1788

by David Hill

  Phillip then had to report the absence of flax to London, noting that the French commander La Perouse had also failed to find it when he had called in on Norfolk Island the year before:

  The small quantity of flax that has been procured is sufficient to show the quality but the flax plant described by Captain Cook I have never met with, nor had the botanists that accompanied Mons La Perouse found it when I saw them, and which was sometime after they arrived.16

  King believed that Cook may have mistaken another local plant for flax. However, a year later he was able to report that they had finally found flax growing on the island, but that ‘it in no manner resembles the flax of Europe’. It was never to become a significant crop on the island.

  Having put King and his party safely ashore, Ball returned to Sydney on the Supply. He again travelled via Lord Howe Island. The island is about a thousand kilometres south of Norfolk Island and about the same distance east of Sydney. It is about eight kilometres in length and was uninhabited but with plentiful bird life and at that time of year abundant with turtles. This time Ball took sixteen of the giant turtles back to Sydney.

  Among the convict women who had been taken to Norfolk Island was Ann Inett, who, at the relatively mature age of 31, became Philip Gidley King’s housekeeper and lover. She had been convicted in 1786 in the Worcester Court of stealing a petticoat, two aprons, a pair of shoes, five handkerchiefs, a silk hood and other clothing, with a total value of a little under one pound. Initially condemned to be hanged, her sentence was commuted to seven years’ transportation to New South Wales. Ann Inett went on to have two children with King, both boys, who were named Norfolk and Sydney.

  When King returned to England for a short time two years later, he married and brought his new wife back with him to Norfolk Island. He was to have three more children with her, named Phillip, Maria and Elizabeth. Nevertheless he continued to care for his first two boys, both of whom eventually became officers in the navy.

  In October 1788 Phillip sent more convicts to Norfolk Island on the store ship Golden Grove before it returned to England with the Fishburn. By that time King was able to report some success with growing food on the island. Unlike the settlers in Sydney they had managed to grow a variety of vegetables, and after an initial failure they looked forward to a good harvest of grain. King reported that the soil was good, the people were healthy and that he felt the island could be self-sufficient in food production within two years, as long as they were provided with some cattle.

  Towards the end of the first year of the settlement of Norfolk Island there was a mass escape plan involving most of the convicts. When next the Supply came to the island, the plotters intended abducting the ship’s surgeon then sending a message for the marines aboard to come and rescue him. Once the marines had come ashore, they planned to send another message to the remaining marines on the Supply saying that the first boat with their colleagues had hit a reef and they should come to help. This, they hoped, would enable the convicts to then seize the now defenceless ship.

  The scheme was discovered when the plotters tried to recruit Lieutenant King’s gardener, and the convict woman who was living with the gardener told King of the plan. Forewarned, King was able to quickly round up the ringleaders, and the escape was thwarted.

  In his second major report back to England, in July 1788, Arthur Phillip stated that the settlement around Sydney Cove was still struggling. He said that he had hoped to have given ‘a more pleasing account of our present situation’. However, the building program was going too slowly, the convicts needed proper supervisors, they could find no limestone for cement, more cattle had died or had been lost in the bush and they still had stores to unload from the ships but did not yet have the storehouses to secure them.

  Phillip warned Nepean that it would take the colony a long time to become self-sufficient and that for some years it would be heavily dependent on supplies from England for its survival:

  At present no country can afford less support to the first settlers, or to be disadvantageously placed for receiving support from the mother country, on which it must for a time depend. It will require patience and perseverance, neither of which will, I hope be wanting.17

  The problems the settlers were having establishing the colony did not prevent Phillip telling the British Government what they wanted to hear. He wrote that he had no doubt ‘but that this country will prove the most valuable acquisition Great Britain ever made’.18

  However, Major Robert Ross, the commander of the marines, strongly disagreed. In a letter sent back to the Admiralty at the same time as Phillip’s, Ross said that Sydney was destitute and could never support a self-sufficient colony:

  Might I presume to intrude an opinion on their Lordships with respect to the utility of settlement upon this coast, at least upon this part of it, it should be that it never can be made to answer the intended purpose or wish of Government, for the country seems totally destitute of everything that can be an object of a commercial nation, a very fine harbour excepted, and I much fear that the nature of the soil is such as will not be brought to yield more than sufficient sustenance for the needy emigrants whose desperate fortunes may induce them to try the experiment. Here I beg leave to observe to their Lordships that the above is but a private opinion.19

  In September Phillip wrote to Lord Sydney to explain why he had not followed the instruction he had received before leaving London to go and fetch women from one of the Pacific islands in order to address the shortage of women in Sydney. Continuing in his previous vein, he said that the colony was in no shape to accommodate the women: ‘With respect to sending to the islands for women, your Lordship will, I believe, think that in the present situation of this colony it would be only bringing them to pine away a few years in misery.’20

  Captain Tench wrote candidly in his journal after the first few months that the colony had little commercial value to Britain other than as a refuge for unwanted convicts. In a chapter titled ‘Some thoughts on advantages which may arise to the mother country from the forming of a colony’, Tench said the settlement was ‘unequalled’ for a place to send convicts but ‘when viewed in a commercial light, I fear its insignificance will appear very striking’.

  For the colony to be self-sufficient in food, he said, the British Government would need to send out a ‘sufficient military force’ to cultivate the ground, and even then the ‘parent country will still have to supply us for a much longer time with every other necessity of life’.21

  While Phillip was continuing to report favourably on the potential of the colony throughout the year, Ross may not have been the only officer who was sending back different accounts. An unsigned letter from a marine officer sent in November 1788 claimed that Sydney was struggling and that flattering reports being sent to London should be disregarded. The letter claimed that almost all the officers in the settlement wanted the venture abandoned and the men recalled to England:

  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.22

  Towards the end of the year, and faced with failed harvests in Sydney, Phillip authorised the settlement of Rose Hill, some twenty-five kilometres to the west of Port Jackson, where the soil was more fertile.

  By the end of the year a few more buildings had been erected in Sydney: a small stone house was built for Major Robert Ross, the lieutenant-governor and commander of the marines, two storehouses had been completed and the hospital was still under construction.

  An observatory had also been established on the point of the western side of Sydney Cove, near the curr
ent-day southern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Lieutenant Dawes, the marine officer and astronomer, had set up equipment to observe a comet that had last been seen in 1661 and that would, according to calculations, return in 1788. The point was named Maskelyne Point after the astronomer royal who had arranged for the instruments to be sent with the First Fleet, but it later became known as Dawes Point. This is where the Sydney Observatory building stands today.

  As the settlers approached Christmas of the first year, there were still only a few solid structures in Sydney Cove, with most people living in shacks or tents. There were no solid roads. Only a quarter of the settlers were involved in cultivating the land for food, the first harvests had failed and they remained almost totally dependent on the food brought from England. Relations with the local Aboriginal people had deteriorated, the marines were disaffected and the convicts generally showed no interest or motivation in the building of a new world.

  The management of the struggling colony was made more difficult by the increasing friction between Governor Phillip and the Marine Corps, headed by Major Robert Ross. Central to the problem was lack of clarity as to the duties and responsibilities of the marines.

  Phillip had very few officers at his disposal for supervising the convict workers, and he had expected the cooperation of the officers of the Marine Corps in ensuring the convicts worked effectively at farming and building the new settlement.

  The marine officers, on the other hand, believed they were there to maintain order among the convicts and provide protection from any possible assault from hostile natives. They saw their role as military, not civil.

  Phillip felt frustrated by what he saw as a petty lack of cooperation from the start, writing to Lord Sydney:

  The officers who compose the [marine] detachment are not only few in number, but most of them have declined any interference with the convicts, except when they are employed for their own particular service. I requested soon after we landed that officers would occasionally encourage such as they observed diligent, and point out for punishment such as they saw idling or straggling in the woods. This is all I desired, but the officers did not understand that any interference with the convicts was expected, and that they were not sent out to do more than the duty of soldiers.23

  Phillip also complained in the same letter that the marine officers refused to sit on the criminal court: ‘The sitting as members of the Criminal Court is thought a hardship by the officers, and of which they say they were not informed before they left England.’

  The marines and their commander Major Ross, on the other hand, felt they were not afforded the respect or regard they deserved. In a letter to London Ross criticised Phillip for not consulting with anyone else in the colony, saying, ‘from our Governors manner of expressing himself … he communicates nothing to any person but to his secretary’.24

  Ross and some of his fellow officers were also resentful that the fortress they had expected to be constructed in Sydney had not been. It had always been part of the plan for the new settlement and was intended to form the centre of the marines’ barracks.

  However, Phillip had judged very early on that an assault by the Aboriginal people was unlikely and that constructing accommodation, storehouses and other civic buildings was a higher priority. Ross complained directly to the Admiralty:

  Here in justice to myself and the detachment under my command, I must observe to their Lordships that the detachment is at this hour without any kind of place of defence to retire to in case of an alarm or surprise, though I have in justice to myself repeatedly mentioned and urged his Excellency to get something or other erected for this purpose.25

  Ross also complained that the entire marine detachment was still living in tents and that not enough was being done to build their barracks:

  We still remain under canvas, no habitations being provided for either officers or men but what they themselves with the assistance of four carpenters and a few others, convicts (of all trades) has been given me for the use of the detachment, were for some time erecting and when any of them will be finished … is impossible for me to say.

  These were not even the first sources of friction between Ross and Phillip. Quite early on in the first year Ross had wanted to arrest five of his marine officers who had refused to reconvene a court martial involving a marine. The case involved an allegation that a marine private, Joseph Hunt, had struck another marine, William Dempsey. A third, Thomas Jones, had intervened and was abused by Hunt. The court found Hunt guilty and sentenced him to either ask for a public pardon from Dempsey or receive a hundred lashes.

  Ross was outraged by the decision, saying that a prisoner could not be permitted to choose his own punishment and that the court should reconvene and decide one punishment or the other. Captain Watkin Tench, who had convened the court with his four lieutenants, insisted the law did not allow a reconsideration of a court martial and effectively disobeyed his superior’s orders.

  Ross wanted the five officers arrested and court-martialled but, as there were only four captains and twelve lieutenants in the whole settlement, Phillip felt there were already too few officers in service and didn’t want the matter to go any further.

  In the end there were not enough officers to reconvene the court martial. Tench and his colleagues resumed their normal duties and that is where the matter rested, except for the damage to the marines’ morale and the standing of Ross with his colleagues.

  While these arguments were taking place, Phillip had written to London protesting that he had ‘used every means in my power to prevent a general court-marshal, the inconveniences of which were obvious’ but his proposal was ‘declined’ by Ross.26

  Robert Ross also wrote to London insisting that his authority and the morale and good order of the marines required that the formal disciplinary procedures be followed. Without this ‘decisive step’, he wrote, it would be ‘absolutely impossible’ for any commanding officer to properly carry out his duties.27

  The original incident involving a private in the marines may have been relatively trivial, but it demonstrated to the British Government that the two most senior officers in the colony of New South Wales could not resolve their differences and work in harmony.

  Ross believed that the Marine Corps was being treated no better than the convicts. In the same letter to the Admiralty he protested that the marines were forced to survive on exactly the same rations as the convicts, except for receiving a ration of rum that was close to undrinkable:

  I shall take the liberty of mentioning to their Lordships the quantity of the provisions served to myself, the officers and men of the detachment, in which there is now no difference between us and the convicts, but in half a pint per day of Rio spirits, which in taste and smell is extremely offensive.28

  The marines also complained that they were punished as much and often more severely than the convicts. Phillip had demonstrated from the first week of the voyage that he did not want to provoke a convict uprising through the imposition of excessive punishments on them. His subsequent interventions secured more lenient punishment of convicts, while the punishments of the marines went ahead. They tended to come from the same lower social classes as the convicts and were accustomed to stiff justice and rough discipline, so this resulted in an obvious disparity that would have created much resentment among the marines.

  Major Robert Ross does not appear to have been a very popular figure in Sydney with any group, though. Judge David Collins claimed an ‘inexpressible hatred’29 for him, which is somewhat understandable, given Collins’ closeness to Governor Phillip.30 However, some of Ross’ own officers, including his deputy, Ralph Clark, also recorded that relations between Ross and others became so strained that he ceased to be on speaking terms with his senior colleagues.31

  12

  THE FLEET GOES HOME

  The scurvy had now arrived to such a height among the crew that eleven were unable to move and the remaining part were so exceedingly fee
ble from the effects of it as scarcely to be able to navigate the ship so that our situation was become extremely critical …

  In the months following the arrival of the fleet and the unloading of the convicts and supplies, the nine contracted ships had to leave to return to England. Those left behind watching their last connection with the world they knew sail over the horizon had the sense of being ‘cut off … from the rest of civilized nature’ and a feeling of profound desolation.1

  The nine ships would have mixed fortunes on their voyages home. As there was a shortage of fresh food in Sydney, all of them set off with inadequate provisions.

  According to Phillip all of the contracted ships – except the Fishburn and the Golden Grove – were completely unloaded of their cargo and cleared to go before the end of May, but they all needed major work to be made seaworthy for the journey home. It was found that ‘the worm had so much destroyed their sheathing to have worms eating the timber’2 and it was necessary that the ships be pulled up and put on their sides so the carpenters could replace the wooden supports.

  The Charlotte, the Lady Penrhyn and the Scarborough were the first to be ‘discharged from Government service’, in late March, but it took another six weeks for the necessary repairs to be carried out so the ships could set sail. They departed in early May after being at the settlement for a little over three months, and while they were the first ships to leave they would not be the first to reach England.

  The Lady Penrhyn left Sydney on 5 May 1788, and the Scarborough the following day. The Charlotte left early on 6 May and by mid-morning was heading down Port Jackson, according to its captain, Thomas Gilbert, ‘with light breezes and frequent showers of rain’.3 Before being cleared to go, the ship was twice searched for any convicts who may have hidden away below decks.