1788
Page 16
After only a few weeks the general health of the settlers began to deteriorate and there was an outbreak of the scurvy that had been kept at bay for so much of the long voyage from England. There were already too few workers available to help build the new settlement, and the few skilled carpenters were committed to repairing the transport ships that were soon to return home to England:
The people were healthy when landed but the scurvy has for some time appeared among them and now rages in the most extraordinary measure. Only sixteen carpenters could be hired from the ships and several of the carpenters were sick. It was now the middle of February; the rains began to fall very heavy and pointed out the necessity of hutting people; convicts were therefore appointed to assist the detachment in this work.32
The tent hospital established on the western side of the cove was soon filled with cases of camp dysentery and scurvy. Chief Surgeon John White said of the patients, ‘More pitiable objects were perhaps never seen.’33
Back in London, when botanist Joseph Banks heard of the outbreak of scurvy in that first winter he was critical of the settlers’ ability to cope. He suggested that the colony should learn to find and eat the local ‘culinary vegetables’: ‘They must by degrees learn more and more the use of those [vegetables] which are found wild in the country. I think it will be useless to send out essence of malt to them as a medicine.’34
But Surgeon White protested that while he had found a ‘small berry like a white current’ and a native blueberry called Leptomeria aceda that proved to be a good anti-scorbutic, it is ‘far from sufficient to remove the scurvy’, which ‘prevails with great violence’.35
The newcomers could have learned something from the local inhabitants, but a belief of racial superiority prevented them from taking any lessons from the Aboriginal people, who had survived here – despite the scarce resources – for thousands of years.
The new settlers had, as mentioned earlier, encountered local Aboriginal people on the first day they had landed in Botany Bay, and again when they first came to Port Jackson. On both occasions there had been no violence, which gave Phillip and his colleagues confidence that the Aboriginal people would not be a problem when they moved to Sydney Cove.
In the instructions given to Phillip the British Government had made it clear that it wanted good relations, if possible, with the locals, ‘and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them’.36
Over the first few months of the new settlement there was little contact, but as the year progressed there were a number of incidents where convicts died, and similar incidents where Aboriginal people died, which would add to increasing hostility between the white and black peoples. This hostility would shape relationships not only for those who arrived with the First Fleet but also for the settlers of the next two centuries.
Erecting buildings proved difficult and slow. It took days for a team of men to cut down a single tree, drag it to the saw pit and cut it into usable strips of timber. There were only sixteen ship’s carpenters, most of whom were kept busy on their ships before leaving for their return journey within a few months of arriving. This left the fledgling colony with only twelve convicts with carpentry skills.
Initially the entire settlement lived in tents, and even after two years most settlers had only graduated to living in crude shacks made of timber beams against which they would lay bark from the local cabbage tree.
These ‘little edifices’37 proved to be ineffective shelters in the heaviest weather, when rain would pour through the doors and cracks. In the early years there was no sewerage system and no established roads, and during heavy rain the paths would become fast-running filthy streams that would undermine and flood the little dwellings. More than two years after arriving, Judge David Collins witnessed the devastation caused by floods, as heavy rains washed many of the convicts’ hovels away: ‘The rain came down in torrents, filling up every trench and cavity, which had been dug about the settlement, and causing much damage to the miserable mud tenements, which were occupied by the convicts.’38
The building of better accommodation was delayed; it was a higher priority to erect public stores that would provide security from theft, insects and the weather. It would be several months, nevertheless, before the first storehouse could be built. Measuring one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet wide (thirty by seven and a half metres), it was used for Sydney’s first church service under shelter before the provisions were moved in.
It had been expected that religion would play a big role in the new colony, and the responsibility for faith was vested in the chaplain of the settlement, Reverend Richard Johnson. Johnson soon became one of the busiest men in the colony. He held services, either in the open air or in a storehouse, performed all the functions of the church – baptisms, marriages, burials – attended the execution of condemned men and worked hard among the convicts.
It would be more than five years before a temporary church of wooden posts, wattle and plaster was built, before which Johnson had no place to conduct divine services except for any hut that happened to be empty.39
The reverend was to marry a number of convicts within months of arriving. Judge David Collins said that while the marriages were encouraged, many took place for the wrong reasons:
It was soon observed, with satisfaction, that several couples were announced for marriage; but on strictly scrutinising the motive, it was found in several instances to originate in the idea, that the married people would meet with various little comforts and privileges that were denied to those in a single state; and some, on not finding those expectations realised, repented, wished and actually applied to restore their former situations.40
Still, many marriages lasted. Mary Parker had been convicted in the Old Bailey in April 1786 for stealing some clothing and cloth valued at three pounds, two shillings and sixpence and sentenced to seven years’ transportation. She sailed on the First Fleet on the Lady Penrhyn and met and married John Small in Sydney. He had been convicted in Devon for assault and robbery in March 1785 and had sailed to the settlement on the Charlotte.
When they were married by the Reverend Johnson under a tree in Sydney Cove in October 1788, more than fifty weddings had already been performed in the new colony.
Mary and John would have seven children, and their descendants would become one of the largest of a number of convict families in Australia today who can still trace their ancestry back to the First Fleet.41
The marines had been promised a barracks, but when it still had not been built at the onset of winter they built their own shelter with the help of some of the ships’ carpenters, as Tench described:
As winter was fast approaching, it became necessary to secure ourselves in quarters which might shield us from the cold … The erection of barracks for the soldiers was projected and the private men of each company undertook to build for themselves two wooden houses of sixty-eight feet in length and twenty-three feet in breadth.42
The first substantial buildings were rectangular timber structures measuring about twelve feet by nine feet (three and a half by two and three-quarter metres). The corner posts were about six inches (fifteen centimetres) square and buried deep in the ground, with other posts placed at intervals of about three feet (almost one metre) to hold up the timber wall panels. The roofs were of thatch, or of reeds spread between timber ‘battens’.
By the middle of the first year there were only four of these buildings completed, which Phillip needed to secure the stores behind strong walls and under lock and key.
The construction of brick or secure stone buildings would take even longer. Although there was plenty of good stone and clay for bricks, there was no known local source of lime, traditionally used to make the cement that would bind the bricks together. Crushed and burned oyster shells were used as a substitute.43
Even the governor lived in a framed tent for the first eighteen months of the colony. His tent, made by Smith &
Company in St George’s Fields and brought out from England, was set up on the eastern side of Sydney Cove. Phillip complained it was ‘neither wind nor water proof’.44
Finally Phillip was able to leave his tent, as the first brick building to be completed was the governor’s house. It was officially opened on the king’s birthday, in June 1789, nearly eighteen months after the fleet arrived. When building had begun, Phillip had laid a foundation stone with the inscription:
ARTHUR PHILLIP, ESQ.
Captain General in and over his Majesty’s territory of New South Wales, and its dependencies;
Arrived in this country on the 18th day of January, 1788, with the first settlers;
And on the 15th day of May, in the same year, the first of these stones was laid.
The imposing two-storey, double-fronted house, with its nine large windows across the front and two smaller windows on either side of the arched doorway, would be the governor’s official residence for fifty-seven years, before it was demolished and replaced with an even larger dwelling a few hundred metres away. Some of the foundations of the original house remain today, under the corner of Bridge and Phillip Streets.
Because there was no architect in the colony, the governor’s house was designed and built by the convict brickmaker James Bloodsworth. In addition to the governor’s residence Bloodsworth was responsible for the early establishment of the colony’s first brickworks, about a mile from Sydney Cove at what later became the Haymarket at the end of Darling Harbour. The First Fleet had only brought out five thousand bricks, but with abundant clay and plenty of water the Brickfield, as the site was called, was quickly producing a large quantity of bricks.
Brickmaking was back-breaking work, and as there were no carts the completed bricks had to be carried nearly two kilometres from the brickworks to the building site at Sydney Cove. George Worgan was impressed with how quickly the brickworks had been established:
I walked out today as far as the brick grounds, it is a pleasant road through the wood about a mile or two from the village for from the number of little huts and cots that appear now, just above the ground, it has a villatick [village like] appearance. I see they have made between twenty and thirty-thousand bricks and they were employed in digging out a kiln and for the burning of them.45
No doubt grateful for the fine house, Governor Arthur Phillip pardoned Bloodsworth in 1790 and appointed him superintendent of the colony’s buildings.
James Bloodsworth had been convicted in the Kingston on Thames court of stealing and sentenced to seven years’ transportation in October 1785. In the colony he was to partner Sarah Bellamy. Although it is not known if they ever married, they had eight children together. Sarah was only 17 years old when she was convicted in the Worcester Assizes for stealing money and sentenced to seven years’ transportation, only a few months before Bloodsworth.
Bloodsworth decided against returning to England at the end of his sentence and chose to stay in Sydney. When he died in 1804, he was afforded a flattering obituary in the Sydney Gazette, Sydney’s first newspaper:
On Wednesday last died, generally lamented Mr. James Bloodsworth, for many years Superintendent of Builders in the Employ of the Government. He came to the colony among its first inhabitants in the year 1788 and obtained the appointment shortly after his arrival. The first house in this part of the Southern Hemisphere was by him erected and most of the public buildings since have been under his direction.46
After six months a few buildings other than the storehouse had been completed, including a blacksmith’s shack and a guardhouse on the eastern side of Sydney Cove. The governor’s house was also under construction. Nearby were less substantial huts for the Reverend Richard Johnson and his wife Mary, Judge David Collins and a number of other officials.
Phillip now wanted the more permanent buildings to be positioned in a less haphazard manner and had plans for the building of an orderly city, with streets up to sixty metres wide. However, the plans were never implemented.
While building work was forging ahead slowly but steadily, moves towards self-sufficiency in the production of food were progressing rather less well. The settlers had only limited success at growing food and exploiting the local natural resources.
Everyone was issued a weekly food ration, convicts and marines alike, although the marines were also given their grog ration. In the early days the officers fared better, especially on celebratory occasions such as the king’s birthday in June, where they were treated to a feast of mutton, pork, duck, fowl, port Madeira and good English porter. The king’s birthday was a major event in the colony’s calendar, and even the convicts were given rum.
To begin with the food ration included salted beef, salted pork, rice, peas and flour. However, over the next two years the allocation would be progressively reduced as the colony ran out of food. Eventually even the officers would be forced to accept starvation rations.
The seeds that had been brought from Rio de Janeiro and the Cape, including lemons, limes, figs, grapes and oranges, were sown but fared badly. Surgeon George Worgan recorded that:
Indigo, coffee, ginger, castor nut oranges, lemons and limes, firs and oaks, have vegetated from seed, but whether from an unfriendly deleterious quality of the soil or the season, nothing seems to flourish vigorously long.47
Worgan’s own attempt to grow vegetables was equally unsuccessful:
I put peas and broad beans in, soon after I arrived (February) the peas podded in three months, the beans are still in blossom (June) and neither plants are above a foot high, and out of five rows of the peas each three foot in length, I shall not get above twenty pods, however my soil is too sandy.48
Many of the other officers also developed their own small plots of land, but these too proved to be unproductive in the poor soil around Sydney and were ‘successively abandoned’49 as farming moved west of Sydney.
The settlers had found some local wild vegetables to supplement their diet but only a limited amount, not enough to sustain a colony of well over a thousand people. What they found included a plant resembling sage near the seashore, a kind of wild spinach and a small shrub with greenish leaves.
Arthur Phillip established government farms and gardens on which the convicts were obliged to work during the week. However, due to the quality of the soil, they did not prove as productive as hoped.
The settlers had only limited success at fishing. A number of species that had been part of the local Aboriginal diet were rapidly depleted when extensively harvested to feed the new settlement, which had many more mouths to feed. This certainly seems to have been the case with the giant stingrays that in Cook’s time had been so prevalent that he initially called Botany Bay ‘Stingray Bay’. When Cook had anchored in the bay, some of the rays were so heavy that they needed to be gutted in the water and still weighed hundreds of pounds when pulled aboard.
Captain Tench, who regularly fished all night when the colony was short of food, described the slim pickings thus: ‘the universal voice of all professional fishermen is that they never fished in a country where success was so precarious and uncertain’.50
Occasionally the pot was improved by the addition of a bird or an animal (including emus and kangaroos), but these too soon became scarcer around Sydney.
One local plant that attracted the newcomers was the sarsaparilla vine, which looked like a bay leaf, tasted a little like liquorice root and was found to be a good substitute for tea. Chief Surgeon White used it medicinally, finding it to be a good ‘pectoral’, for clearing the respiratory tract.51
‘Sweet tea’, as it became known, was thought to have a number of restorative and health benefits. John Nicol, who was to sail as a steward on the Lady Juliana in the Second Fleet, found it was already being widely used in Sydney when he arrived and brought some back to England via China:
They have an herb in the colony they call sweet tea. It is infused and drank like the china tea. I liked it much; it requires no sugar and is both bit
ter and sweet. There was an old female convict, her hair quite grey with age, her face shrivelled, who was suckling a child she had born in the colony. Everyone went to see her, and I among the rest. It was a strange sight, her hair quite white. Her fecundity was ascribed to the sweet tea. I brought away with me two bags of it, as presents for my friends; but two of our men became quite ill of the scurvy, and I allowed them the use of it, which soon cured them, but reduced my store. When we came to China, I showed it to my Chinese friends, and they bought it with avidity, and impugned me for it, and a quantity of the seed I had likewise preserved. I let them have the seed and only brought a small quantity of the herb to England.52
The sarsaparilla leaves would attract a lot of attention in London after the publicity surrounding the First Fleet convict Mary Bryant, who escaped from Sydney with her husband, two children and seven other convicts. The party managed to reach Koepang in Timor before being recaptured, and Mary Bryant was one of five who survived and were eventually returned to London. Her sensational story generated support and sympathy and she was eventually pardoned with the help of James Boswell. She famously gave him as a thank-you present some sarsaparilla leaves that she had somehow kept throughout her ordeal.
The small amount of produce that was locally grown or caught notwithstanding, the weekly ration was less than adequate from the start, and many convicts ate all their food before the next issue and then resorted to stealing to survive. This left those who had had their food stolen with little option but to steal from someone else.
Almost all the crimes committed in the early days of the colony involved the theft of food. Captain Tench noted that it was surprising how ‘few crimes of deep rye, or a hardened nature have been perpetuated during the first few years’.53