Elizabeth Macarthur

by Michelle Scott Tucker

  Given their ambiguous orders and the unclear lines of command, the dispute between the army officers and the ships’ captains was inevitable. Nepean outranked Gilbert, officially and socially. Yet on board the Neptune Gilbert’s word was necessarily law and the ordering of the ship—including the movement of convicts above and below decks—was very much his concern. Brawls and brouhaha between the services, in the ranks as well as in the corridors of power, were commonplace. But the relatively small altercation that was about to take place on the Neptune would, in the new colony, be re-enacted and enlarged over and again as the army, in the form of the New South Wales Corps, effectively took over from the navy, in the form of Governor Phillip and his marines.

  While Gilbert was on shore, Nepean ordered the first mate Nicholas Anstis (who seems to have been considered a soft touch by the army men) to hand over the keys to the convict compartments. Anstis gave Nepean the keys. Nepean then went on shore himself, leaving orders for his sergeants to use the keys as necessary and then leave them with Lieutenant Macarthur. That night, when Gilbert returned and discovered what had happened, he indignantly demanded the keys from Macarthur, who refused to give them up. Over the next few days letters were written, demands were made, locks were changed, and keys were passed reluctantly back and forth.

  On Tuesday 1 December, Nicholas Nepean wrote to his brother Evan, seeking to have Gilbert removed. He described Gilbert as ‘the greatest scoundrel that was ever created’ and went on to note that ‘his insolence to me has been so extraordinary that words can hardly convey you an Idea of his Infamy’. Nepean went on to accuse Gilbert of subverting his authority and inciting mutiny ‘and that unless he is removed I fear worse consequences must ensue.’24 Nepean then returned ashore, once again leaving Macarthur and Harris in charge of the keys.

  Gilbert also remained on shore until Wednesday afternoon when he boarded the Neptune accompanied by three friends. The four men spent the afternoon and early evening drinking in Gilbert’s cabin. At some point in the evening Gilbert politely sent Macarthur ashore, asking him to collect Captain Nepean because the ship was ready to sail at three o’clock in the morning, on the next tide. John obliged, planning also to meet Elizabeth as she returned from Bridgerule. Gilbert’s request, however, was a malicious one: he had not the slightest intention of sailing that evening, having previously ordered half a dozen hogs to be sent on board the following day.

  While Macarthur was gone there was a fracas among the convict women, who were noisy and violently abusive, forcing Harris to place the ringleader in irons. Gilbert yelled down the hatchway ‘several vulgar phrases’, wanting to know ‘who was that below making such a Rackett, damning his eyes’. Upon discovering Harris, Gilbert was furious, theatrically demanding to know who had given Harris authority to command the ship. Harris replied that he was obeying his officer’s directions. Then, casting fuel on the fire, Harris added ‘and let me see who would hinder me’.25 Gilbert flew down the ladder and grasped Harris’ shirt front, damning Harris and Nepean together. Gilbert then turned on the soldier standing guard, grabbed him by the neck, damned him and asked what right had he there. The soldier stood his ground, asking Gilbert ‘not to shove him on his post or he would run him through’ and noting that he had private orders which he had no right to explain to Gilbert.26 At this, Gilbert melodramatically bared his chest to the soldier and dared the man to run him through, according to his orders. The soldier—bemused, bewildered or simply belligerent—failed to run Gilbert through, but we can guess as to how tempting he may have thought the offer. Gilbert finally left only to return shortly afterwards to continue taunting the soldier before he and his cronies holed themselves up in Gilbert’s cabin with a dozen loaded muskets. There they calmed down and had some time to reflect. A short time later Gilbert, leaving his friends in the cabin, prudently slipped away to shore. It was to this ‘scene of uproar and confusion’ that Elizabeth, accompanied by John Macarthur and Captain Nepean, returned.27

  Elizabeth had spent much of the day travelling from Bridgerule. Exhausted as she was, on the basis of Gilbert’s malicious message she was obliged to travel out to the Neptune right away. She arrived on board with John and Nepean at about midnight, to be met by a dishevelled Harris. No sooner had Harris described the evening’s events than Nepean sent him off to brother Evan with an ominous note, hastily scrawled: ‘There is a Mutiny in the Ship’. With Gilbert gone, his friends in the cabin surrendered their arms to Nepean and went ashore. Poor Elizabeth noted in her journal that she didn’t manage to crawl into her cot until about three in the morning. The fact that Neptune remained anchored in Plymouth Sound for another week was further salt to her wounds. She needn’t have hurried back from Bridgerule after all.

  During the time the Neptune remained in Plymouth, Gilbert and Nepean were, separately, busy rounding up support on shore. A number of senior officials and naval officers found themselves asked for advice and assistance. Evan Nepean, naturally, was very much involved, as were the contractors who owned the Neptune. A flurry of letters criss-crossed between them. The result was that even though Gilbert was largely considered to have been in the right, he was to be removed before the Neptune departed for New South Wales. Nepean’s powerful patrons had prevailed. But Nicholas Nepean seems to have been told in no uncertain terms about the limits of his power, as his subsequent actions—or lack of action—would demonstrate.

  On Thursday 10 December Gilbert sailed the Neptune eastward to Portsmouth, tiresomely retracing his earlier passage through the English Channel, made mere weeks before. Several convicts died on the way and were carelessly buried at sea; four corpses were later found floating back to shore. A further sixteen convicts, according to one account, would die before the ship left Portsmouth.28 It seems reasonable to assume that these convicts were unwell before their embarkation. And those that died so early in the piece cannot possibly have been the only ones who were sick or chronically diseased before they boarded the Second Fleet transports. Yet even that being the case, pre-existing illnesses cannot account for the eventual inexcusable death rate among the Neptune’s convicts. Almost one-third, or a total of 158 of the Neptune’s convicts (including eleven of the women), would die before the ship reached New South Wales—nearly one for each day at sea.

  Gilbert anchored in Stokes Bay on Sunday 13 December. Waiting there, ready for sea, were the Neptune’s sister transports, Scarborough and Surprize. Soon after arriving in Portsmouth Thomas Gilbert left the ship for the last time. Captain Donald Trail, formerly of the Surprize, was moved onto the Neptune to become its new master. First mate Anstis found himself promoted to captaincy of the Surprize. Surgeon’s mate Harris, John Macarthur’s friend and supporter, was moved to the Surprize too. Elizabeth wrote that she was ‘heartily glad’ to see the back of Gilbert and she and John congratulated themselves with the thought that ‘such another troublesome man could not be found’.29

  But Elizabeth and John were wrong. ‘Experience however soon taught us a very disagreeable truth,’ continued Elizabeth in her journal. ‘Mr Trail’s character was of a much blacker dye than was ever in Mr Gilbert’s nature to exhibit.’30

  4

  From the Neptune to the Scarborough

  I wrote to you from Portsmouth that we had a Lady going out with us; the wife of Captain Trail; she appeared a very agreeable woman, but her husband proved himself a perfect sea monster.

  ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO HER MOTHER, 20 APRIL 1790

  In Elizabeth’s journal of the voyage she names only those who, in her eyes, were at the top of the ship’s hierarchy. Neptune’s new master, Donald Trail, a Scotsman aged forty-four, was an experienced mariner and navigator. He had been an officer in the Royal Navy, at one stage serving under Nelson. Nelson would later describe Trail as the ‘the best Master I ever saw since I went to sea’.1

  The differences between the blustering Gilbert and hard man Trail were, as Elizabeth noted, at the level of character. Gilbert, although in a position of authority,
received very little respect from the officers of the New South Wales Corps. They challenged him at every turn. Few men were as keen to take on Trail. He was a stern disciplinarian, and his shipboard authority was absolute. Trail’s willing contribution to the culture of systematic cruelty and avarice of each of Camden, Calvert and King’s Second Fleet transports ensured they were places of brutishness and savagery. Upon the eventual return of the Neptune to England, Trail and his first mate, William Ellerington were brought to trial for the murder of the Neptune’s Portuguese cook, John Joseph.

  The murder allegedly took place off the coast of China, where the Neptune sailed after leaving New South Wales. During the 1792 trial, witnesses told how the cook was beaten by Ellerington with a lump of wood and with rope. Trail then ordered that the cook be flogged, using a lash unusually and cruelly knotted and ‘too severe for anybody but a Sodomite’. After two strokes Trail complained the work was not being done properly by the boatswain’s mate and ordered another man to take over the flogging. When the cook’s back was ‘all over blood and mangled’ he was cut down and lay on the deck, unable to walk. Ellerington walked over and kicked him ‘as hard as he could’ in the side. Then he threw him down a ‘ladder and struck him several times with his fist and put him in Irons for three or four hours’.2 The man died three weeks later. The judge and jury were unconvinced of a connection between the beating and Joseph’s death and both Trail and Ellerington were acquitted. Trail went on to have a long and prosperous maritime career.

  Accompanying Trail on the Neptune was his wife, who Elizabeth thought ‘appeared a very agreeable woman’.3 Fifty-year-old naval agent Lieutenant John Shapcote joined the ship while the Neptune was anchored at Portsmouth, to ensure that the convicts were transported in accordance with Camden, Calvert and King’s government contract. Subsequent events would, however, show him to be at best unwell and distracted from his duties and at worst an ineffective lackey. Trail, his wife and Shapcote, along with Captain Nepean, ‘lived together’ in the upper cabins and, to Elizabeth’s dismay, she and John ‘seldom benefited by their society’.4

  Elizabeth herself pinpoints the true reason for her and John’s exclusion. With the new master on board, John continued to complain about the partitioning of their cabin and the unsavoury presence of the convict women. The Macarthurs’ cabin had two means of accessing the open deck. One passage led straight through the upper cabin and onto the quarterdeck, while the other common passage to the deck was now rendered totally dark and was, wrote Elizabeth, ‘always filled with Convicts & their constant attendants, filth and Vermin’.5 The only concession that John Macarthur could eventually obtain was an assurance that the passage through the upper cabin to the quarterdeck would always be open for his family and their servants to use. The outcome of this dispute was, explained Elizabeth, a studied ‘coldness between Capt’n Nepean, the Master of the Ship & Mr McArthur’.6 Macarthur stopped speaking to Nepean and Trail, and they to him, except when forced to in the performance of their duties.

  Excluded from polite society, such as it was, Elizabeth and John appear to have made no effort to find friends elsewhere. The ship’s surgeon and mates, employees of Camden, Calvert and King, may have been likely candidates but they don’t rate a mention in Elizabeth’s journal. Nor, more surprisingly, does the assistant surgeon, D’Arcy Wentworth—a genteel, handsome and popular young man who had become something of a London celebrity. The twenty-seven-year-old Irishman boarded the

  Neptune at Portsmouth, having come straight from the Old Bailey where for the fourth time he had been tried and acquitted of highway robbery.7 Wentworth’s well-connected relations seem to have arranged his passage on the Neptune, perhaps deciding that some time on the other side of the world might do him (and them) some good.

  The Neptune remained anchored at Portsmouth for more than three weeks. During this time a formal search of the convicts’ quarters revealed almost one hundred knives and other metal items, such as tin pots, that could potentially be crafted into knives. This, as well as a fear of gaol fever contagion, was considered reason enough for many of the convicts’ personal boxes, bags and belongings to be tossed overboard. Any meagre store of clothes or mementos of home were gone in an instant. Trail would later claim that Shapcote had ordered the property overboard, while Neptune seamen attested to Trail giving the order.8 Who it was that gave the order hardly mattered to the convicts. The conditions of their new internment were rapidly becoming clear.

  If the convicts hadn’t already learnt survival skills while on the hulks, they were forced to pick them up fast. Those that made it to New South Wales were observed on arrival by the Reverend Johnson:

  When any of them were near dying, and had something given to them as bread or lillipie (flour and water boiled together), or any other necessaries, the person next to him or others would catch the bread &c. out of his hand and, with an oath, say that he was going to die, and therefore it would be of no service to him. No sooner would the breath be out of any of their bodies than others would watch them and strip them entirely naked. Instead of alleviating the distresses of each other, the weakest were sure to go the wall.9

  It seems safe to assume that the convicts’ behaviour on board each of the Second Fleet transports differed little from the behaviour Johnson recorded.

  The Macarthurs’ shipboard Christmas—little Edward’s first—was likely cold, cramped and lonely. Elizabeth doesn’t mention it in her journal. She does note, though, that she ‘made it a practice every fine Evening to…walk or sit with Mr M’ on the stern gallery, a small balcony at the rear of the ship opening off the upper cabin.10 The fresh air, the ocean view and the company of her husband made for a pleasant interlude from the stale confines of their partitioned cabin. Elizabeth was ‘much pleased with the variety of different Fish & seabirds which every day presented themselves.’11 Unfavourable winds delayed the fleet’s sailing until 5 January, but again the weather was against them and they didn’t truly get underway until Sunday 17 January 1790. By then Elizabeth had been on board the damp and dismal Neptune for two months, without leaving English waters.

  As soon as they were at sea, the crew demanded access to the female convicts. The men claimed that Trail had promised in Portsmouth that ‘they should have the Women among us’.12 Trail denied having made any such promise. Subsequently, each time a crew member was found to have had illicit contact with the women (and at one stage Trail found that a partition between the carpenter’s berth and the women’s compartment had been secretly removed), Trail had the man flogged. Such floggings occurred with sickening regularity. To a large extent the seamen were used to such treatment—floggings were a standard method of exerting discipline at sea—but Trail seems to have been particularly brutal. In 1791 ten Neptune crew members, a mix of senior and ordinary seamen, made sworn statements before the London Guildhall in which they complained of frequent beatings and inhuman cruelty.

  While Trail denied his crew contact with the convict women, he was far more lenient with his officers. Naval agent Shapcote was ‘constantly attended’ by a convict woman and it was she who, many months into the voyage, would report his sudden, late-night death. D’Arcy Wentworth too had a convict companion, who would much later become his wife. She conceived a child on the voyage and the baby grew up to be the well-known explorer, colonist and society figure William Charles Wentworth.13

  The fine weather that had carried the Second Fleet down the English Channel and south past the French coast lasted only a few days. Near the Bay of Biscay, Elizabeth records, the wind shifted and ‘it blew exceedingly hard, and now for the first time I began to be a coward. I could not be persuaded that the Ship could possibly long resist the violence of the Sea which ran mountains high.’14 By the following night the storm abated and morning dawned a perfect calm.

  At about this time Elizabeth notes that her ‘poor little Boy was taken very ill’ and that her unnamed servant ‘was attack’d with a Fever that reigned among the Women Convicts�
��.15 Baby Edward’s illness could be attributable to almost anything but the servant probably had typhus. Spread by infected lice, typhus was common in the cramped environments of ships and gaols. The ship’s surgeon, William Gray, had very little to offer. Medical qualifications (or even rudimentary expertise) were unnecessary for the role, and his supply kit included so-called medicines: oil of tar, essence of malt, spice, barley, oatmeal, sugar and wine. And neither invalid was likely to have been helped in any way by the shipboard diet.

  A surviving copy of the contract of transportation lists the rations to be provided for each soldier and convict. Over a period of seven days each soldier was to receive seven pounds of bread (equivalent to a small loaf each day); four pounds of beef; two pints of pease (a form of split pea soup or porridge); six ounces of butter; seven pints of beer or three and a half pints of rum; two pounds of pork; three pints of oatmeal and twelve ounces of cheese. The male convicts received substantially less (and no cheese or alcohol); the women less again.

  Camden, Calvert and King’s directions to Captain Trail stipulated that Shapcote and Nepean were ‘to be accommodated in a respectable and comfortable manner at your table, without any expense to themselves whatever’, but these contractual niceties were not extended to junior officers and their wives.16 Customarily, the junior army officers and the ship’s senior crew would buy in their own stores and so eat moderately well: better than the ordinary soldiers and seamen but not as well as the captain, but only for as long as the extra purchases lasted. The problem facing Elizabeth at each meal was not, however, the nutritional value of the food or even the quantity (although that was an issue too). It was the quality. Food at sea was always poor but on the Neptune it was abysmal. Even crew members, well-accustomed to a poor diet at sea, found cause to complain, later claiming they were kept on a very ‘short allowance of bad provisions’.17