As they steered slowly towards their longed-for destination there were repeated attempts by some of the passengers to claim more than their meagre rations. Men soon began to die. The first drank seawater and threw himself into the dark sea one night.
McIntosh did most of the sailing and also acted as a religious minister, focusing a mixture of religious beliefs into a form of Anglican service, complete with some hymns. One night he got the Sikhs to sing. The sound was ‘soothingly beautiful’.
Dodging whales, cold at night, hot and parched during the day, the passengers aboard Lifeboat No. 7 sailed on. Snuffling seawater through the nose and spitting it out helped McIntosh relieve the dreadful thirst, as did sucking on a button. Fortunately, a couple of squalls brought rain which they captured for drinking water and, as the death toll mounted, there were more rations to share among the survivors.
At dawn on the twenty-second day the dark blue water beneath their boat turned green. They saw plants floating in the sea and the number of birds increased. They were close to land. But as they neared the coast they could spy nowhere safe to land through the shoals and breaking waves. They lost sight of the land, and Captain Bill Lyons died that night. But by noon the next day they saw the coast again and found a sheltered bay to come ashore. The place they landed was amazingly close to where they had navigated towards from the other side of the Atlantic.
The wallowing lifeboat ground into sand about 300 yards off the beach. Some of the passengers were unwilling to get into the water but McIntosh threw them overboard. Those first ashore found fresh water and the 38 survivors made a fire and cooked up some of the berries growing there. They relaxed around the fire, stretching out horizontal for the first time in 23 days and hardly noticing the saltwater boils covering their bodies. But they were not safe yet. There was fresh water but little else. They could see no signs of human habitation.
But suddenly two native boys appeared and led the group to their fishing village a kilometre or so along the coast. The villagers fed and cared for the survivors of Lifeboat No. 7 from their own meagre resources and were able to get a message to the authorities. Travelling a network of creeks and waterways in a flotilla of dugout canoes, the survivors were eventually transferred to trucks and taken to Sao Luiz, where they received hospital treatment. The poor fisher people, who had almost certainly saved their lives, trekked all the way to the capital from their village to bring them fruit. All the survivors recovered and were transported by luxury liner to Trinidad. McIntosh took a passage to Bermuda and went on to a stellar naval career. For his exploits in Lifeboat No. 7 he was awarded the honour of Member of the British Empire. He subsequently won many more decorations in the Royal Navy, retiring as a vice admiral in 1980. After a busy and productive retirement, Sir Ian McIntosh KBE CB DSO DSC MBE died in England in 2003.
DUNERA BOYS
They had no idea where they were going. They only hoped that it would be safer than where they had come from. On 10 July 1940, the hired military transport ship Dunera left Liverpool docks with around 2500 souls aboard, bound for somewhere else.
In the first fearful months of World War II the British government became concerned that refugees who had flooded to their shores seeking sanctuary from Hitler’s Nazis might be enemy spies. In what Winston Churchill later admitted was ‘a deplorable and regrettable mistake’, the British government decided to deport these people. Around two thousand male German refugees, mostly Jewish, were placed aboard the Dunera, along with several hundred Italian prisoners of war and over two hundred Nazis. They were guarded by over three hundred army troops. Together with the ship’s crew, those aboard added up to around twice the carrying capacity of the Dunera. The scene was set for disaster.
At first the Dunera passengers were told they were bound for Canada. But one man found an atlas, and with the aid of a sextant and some trigonometry, worked out that they were actually sailing to Australia.
The men on the overcrowded vessel were mainly aged between eighteen and 45. Space was so limited that they slept wherever they could. Held below decks for most of the day and night, apart from 30 minutes of exercise per day, sickness was inevitable. Many suffered from diarrhoea and the ten toilets available were strictly policed to control their use. One man was bayoneted as he tried to reach the toilet after dark when access had been forbidden. Someone whimsically calculated that over the length of the 57-day voyage, each of them had just seven minutes use of a toilet a day. Raw sewage often flooded the decks.
Those troops assigned to guard the passengers behaved appallingly, abusing, robbing and beating them, and destroying medicine and religious items. Water was in short supply and razors confiscated, increasing the misery throughout the poorly ventilated ship.
When the Dunera reached Australia, the prisoners of war, the Nazis and some internees were put ashore in Melbourne. Most of the Dunera boys, as they would come to be known, continued to Sydney. There, an Australian medical officer, Alan Frost, boarded the ship and was shocked by what he saw. The passengers were dirty, unkempt and poorly dressed. It was soon clear that a serious wrong had been done. Frost wrote a scathing report that eventually led to questions being asked in the British Parliament. The commanding officer aboard the Dunera was severely reprimanded and a regimental sergeant major in charge of the army guards was broken to the ranks, imprisoned and then dishonourably discharged. Several other guards were also penalised for their actions during the voyage.
The Dunera boys were transferred by train to an internment camp in Hay in New South Wales where they received much better treatment. Some would tell a story of a casual Australian guard asking an internee to hold his rifle while he rolled a smoke. Later the internees were moved to Tatura in Victoria. In both places they continued the cultural and educational activities established on the Dunera, with a camp ‘university’ and musical groups. They even developed their own currency for use in the camp, a denomination known as a goodonya, after the continual use of the term by their friendly Australian guards.
When the mistake made by the British government was realised and accepted, the Dunera boys were reclassified as friendly aliens and gradually released from internment. Some returned to enlist in British forces or joined the Australian forces. Many received compensation for the loss of their belongings.
After the war, a notable number of the 900 Dunera boys who remained here went on to make valued contributions to Australian education, science and business. Of those who had returned to Britain, many also contributed there, one even becoming a lord.
3
DANGEROUS JOURNEYS
He did not seem a bit afraid of the police, but, on the contrary, laughed at them and at their efforts to capture him and his mates.
Robert Scott, manager of the Euroa Bank, on Ned Kelly in 1878
VOYAGE TO FREEDOM
James Martin stole some scrap metal belonging to Lord Courtney of Powderham Castle in Exeter. He was arrested, tried, found guilty and transported for seven years to Botany Bay with the First Fleet in 1787. Three years later, on the night of 28 March 1791 Martin joined William and Mary Bryant, their children Charlotte and Emanuel, and six other men in a small leaky boat stocked with food, water and weapons. They rowed the governor’s cutter straight through Sydney Heads and set a course north to freedom.
William Bryant’s Cornish sailing and fishing skills would be invaluable during the ordeals to come. Some of the other men also had some experience with navigation and handling boats. But nothing they had seen could have prepared them for this daring voyage that would take them along dangerous coasts and through some of the world’s least-known waters.
In his surviving account of the voyage, Martin says that after two days they found a creek where they camped for two nights and where ‘The Natives came down to whom we gave some Cloaths and other articles, and they went away very well satisfied.’ After a couple more days of sailing they landed in ‘a very fine harbour’ to repair their boat but ‘were drove off by the Natives, wh
ich meant to destroy us’. Escaping downstream they found another place to land but ‘the Natives came in great numbers armed with Spears and Shields &c. we form’d ourselves in parts, one party of us made towards them to pacify them by signes, but they took not the least notice accordingly we fired a Musket thinking to affright them but they paid no attention to it’.
The escapees fled and continued their voyage along the unknown north coast, suffering from exposure, lack of food and dangerous storms. They again attempted to frighten off groups of Aboriginal people by firing over their heads. They were buffeted by howling winds and deluged by rain. During one terrifying storm they were forced to throw their clothes into the sea to avoid sinking. Martin wrote: ‘I will leave you to consider what distress we must be in the Woman and the two little babies were in a bad Condition every thing being so wet that we could by no means light a fire we had nothing to eat except a little raw Rice at night.’
By now it was mid May. After about six weeks they had reached the Great Barrier Reef and were surviving mainly on fish and turtle they caught, and rain water. They made land again at the Gulf of Carpentaria where they encountered more ‘Natives’, probably Torres Strait Islanders, who attacked them with bows and arrows when they again fired their muskets. Later, another group of Islanders chased the escapees into the gulf on sail-rigged canoes. The band outran their pursuers and made a fast three-day passage across the gulf to Arnhem Land where they found fresh water that enabled them to reach the island of Timor, then held by the Dutch.
When they reached Timor, it was 5 June 1791 and the small group of escapees had been at sea for sixty-nine days and sailed 5000 kilometres from Port Jackson. Passing themselves off as survivors of a sunken whaling ship, the group remained on Timor for two months, enjoying the governor’s excellent hospitality. Unfortunately, according to Martin’s account at least, Mary Bryant and her husband ‘had words with [the governor’s] wife [and] went and Informed against himself wife & children and all of us which we was immediately taken Prisoners and confined in the Castle’. After some months’ confinement they were taken to Batavia, now Jakarta, in chains. Three weeks after their arrival the twenty-month-old Emanuel Bryant died. Three weeks later fever also took his father, the leader of the group.
From there the survivors were taken to Cape Town on separate ships, though three of the remaining men died on the way. The survivors assembled in Cape Town in March 1792. Martin wrote that despite their recapture the fugitives were relieved not to have perished. In April, they left for England aboard HMS Gorgon. Sailing through the tropical heat, some of the children of the soldiers aboard began to die. On 6 May, young Charlotte Bryant died and was buried in the sea on which she had lived much of her brief life. The five surviving escapees landed back in England on 18 June 1792. They were conveyed to Newgate prison to await their uncertain futures, quite possibly a sentence of death.
But public interest in the plight of the prisoners, and their astounding escape story, worked in their favour. At their trial before the Old Bailey Bar on 7 July, a sympathetic magistrate decreed that they would only have to serve out the reminder of their existing sentences. Mary Bryant was released in May 1793. The four men, including Martin, were discharged by proclamation in November that year.
What did they do with their hard-won freedom? Although historians have speculated on the subsequent life of Mary Bryant aka Broad, nothing definite is known. The men mostly faded into the shadows of history. James Martin had a wife and son in Exeter and was thought to be willing to return to his trade in Ireland or London. Two of the other men had a brief association with the philosopher and reformist Jeremy Bentham, who took up their case as part of his campaign against transportation.
Wherever they all went and whatever they did, their extraordinary journey to Botany Bay and back and their ultimate path to freedom had cost them five years of their lives.
NED KELLY’S POOR DRIVING
Robert Scott was manager of the National Bank at Euroa. Just before 4 p.m. on 10 December 1878, he received a visit from Ned Kelly and his gang, wishing to make a large but unauthorised withdrawal. Ned pointed a large revolver at the manager and told him to ‘bail up’. Steve Hart then joined them, carrying two revolvers.
‘I did not bail up at first and they called again upon me to do so,’ Scott later stated. ‘I had a revolver, but it was lying on the opposite side of the table from me, and I could not reach it without placing myself in the certain danger of being immediately shot.’
The bushrangers again demanded that Scott surrender. Wisely, he decided that although he was armed he had no chance of reaching the weapon before being shot. ‘On their again ordering me to throw up my arms I said, “It is all right”, and raised my hands to the armpits of my vest.’ Ned Kelly then ransacked the bank, taking between three and four hundred pounds worth of gold, silver and banknotes while Hart guarded the helpless bank manager.
In those days, bank managers and their families lived on the premises. Kelly went towards the living quarters and Scott spoke up again: ‘Fearing that he would do them harm I said to him “Kelly, if you go there I’ll strike you, whatever the consequences may be.” Thereupon Hart presented his revolvers at my head, and Kelly passed through.’
To Scott’s surprise, his wife, family and servants took the sudden appearance of an armed bushranger very calmly. They were not harmed, but Ned returned to the front of the bank saying he knew there was more money. Scott refused to give him any more, but Ned forced the bank’s teller to hand over more gold, sovereigns and cash. The bushrangers had now seized up to the value of 1500 pounds, an enormous amount of money at the time. Ned also broke into the bank vaults but left the share certificates and other securities untouched.
Now the bank manager’s slightly surreal journey with Australia’s most feared outlaws began. The gang had obtained a hawker’s wagon and a small cart. Kelly ordered Scott to also harness his own horse and buggy but Scott refused, saying ‘Do it for yourself.’ Surprisingly, Kelly agreed mildly and harnessed the horse.
Adding to the carnival atmosphere developing around the convoy of carts and horses, Scott offered the bushrangers a drink. They accepted, although they were careful to watch him drink first. However, Scott’s further attempts to slow the procession down come to nothing, and they set out on the five kilometre trek to Younghusband’s Station, a property already taken over by the bushrangers in preparation for what was to follow. The brave bank manager described the journey thus:
Every person about the bank was taken. There was myself, my wife and her mother, my seven children—four boys and three girls the eldest being a boy 13 years of age—the accountant, clerk and two servants. The hawker’s van was placed in front, then followed my buggy, which Mrs Scott was driving. The spring cart, driven by Ned Kelly, came next, and Stephen Hart brought up the rear on horseback. I may say here that when the bank was stuck up my wife and family were all in one room, preparing to go out for a walk, and was making ready to attend a funeral. Our arrangements were, however, rudely upset and it appeared for the time that my own funeral would be the next. The distance between Euroa and Younghusband’s station is about three miles and a half.
As the slow journey proceeded, Scott opened up a conversation with Kelly. ‘I asked him, “What would that fellow Hart have done if I had struck you when you were going into my private house?” He replied, “He would have shot you dead on the spot.”’
Kelly let on that the bushrangers had done their background research on the bank manager.
He further said that he had heard a good deal about me, and had been told that he would find me a difficult person to deal with, and that whilst the hawker he bailed up had been bad, I had been worse, and was, in fact, the worst and most obstinate fellow he had ever met with. The hawker, I believe, was very impertinent to him. He also said, ‘I have seen the police often, and have heard them often.’ He did not seem a bit afraid of the police, but, on the contrary, laughed at them and at their efforts to
capture him and his mates.
The other ruffians appeared to have as little dread of their pursuers. I asked Hart which way he was going when he left the station, and Kelly answered carelessly, ‘Oh, the country belongs to us. We can go any where we like.’ He said, however, that he was getting sick of bushranging life. In reply to a question as to how Constable M’Intyre behaved when his comrades were murdered, he simply said that that officer made no resistance. He would not say where he and his gang had been concealing themselves, nor what they as outlaws wanted with the money he had stolen. I presume, however, that they intend the money for their relatives.
Kelly was driving the cart badly. Scott asked to take the reins as he knew the road, but Kelly refused. It wasn’t long before the bushranger ran the conveyance into a bank and turned it over.
We were nearly all thrown out. I jumped out, and got hold of the horse, and Kelly lifted out the servant. He then got the horse released, harnessed it again, and we started afresh. After driving a little he said, ‘You drive very well, you had better go on.’ I was then proceeding to take a short cut to Younghusband’s station—for we had been informed that it was our destination when Kelly, suspecting that I was misleading him, said, ‘If you play me any pranks, I will make it hot for you.’ I told him that the others had taken the wrong road—or rather a longer one—and he allowed me to proceed. The notes stolen from the bank were lying beside me, and I felt sorely tempted to regain them, but restrained myself.
Great Australian Journeys Page 6