by David Hill
Captain Gilbert had decided to take a more easterly route through the Pacific Ocean to China than had ever been undertaken before, and with ‘no chart to guide me and with dangers of which I was entirely unacquainted’ kept a record of the voyage.4 Having unloaded its cargo of supplies and more than a hundred convicts in Sydney, the almost empty ship was on its way to pick up its cargo of tea with a crew ‘not exceeding thirty’,5 several of whom were only boys.
Within a week of leaving Sydney and with no fresh food, the crew began to contract scurvy. Captain Gilbert headed straight for Lord Howe Island, which was the closest place to Sydney where he could stop for provisions and find some fresh food.
Arthur Phillip had ordered Gilbert before he left not to seek provisions on Lord Howe Island, saying that the available fresh food on the island should be for the settlers in Sydney Cove. As Captain Gilbert wrote, Phillip told him that Lieutenant Ball, standing off the island in the Supply at that point, ‘had directions to prevent my landing on this newly discovered land of promise’.6
Gilbert said that his crew had tried to find enough food in Sydney and had fished ‘as often as possible’ before leaving, but that fish, while ‘palliative’, would not ‘altogether alleviate’ scurvy:
The situation of my ships company rendered it necessary that I should if possible procure a supply of fresh provisions and vegetables as the scurvy had begun to make a rapid progress amongst them. I was determined to endeavour to surmount every difficulty and land upon the island.7
When he reached the island and was trying to find a spot to anchor, he saw the Supply and also the Lady Penrhyn, which had left Sydney the day before his ship. To Gilbert’s surprise Lieutenant Ball of the Supply sent for him to come over, telling him that the island ‘afforded plenty of turtle, fowls, fish, cocoa nuts and cabbages’.
The following day Gilbert and members of his crew went ashore but without Ball, who did not want it ‘supposed that he conducted us to the island’. Once on the island they found large fat birds ‘walking with less fear and concern than geese in a farm yard’ as well as large eggs, fat pigeons, partridges in ‘great plenty’ and cabbages.
The uninhabited Lord Howe Island was the home of some unique animal life. While briefly there, the surgeon on the Lady Penrhyn, Arthur Bowes Smyth, made the earliest known drawing of the now extinct white gallinule. He also observed the bell magpie, or currawong, and four now rare or extinct birds that have been identified as the Lord Howe Island pigeon, the booby, the Lord Howe Island rail or woodhen and an extinct species of parakeet. Bowes Smyth kept a valuable journal of the First Fleet voyage and early settlement, as well as recording much of the wildlife in the new colony. He was believed to have been the first white man to have seen an emu, which he included in his illustrations. He died shortly after arriving back in England in April 1790 and was buried at his home town of Tolleshunt D’Arcy in Essex.
The next day the Scarborough appeared at the island. It had been agreed in Sydney that the three ships would rendezvous off Lord Howe Island and sail together to China, but a few days later, according to Gilbert, ‘when daylight broke we found the Lady Penrhyn gone’.8 Now abundantly supplied, the Charlotte and the Scarborough headed off together for Norfolk Island, almost another thousand kilometres further to the north.
On the way there Gilbert was shocked to learn that two deserters from the Sirius were aboard the Charlotte, having stowed away before it left Sydney – this despite the ship having been searched twice by the marines before leaving. Gilbert said he protested ‘against their conduct’ but that they had sailed too far to take the men back and said he would ‘swear an affidavit’ to the British authorities at the earliest opportunity – though there is no record that he did.
A week later the two ships were off Norfolk Island. Here Gilbert had intended landing to collect timber for ships’ masts that he hoped to sell in China but, finding ‘a tremendous surf on all sides of the island’,9 they decided against trying to land and continued on their journey.
For the next month the ships sailed further north in ‘hot and sultry’10 weather with occasional calms and rainy spells, until they came across some islands, one of which Gilbert named Gilbert Island after himself. He named the Marshall Islands after the captain of the Scarborough. While among the islands, they invited aboard a number of natives who had paddled their canoe alongside and despite language difficulties managed a friendly exchange of nails and fish hooks for some local matting and seashells.
Deciding against accepting an invitation to go ashore with the natives, the two captains sailed on past other new islands that Gilbert was to name Daniel’s, Pedder’s and Arrowsmith, and through a passage he would name Fordyce’s Passage.11 He suggested in his journal that all the islands he was passing might ‘prove to have safe and convenient harbours’ and such ‘necessities’ as to allow regular trade between New South Wales and China.12
They had now been sailing for two months, and despite the fresh food from Lord Howe Island and a little more from the Gilbert and Marshall islands, scurvy again became a problem. As Gilbert wrote: ‘Captain Marshall informed me that ten of his men were down with scurvy. Having been for so long without procuring refreshment from on shore, that disorder, so fatal to seamen, now began to grow alarming in both ships.’13
The ships were now in a difficult position. Gilbert admitted he had sailed too far north and calculated that with the onset of the south-west monsoon they would not be able to reach Formosa (Taiwan) and then China until the later north-east monsoon, which was some months away. He also thought that because of the ‘sickly state of the crew’ they would be unable to reach Japan, where the currents ‘were rapid and uncertain’ anyway. With no other choice, he decided to turn around and head south. ‘I never intended to have gone so far northward. There being no alternative but that of returning southward while we had it in our power to do so.’14
A week later Captain John Marshall sent the Scarborough’s boat across to inform Gilbert that Marshall’s brother was dangerously ill with scurvy. Gilbert went across himself with what medicines they had on board. Neither ship had a surgeon, as most of the surgeons who had sailed on the First Fleet were now in Sydney and surgeon Bowes Smyth was on the Lady Penrhyn, which they had last seen off Lord Howe Island. Gilbert found the situation aboard the Scarborough to be serious:
Mr. Marshall’s case was however very obstinate; he had languished some time under that disorder and as we were not able to make any land, where the sole effective remedy against it could only be obtained, from the benefit of air on shore and from the use of fruit and vegetables, it had now arrived to such a height to deprive him of life.15
Over the next two weeks the number of cases of scurvy increased and another seaman died. The Charlotte was in as bad a condition as the Scarborough, and as they reached a critical stage Gilbert decided to head for Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas, more than two thousand kilometres south of Japan and about two thousand kilometres east of the Philippines:
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 feeble from the effects of it as scarcely to be able to navigate the ship so that our situation was become extremely critical, which induced me to make the best of my way to the island of
Tinian, and this I signified to Captain Marshall.16
A week later they reached the island, where they quickly found some oranges, coconuts and cabbages and put the sick ashore ‘to receive the benefit of land air as soon as possible’. Tarpaulins and sails were used to make a shelter for them, while those who were fit enough went inland to kill wild pigs and birds.
After only three days, and worried about the high surf and the reef, they ‘with great difficulty’ brought the sick aboard again. In the high seas there were not enough able-bodied men to pull in the anchor, so instead the chain was cut. Gilbert noted that this drastic action was taken in the nick of time:
Had the ship rema
ined a quarter of an hour longer in the bay, I am fully persuaded, and my officers and the whole ships company are of the same opinion, that she must inevitably have driven ashore upon the reef.17
The Scarborough made a similarly quick departure, prompting Gilbert to admit that he had been ‘obliged to forego all the benefits’ he had hoped for as they had left before collecting enough fresh food, and the sick had not had time to recover.
Three weeks later the Lady Penrhyn would also stop at Tinian Island and find the Charlotte’s anchor buoy.
For the next few weeks the two ships sailed on towards China, treating their sick with wine and ‘such other anti scorbutic’ as they had on board.18 On 3 September, almost four months after leaving Sydney, they sighted Bashi Island, north of the Philippines and south of the islands of Formosa and Grafton. According to Gilbert Bashi Island had been named by Captain James King, who had taken command of the Resolution on his way back to England after Cook had been killed in 1779 in Hawaii. A week later, on 9 September, the Charlotte reached Macao.
Macao was the Portuguese island port on the mouth of the river leading to Canton. Gilbert noted that the city, like most of the Portuguese Empire, was in decline, having been ‘formerly richer and more populous than it is at present’ and having ‘lost much of its ancient consequence’.19
The Charlotte would soon be joined there by the Scarborough and, in the following month, by the Lady Penrhyn. They would load up a ‘valuable cargo of teas and china ware’ and sail for England.20
Incredibly, despite the scurvy that afflicted and killed many on the other ships, Gilbert was to boast that not one crew member had died of the disease on the Charlotte. His only fatality occurred after the ship reached Macao, when the boatswain died and was buried on Dean’s Island. This death, Gilbert insisted, had less to do with the ship and more to do with the boatswain’s excessive drinking once they had reached the shore.
The Lady Penrhyn, which had left Sydney for China the day before the Charlotte and the Scarborough and arrived in Macao a month later, had experienced its own difficulties en route.
Lieutenant John Watts, aboard the Lady Penrhyn, kept an account of the journey. He had sailed as a midshipman with Captain James Cook’s third voyage on the Resolution, being promoted during the expedition to able seaman. According to the Naval Chronicle of 1801 Watts had been tattooed all over his body by natives of the Pacific islands he had visited in the course of the voyage with Cook.
Watts recorded that a month after leaving Sydney and passing the islands that were to be named the Macaulay Islands and the Curtis Islands, scurvy broke out on the Lady Penrhyn and disabled almost the entire crew:
The scurvy now began to spread very fast among the crew, and by the 6th, they had nine men unable to get out of their hammocks, and many others complained very much: swelled gums, the flesh exceeding black and hard, a contraction of the sinews, with a total debility; were the general appearances. Wine was daily served out to them, and there was sour-krout on board, but the people refused to eat it. From this to the 17th they had little variety; by that time the people were in a deplorable state, for with every person on board, the Captain included, they could only muster ten men able to do duty, and some of them were in a very weakly state: sour-krout, which before had been refused, now began to be sought after, and they had all the Captain’s fresh stock, himself and officers living solely on salt provisions.21
A few days later, and despite being almost halted by a lack of wind followed by frequent heavy storms, the ship managed to reach Tahiti. Its men were told they were the first white people to visit the island since Cook had been there more than a decade earlier. The natives, who remembered Cook, were pleased to see the Lady Penrhyn and brought fresh food to the stricken crew:
When anchored they had only three men in one watch, and two in the other besides the mates, and two of these ailing; the rest of the crew were in a truly deplorable state.
Their first care was naturally to procure some refreshments, and it was a pleasing circumstance for them to see the natives flock round the ship, calling out ‘Tayo Tayo,’ which signifies friends; and ‘Patri no Tutti,’ Cook’s ship; and bringing in very great plenty cocoa nuts, bread-fruit, plantains and taro, and a fruit known by the name of the Otaheite apple; they also brought some hogs and fowls.22
The Tahitians’ friendliness was in spite of the fact that they had suffered from the earlier visit of the English. According to Watts:
Great numbers of the natives had been carried off by the venereal disease, which they had caught from their connections with the crews of the Resolution and Discovery; nor were the women so free from this complaint as formerly, especially the lowest class, the better sort seemingly not wishing to hazard the catching so terrible a disorder.23
Within a few weeks and with access to plenty of fresh food, the diseased crew, ‘who had recovered in a most astonishing manner’, were once again able to work the ship. The Lady Penrhyn was by no means the first ship to enjoy sexual experiences with the Tahitians, and it was with the crew’s ‘great reluctance’ that Captain Sever ordered the ship to depart on its next leg to the Society Isles.
After stopping at a number of other nearby islands, the ship loaded a huge amount of food, including sixty large pigs, fifty piglets, a hundred and fifty chickens, a large quantity of coconuts, green vegetables, sugar cane, taro and yams, and about a hundred pumpkins. Watts said the crew were not only perfectly recovered, but also, with so much fresh food aboard, they had every ‘reason to hope that they would not be any more alarmed for their safety’.24
On 15 September they stopped on Saypan Island in the Marianas, having seen bullocks grazing on the shore, and brought aboard a young steer. Ten days later they reached Tinian Island and saw in the water a buoy with a severed anchor chain and a sign identifying it as belonging to the Charlotte, indicating it had passed this way some time before. Stopping again, they loaded aboard more fresh food, including pigs and chickens and some green breadfruit and guavas, limes and ‘sour oranges’,25 which was enough to last them until they reached Macao on 19 October. In all, their journey from Sydney had taken them a little more than five months.
Finally, loaded with their East India Company cargo of chinaware and tea, the three ships sailed from Macao in November 1788 and arrived back in London the following April. This was a month later than three of the other ships of the First Fleet, which had left Sydney the previous July and sailed a more direct route to England.
These three ships were the Alexander, the Prince of Wales and the Borrowdale. They sailed from Sydney on 13 and 14 July 1788 with the Friendship, but the latter ship would not reach England.
When planning their route back to England, the masters of the four ships had considered going south from Sydney, east under New Zealand and then below Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. However, the season was thought to be too far advanced for them to attempt this southern course, and the passage by Cape Horn was objected to by the governor. It was winter in the southern hemisphere and the ships would not be able to sail in the high latitudes, so it was decided they should head north up the east coast of Australia, then west either through the Endeavour Straits or even further north above New Guinea.
When the ships reached the top of Australia, they took the more northerly course, tracking the route charted by Captain Carteret of the Royal Navy some ten years earlier. This would take them between New Britain and New Ireland, off the east coast of Papua New Guinea.
Although the dangers of scurvy were well known, the settlement in Sydney was itself already short of fresh food when the ships departed, and, like the Charlotte, the Lady Penrhyn and the Scarborough, they were unable to take with them any food that would have helped keep scurvy at bay. All the ships had left England with portable soup, but even this was now almost totally exhausted. Portable soup was made from boiling meat, offal and vegetables into a thick paste, which was then dried out and cut into cakes, like modern-day stock cubes.
The soup was prepared on board by dissolving the tablets in boiling water.
It was presumed that the four ships would regularly stop after leaving Sydney and collect fresh vegetables and fruit on the islands they passed. For various reasons this did not occur, and it was to have terrible consequences.
The ships were under the command of Captain John Shortland, the First Fleet’s naval agent, who sailed on the Alexander. The Friendship, the Prince of Wales and the Borrowdale went ahead, as the Alexander required some last-minute preparations. It was agreed that the ships would rendezvous at Lord Howe Island.
Two days after leaving Sydney, the ships were struggling against the wind and spent the day and evening tacking first into a north-west wind and later to the east-south-east. By midnight the Alexander could see only the Friendship and had lost sight of the Borrowdale and the Prince of Wales.
Shortland, although still hoping to join up with the other ships, decided to press on in an easterly direction. However, after encountering more difficult weather, he abandoned the planned rendezvous and headed off with the Friendship in a more northerly direction. They were not to sight either the Prince of Wales or the Borrowdale for the rest of the voyage.
Shortland ordered the Alexander and the Friendship to head north to Carteret Harbour in New Ireland, which had been discovered and charted by Captain Phillip Carteret in 1768.
After being at sea for nearly four weeks, they arrived at the harbour to be met by a number of canoes carrying natives bearing ‘rind of an orange or a lemon, the feathers of tame fowls and other things that might be procured on shore’.26 One of the natives handed up to Captain Shortland what he thought to be a breadfruit.