hatch and ordered one of the convict guards to take her back down to her mess.

  ‘Perhaps you should remain down there for a while, to prevent her being misused by those who falsely accuse her,’ Daniel instructed him.

  Mary reached out a warm soft hand and touched his left cheek as she walked past him. ‘God bless you, kind soul,’ she murmured as she flashed him a beautiful smile through white teeth, her green eyes wide with gratitude.

  Daniel flushed and looked down at the deck.

  Early the next morning, the order came to raise anchor and follow the Supply north. The hatches were kept down as they battered their way into the southerly swell once they had left the relatively calm bay and rolled their way north. After only a few minutes a wide opening appeared on their port beam, with imposing wooded headlands on either side. The vessels ahead of them steered to port and headed in between the headlands, the Lady Penrhyn following behind, almost the last in the queue of ships. Within minutes of passing between the headlands, the wind had eased, and the swell had dropped sufficiently for the men on deck to release their holds on the gunwales as they took in the long wide estuary that their commander had chosen in preference to the forbidding rocks of Botany.

  Ahead of them, the Supply had already dropped anchor and her boats had been lowered to enable an advance party to stride up the beach. As Daniel strained to look forward across the mile or so of water, listening absentmindedly to the now familiar rattle of their own anchor chain being played out, he saw a tall pine tree fall into the stunted scrub that lay just beyond the beach. Men with axes immediately set about trimming it, while others could be seen putting some of the tools they had brought with them to good use, digging a deep hole in the sand.

  An hour later, Daniel caught the distant strain of a bugler blowing his lungs out in a patriotic celebration, as the Union Jack fluttered out at the top of the recently erected flagpole, to the accompaniment of a volley of celebratory musket shots.

  Later, all the marine officers were ordered on board the Sirius for a meeting with their commanding officer, Major Ross. There was insufficient room below decks, so the men stood, sat, or simply squatted on their haunches, as Major Ross squinted his eyes against the glaring sun and began by advising them that now they had finally made landfall, his role had changed, along with the role to be played by all his men.

  ‘We are now a land-based penal colony,’ he told them, ‘and His Majesty has graciously appointed me lieutenant-governor of the colony, directly under Captain Phillip as the governor. But my day-to-day responsibilities will still include the command of the Marine Corps and we are met here today in order that I may instruct you on what you will be required to do once we are on shore.’

  ‘Are we mooring here for good, sir?’

  ‘Please God that we are,’ Ross replied. ‘I’m sure that we’re all looking forward to feeling firm ground beneath our boots once more, even though we are marines. And Governor Phillip, as he is now to be addressed, has deemed this to be the ideal anchorage. As you will already have realised, this is a safe and copious natural harbour, with a generous beach for landing and unloading, a ready supply of fresh water from a stream that flows into the bay and soil that appears to hold out some prospect of yielding crops. The water that we are currently treading he has named “Sydney Cove” and the settlement we are to build on land has already been named “Port Jackson”.

  ‘But a colony will not appear either naturally, or overnight. We need to establish houses for shelter, roads for transport and crops for grazing and eating. The supplies we brought with us should last until fresh crops are harvested and we have tools with which to dig the ground, quarry rock, fell trees and build houses. The labour for all this will come from the male convicts, who will be organised into working parties, which you must guard, not only from any prospect of escape by the convicts, but also against the natives who have been glaring out of the undergrowth at us ever since we arrived. There is to be no shooting at them unless we are under attack, but something tells me that such a day is not far distant.’

  ‘What about the female convicts, sir?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Ah yes, the ladies. They will obviously work on tasks for which women are best fitted. Washing, cooking, sewing and rearing children.’

  ‘And screwing,’ came a quiet voice from one side and a rousing cheer went up.

  Major Ross stood with a stern face until it had quietened down. ‘I remind you that fraternising with female prisoners is a court-martial offence. It is also likely to lead to disease and unwanted pregnancy. I realise that all the men in this expedition have been without women for a long time but this is a newly established colony under the British Crown, not the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The women may be convicts, but they are still women and entitled to our protection in the normal way of things.

  ‘Anyway, as to the detailed ordering of matters, each of the lieutenants will be placed in charge of an aspect of the many duties that have to be allocated. To begin with, the male convicts will be taken off in work groups, guarded in a ratio of forty prisoners to one marine. Several such groups will fall under the overall command of a lieutenant, to whom will be allocated the ranks beneath them, to be spread between the workgroups as he thinks fit. I have already drawn up and copied the group allocations and these will be handed out to you in due course.

  ‘If you have any questions regarding the way in which these allocations have been made, please ask either myself or Captain Mulgrave. We will meet every day under the flag, in order to discuss progress; the signal for the meeting will be three cannon shots from the Sirius. Very well, dismiss, men and welcome to Port Jackson.’

  Daniel was relieved to discover that his command included ongoing supervision of the female convicts on board the Lady Penrhyn. It was not the only vessel that contained female convicts, but it held the bulk of them, and at least it was not being abandoned to the lecherous attentions of some of the lieutenants.

  Daniel put his two best privates on daily guard duties, assisted by ship’s crew members who now had nothing else to do and were more than content to amuse themselves down in the convict holds, where they could expose themselves to venereal disease, cholera, lice an
d verbal abuse. Daniel’s orders were that the women be brought up twice daily, after meals, to exercise — and if possible, wash — if the weather was fine and not so hot as to be hazardous to health. With that, he ordered a ship’s boat to be lowered and made his first journey ashore.

  He was met on the beach by the major’s adjutant, who had seen him being rowed ashore and who handed him several lists of convicts and the marines allocated to guard them. They had been consigned to hut building, rock quarrying and tree felling, and there were three groups in all, totalling one hundred and twenty men.

  Daniel instructed his marine privates to round up all the men as they came off the ships’ cutters bobbing out in the bay and then climbed onto the tailboard of one of the ox carts that had been unloaded from the supply ship Fishburn the previous day. Once they all appeared to be standing below him, in knotted, sullen, ill-clad clusters, he raised his voice to be heard. ‘You have all been allocated to tasks with which most of you will be unfamiliar. Be assured that I will not punish inability. I will, however, punish laziness, insubordination and deliberate obstruction. Plus, of course, any attempt at escape will result in death, either from a musket ball in the back, or on the gallows that I have no doubt will be the first thing to be constructed here on land.

  ‘I have a list of all you men who will be working under my command, with an armed marine to enforce my instructions. Some of you list your previous occupations, some of you not. Let’s begin with the obvious first step. Raise your hand if you are a tree feller.’

  Several hands rose in the air and Daniel instructed them to stand in a separate group to one side.

  ‘Now, any quarry workers or stonemasons?’

  Another group was separated from the main body and there was one task left.

  ‘House builders and thatchers?’

  This produced the third group and some fifty men now stood aside from the main body of convicts.

  Daniel chose the oldest looking man in each of the specialised teams and invited each of them, in turn, to select labourers from among those who were left. Within ten minutes he had three working parties, each headed by a man who claimed to have experience. He then turned to the marines who had been watching the proceedings. ‘Private Milward, take the group into the trees over there and start felling. Private Kenning, you’ve got the quarry working party. Find a suitable outcrop of rock and start them on cutting. Private Webber, you’re with me and the house-builders. All of you report to Captain Mulgrave on the shoreline down there and tell him what tools you need to have unloaded from the supply ships.’