1788

by David Hill

  The first criminal court in the new colony was convened only two weeks after landing, on Monday 11 February, to hear charges against a number of convicts. One was found guilty of assault and sentenced to one hundred and fifty lashes, and a second was banished for a week on a small rocky island with only bread and water for stealing a biscuit from another convict. The third was found guilty of stealing a plank of wood and sentenced to fifty lashes but later forgiven, and the sentence not carried out.

  Judge David Collins said the mildness of the first punishments seemed to have encouraged rather than deterred others from committing more serious offences. Before the end of the month the court was reconvened to hear evidence of a plan by some convicts to rob the public stores. One of the convicts, Thomas Barrett, was the first to be hanged in the new colony, but his colleagues were given a last-minute pardon. As Surgeon John White recorded in his journal:

  February 27th. Thomas Barrett, Henry Lovell, and Joseph Hall, were brought before the criminal court and tried for feloniously and fraudulently taking away from the public store beef and pease, the property of the crown. They were convicted on the clearest evidence, and, sentence of death being passed on them, they were, about six o’clock the same evening, taken to the fatal tree, where Barrett was launched into eternity, after having confessed to the Rev. Mr. Johnson, who attended him, that he was guilty of the crime, and had long merited the ignominious death which he was about to suffer, and to which he said he had been brought by bad company and evil example. Lovell and Hall were respited until six o’clock the next evening. When that awful hour arrived, they were led to the place of execution, and, just as they were on the point of ascending the ladder, the judge advocate arrived with the governor’s pardon, on condition of their being banished to some uninhabited place.54

  Within a week convicts Daniel Gordon and John Williams were tried and convicted of stealing wine. Because Williams was regarded as an ‘ignorant black youth’, the court recommended that the governor show him mercy, and he was accordingly pardoned. Gordon, who was also black, was sentenced to death, but at the gallows this was changed to banishment.55

  The following day James Freeman was tried for stealing seven pounds of flour from another convict. He was convicted and sentenced to be hanged, but while under the ladder, with the rope about his neck, he was offered his free pardon on condition of performing the duty of the common executioner as long as he remained in the country, ‘which, after some little pause, he reluctantly accepted’. William Shearman, his accomplice, was sentenced to receive ‘on his bare back, with a cat-o’-nine-tails, three hundred lashes, which were inflicted’.56

  Within six months of arriving, as the thieving escalated, Collins argued that harsher punishments were unavoidable:

  Exemplary punishments seemed about this period to be growing daily more necessary. Stock was often killed, huts and tents broken open, and provisions constantly stolen, particularly about the latter part of the week; as many of those unthrifty people, taking no care to husband their provisions through the seven days that they were intended to last them, had consumed the whole by the end of the third or fourth day.57

  The floggings were savage but were not designed to incapacitate the convicts. As a later account describes, unless it was night time, the convict was expected to go back to work immediately after the punishment:

  He was immediately sent to work, his back like bullocks liver and most likely his shoes full of blood and not permitted to go to the hospital until next morning when his back would be washed by the doctors mate and a little hog’s lard spread on with a piece of tow, and so off to work …58

  It was the theft of food that led to the decision to grow vegetables on what was to become known as Garden Island, about two kilometres out from Sydney Cove in Port Jackson. It was felt that the vegetables would have a better chance of being harvested on the island, as it was more difficult for thieves to reach.

  For most of the convicts life in the new settlement was harsh, with poor accommodation and inadequate food that lacked nutrition. Conditions were crowded, with more than a thousand people packed into an area of little more than two square kilometres. It was little different from living in a prison; there were no bars and fences, but equally there was nowhere to go except into the seemingly endless bush.

  Most of the convicts felt no commitment to the building of a new society. For most, beginning a colony on the other side of the world would have been daunting. They had been banished from their homeland. Few believed they would ever see their home or loved ones again.

  While many wanted to return to England after their sentences had been served out, Britain made it clear that they were not wanted and that they should be provided with no assistance or cooperation if they tried to arrange a passage home. Governor Phillip was told in no uncertain terms that the government thought the convicts were incapable of living honestly in Britain and should be encouraged to stay away. Phillip was also told that the convicts would have to arrange and pay for their own passages home – which was extremely unlikely, because practically none of them had money for the fare.

  After the transport ships that had brought the convicts out to New South Wales had left for their journey home, the convicts would have despaired all the more of ever getting back to England.

  11

  FRICTION IN THE SETTLEMENT

  We have laboured incessantly since we arrived here to raise all sorts of vegetables and even at this distant period we can barely supply our tables, his Excellency not excepted. This together with the miserable state of the natives and scarcity of animals, are convincing proofs of the badness of the country. You will no doubt have a flattering public account but you may rely on what I have advanced. Every gentleman here, two or three excepted, concur with me in opinion and sincerely wish the expedition may be recalled.

  Between the convicts and their masters was a wide cultural and social chasm. The officers showed little comprehension or understanding of the convicts, whom they regarded in every respect as inferior. The differences extended even to language, as many of the convicts spoke different dialects and often could not be understood by the officers. Captain Watkin Tench refers to a number of the convicts who spoke a ‘flash’ or ‘kitty’ language and required a translator when they were being tried in the colony’s criminal court, which was now up and running.1

  The officers’ low opinion of the convicts worsened the longer they were forced to coexist in the struggling settlement. Several months after arriving in Sydney, Surgeon John White said that the convicts were so hardened in wickedness and depravity that many were totally insensible to the fear of corporal punishment, or even death itself.2

  The convicts were assigned to work from 7 am till 3 pm each day and on Saturday until 12 pm, usually on construction or on the vegetable farms. Outside these hours they were free to work for themselves. However, Phillip was to complain that the convicts were lazy and not useful for the building of the new settlement: ‘The convicts, naturally indolent, having none to attend them but overseers drawn from amongst themselves and who fear to exert any authority, makes this work go on very slowly.’

  Within six months of arriving, Phillip had written to Nepean asking for more thought to be given to selecting the convicts who were sent out: ‘In our present situation I hope that few convicts will be sent out for one year at least, except carpenters, masons and bricklayers, or farmers who can support themselves and assist in supporting others.’3

  The convict women had even fewer skills to contribute to the building of the colony. Captain Tench was moved to remark that most of the women ‘lived in a state of total idleness, except for a few who are kept at work in making pegs for tiles, and picking up shells for burning into lime’.4

  Phillip, in a letter to Lord Sydney, stated that he thought the colony had no future as a convict settlement and suggested that free settlers, who could use the convicts to develop the place, were what was needed. He had no confidence that the convicts
at work could be effectively supervised by the military, but thought settlers with an interest in their own enterprises would be able to get more out of them:

  Your Lordship will, I hope judge it expedient to send out settlers to whom a certain number of convicts may be given; they my Lord, will be interested in cultivating the land and when a few carpenters and bricklayers are sent out who will act as overseers, and have some little interest in the labour of the convicts who are under their care, a great deal of labour will be done by them who are employed on public works.5

  Phillip had written to Evan Nepean with the same message: ‘If fifty farmers were sent out with their families they would do more in one year in rendering this colony independent of their mother country as to provisions, than a thousand convicts.’6

  The low opinion they held of the convicts did not prevent a number of the officers from living with convict women and having children, even if the officers in question had a wife and other children waiting back in England.

  At the end of their sentenced terms the male convicts could be granted land to become farmers. They were allowed forty acres of land and an additional four acres for each of their children. Women convicts were ineligible for land grants when their term expired; they could either marry someone with land or return to England. All those who took land were obliged to live on it and cultivate it, during which time they could continue to draw rations from the public store for twelve months.

  Phillip had his doubts about the ability of the convicts to make good farmer settlers. Few had a background in farming and fewer felt any commitment to building a new life in this land, where they had been forced to live.

  A further complication arose when an increasing number of convicts came to Phillip claiming their term of sentence had expired, only to find that their freedom could not be confirmed because the record of their convictions had not been sent out from England:

  The masters of the transports having left with the agents the bonds and whatever papers they received that related to the convicts, I have no account of the time for which the convicts are sentenced, or the dates of their convictions; some of them, by their own account, have a little more than a year to remain, and, I am told, will apply for permission to return to England.7

  The convicts were understandably unhappy. Phillip rejected their claim that they should be paid wages and suggested Judge Collins take their details until the matter could be settled.

  Even two years later the situation was still not resolved. On 15 April 1790 Phillip again sought instructions as to what he should do with convicts who claimed their sentences were up:

  I have to request that the necessary instructions may be sent out respecting those convicts who say their terms of transportation are expired of which we have a very great number, very few who are being desirous of becoming settlers in this country.8

  Four months later he was to write again to say that there were now thirty convicts claiming they had served their time and would want passages back to England.

  The first convict to seek a grant of land in the new colony was James Ruse, who as a 22-year-old had been convicted of stealing in the Cornwall Assizes in July 1782 and sentenced to death. He was reprieved to be transported for seven years to Africa but spent almost all of the next five years aboard the Dunkirk hulk in Plymouth before being sent with the First Fleet on the Scarborough. In July 1789 he claimed his sentence had expired and requested a land grant so he could become a farmer. He was one of the minority of convicts who had some farming experience.

  In the absence of Ruse’s records, however, Arthur Phillip would not initially grant him land. He relented in November 1789 and allowed him to farm an allotment until he could be given title when proof of his freedom arrived. With the help of Phillip he was given clothes, food, seeds, livestock, a hut and some help to clear the land. Ruse proved to be industrious and managed to make a success of farming.

  Although not the first person to cultivate land in the colony on his own behalf, Ruse was the first ex-convict to seek a grant, as most of the other emancipated convicts showed no inclination to take up agriculture. Undeterred by famine, drought and the depredations of convict life, Ruse applied himself diligently to his task and proved not only a hard worker but also, by local standards, a successful farmer. By February 1791 he was able to support both himself and his wife, Elizabeth Perry, a convict whom he had married on 5 September 1790. In April 1791 he received the title to his land, the first grant issued in New South Wales.

  Phillip’s first report back to England about the new colony was dated 15 May 1788, almost four months after the fleet had arrived. In this report he outlined some of the difficulties facing the early settlement and foreshadowed something of the looming food crisis. His long handwritten account was put aboard the returning ships of the fleet that would reach England in March the following year.

  In his report Phillip explained that Botany Bay had been quickly abandoned as a site for the colony because there was insufficient water, much of the coastal land was unhealthy swamp and the harbour provided too little shelter for ships.

  He explained that he was forced to settle on Sydney Cove due to the instructions to unload the ships and release the vessels at the earliest possible date, even though this site, too, had been found to have limited water and available fertile soil.

  Phillip admitted that progress in establishing the new colony was slow. Having been a farmer, he recognised that the harsh vegetation, the rocky ground and the absence of fertile soil would make things difficult: ‘The necks of land that form the different coves and bear the water for some distance are in general so rocky that it is surprising such large trees should find sufficient nourishment.’9

  Even at this early stage there were warning signs that the new colony was not going to be able to produce enough food:

  The great labour in clearing the ground will not permit more than eight acres to be sown this year with wheat and barley. At the same time an immense number of ants and field mice will render our crops very uncertain. Part of our livestock brought from the Cape, small as it was, has been lost and our resources in fish is also uncertain. Some days great quantities are caught but never enough to save any part of the provisions; and at times fish are scarce.10

  Phillip added that the Sirius would soon sail north to purchase more livestock. Within months, however, the food shortage would be so great that the more immediate need of grain caused plans to change. The flagship would instead be sent on an urgent run to collect food from the Cape of Good Hope.

  The challenges and problems of the new settlement in Sydney did not absorb Arthur Phillip to the extent that he forgot his orders, which included an instruction to colonise Norfolk Island, some fifteen hundred kilometres north-east of Sydney. Phillip’s instructions, signed by King George III, had explicitly called for the early settlement of Norfolk Island:

  Norfolk Island … being represented as a spot which may hereafter become useful, you are as soon as circumstances will admit of it, send a small establishment thither to secure the same to us, and prevent it being occupied by the subjects of any other European power.11

  The British wanted to secure the island, which had been noted by Cook on his voyage eighteen years earlier, as part of the empire. It was believed it could produce a superior hemp or flax for sails and canvas – both vital for the Royal Navy.

  Accordingly, on 1 February, within a week of arriving in Sydney Cove, Arthur Phillip asked his young protégé Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to organise to take the Supply with a small group to settle the island.12

  Before leaving for Norfolk Island, King was issued with detailed written instructions from Phillip. ‘After having taken the necessary measures for securing yourself and people, and for the preservation of the stores and provisions’,13 he was to grow the flax plant and cotton, corn and other grains with the seeds they had taken with them. They were to be left with six months’ provisions but were expected to procure vegetables and fish l
ocally. Labour for the development of the colony was to be provided by the convicts, ‘being servants of the Crown till the time for which they are sentenced is expired, then labour is to be for the public’. Finally King was ordered to ensure that religion was observed and prayers of the Church of England were to be read ‘with all due solemnity’ every Sunday.

  At 7 am on 14 February King set sail to his new post on the tiny tender the Supply with perhaps the smallest ever party to establish a colony of the British Empire. His group of twenty-three included a surgeon, a carpenter, a weaver, two marines, eight male convicts and six female convicts. The 33-year-old surgeon, Thomas Jamieson, was an Irish Protestant who had sailed as surgeon’s mate with the Sirius in the First Fleet. Jamieson would stay on Norfolk Island for eleven years before taking up the post of senior surgeon in New South Wales.

  The little party took two weeks to sail the fifteen hundred kilometres to Norfolk Island on the seventy-foot long HMS Supply, which was commanded by Lieutenant Henry Ball. On the way they passed an island where they observed giant turtles. Ball was to name the island Lord Howe, after one of the lords of the Admiralty.14

  The Supply spent a week sailing around the rocky shores of Norfolk Island in high seas trying to find somewhere to land, until at last King discovered a small gap in the reef. It seems that Cook had encountered the island on an uncharacteristically calm day eighteen years previously, as he had managed to anchor in a reef on the north side of the island.

  For two years King supervised this little establishment, organising the clearing of land and struggling against grubs, rats, hurricanes and occasionally troublesome convicts. Thanks to the fertile soil he was able to report favourably on the island’s prospects, although when the Supply left to return to Sydney he had not found the promised flax, which had been the major reason for the settlement: ‘We have not seen a leaf of flax or any herbal grass whatever, the ground being quite bare, which is rather extraordinary as Captain Cook says that flax is more luxuriant here than in New Zealand.’15