by David Hill
By late November the crew began to be disabled with scurvy. As many of the crew had eaten very little fresh food since they had last been in the Cape of Good Hope on their way to New South Wales the year before, the illness came as no surprise to Hunter. He had nothing on the Sirius for its treatment except for ‘a little essence of malt’. Their only hope, he said, was ‘for a speedy passage’ to their destination, where they would have access to fresh food that would ‘reinstate their health’.22
Aboard the Sirius the American seaman Jacob Nagle described going around Cape Horn at Christmas and passing dangerously close to more than thirty giant icebergs and large pieces of floating ice, which was ‘the most dangerous in the night’. He also said they passed whales that were ‘very numerous and that were so thick that we could not count them’ and their spouting soaked all the crew on deck with spray.23
Nagle was one of the many crew stricken with scurvy who collapsed. He had to be ‘carried below three times in one night’. The disease decimated the crew and ‘some died in the sight of the Cape’.24
The ship finally reached Robben Island, about eight kilometres from the mouth of Table Bay, on New Year’s Day 1789. Fresh fruit was immediately brought on board for the sick; the following day they entered Table Bay. Nagle described how he and the others stricken with scurvy tried to eat the fresh fruit: when ‘biting an apple, pear or peach the blood would run out of our mouth from our gums’.25
By the time they arrived at the Cape of Good Hope after roughly ninety days’ sailing, more than half of the crew were too ill to work the ship, according to Hunter:
When we arrived in this bay, we had just twelve men in each watch, and half that number, from scorbutic contractions in their limbs, were not able to go aloft … Immediately after our arrival, I directed that sick quarters should be provided for the sick, which was done, and the invalids, to the number of forty, were landed under the care of Mr. Worgan, the surgeon of the ship.26
Hunter was keen to be away with the relief food as soon as possible but was delayed in Cape Town loading the supplies because he had so many sick crewmen. He also had only two little boats to bring the cargo from the shore, ‘Governor Phillip having found it necessary to keep the Sirius’ long boat and a smaller boat for the use of the settlement, which reduced our number to two six oared cutters’.27 At the time of their arrival Table Bay was very busy and it was difficult to hire additional boats.
Hunter also needed to repair the Sirius, which was still leaking badly. He had the ship ‘heeled’, or put on its side, and a number of holes plugged, but reported that the ship would need major repair work ‘below the wales’ when they eventually returned to Port Jackson.28
Nagle and four other seamen deserted the Sirius in Table Bay, objecting, Nagle said, to the behaviour of the young midshipman who was in charge of the boat that was ferrying and loading food onto the ship:
He begin upon the whole boat crew with his rattan without any provocation and being a stripling not more than 15 years of age I told him we would not be treated in such a manner by a boy. When we got on shore, five out of the six left the boat not intending to return any more.29
Nagle was persuaded to return when Hunter admonished the midshipman and confined him for three weeks to his cabin as punishment, but the other four crewmen disappeared and ‘never did return’.30
Hunter left Table Bay on 20 February 1789, after more than seven weeks in the port. His voyage back to Sydney was even more difficult than that of the previous year, when he had sailed as commander of the slower ships in the First Fleet. This time he did not ‘meet with the westerly winds quite so soon as I expected, or as we had done the last time we had made this passage’.31
When later on the voyage back they finally met with strong winds, the weather closed in so much that they were unable for some days to calculate their exact position:
It may not be improper here to observe, that three days had now elapsed without a sight of sun during the day or a star during the night from which we could exactly determine our latitude … the gale not in the least likely to abate, and the sea running mountain high, with very thick weather, a long dark night just coming on, and an unknown coast I may call it, (for although it has been seen by several navigators, it is not yet known) close under our lee; nothing was now left to be done but to carry every yard of canvass the ship was capable of bearing, and for every person on board to constantly keep the deck.32
After finally rounding Tasmania and heading north, they again encountered strong headwinds and did not reach Port Jackson until early May, having been away seven months. Tench described the relief felt by everyone in the settlement on seeing them:
May 1789. At sunset, on the evening of the 2nd instant, the arrival of the Sirius Captain Hunter from the Cape of Good Hope was proclaimed and diffused universal joy and congratulations. The day of famine was at least procrastinated by the supply of flour and salt provisions she brought us.33
The Sirius had brought vital relief to Sydney, but, after the initial excitement, reality set in. Its cargo of flour was not enough to make up for all the other declining food stocks of the colony. David Collins captured the disappointment: ‘The Sirius brought one hundred and twenty seven thousand weight of flour for the settlement … but this supply was not very flattering as the short space of four months at a full ration, would exhaust it.’34
If the first year for the colony had been difficult, the second year was to be much worse. Theft of food from the stores and from other people was rife, as was pillaging from the vegetable gardens before the food was ripe for harvest. Increased punishments, including executions, could not control it.
In March 1789 six marines were caught stealing large quantities of food and grog from the public store. Nobody seemed to notice that the stores had been gradually depleted for ‘upwards of eight months’35 or that the marines had excessive amounts of alcohol that they shared with some of the convict women.
The scheme was uncovered when one morning the commissary was conducting the usual inspection of the food store and found a broken piece of key stuck in the lock. The locksmith identified it as belonging to a marine private named Joseph Hunt, who had regularly been in trouble in the settlement. Hunt turned and gave evidence against the other marines. They had had the key made so that when one of them was posted at night to guard the store, he would allow the others entry to steal food and grog. If a night patrol passed the store while the thieves were inside, ‘the door was found locked and secure’ with the guard outside and the ‘store apparently safe’.36
On Friday 27 March all six marines were hanged on a scaffold that had been built between the storehouses.
In August a convict called John Harris persuaded Judge David Collins and Arthur Phillip to establish a night watch from among the more trusted convicts – and so Australia’s first police force was formed, though it is not clear if it made any difference to the level of thefts.
By the beginning of November in the second year of the settlement the standard rations of flour, salted meat and peas or rice were reduced again. By now everyone knew that the settlement was in a state of crisis, and all attention was focused on where the next intake of food would come from. Watkin Tench wrote:
Famine … was approaching with gigantic strides, and the gloom and dejection overspread every countenance. Men abandoned themselves to the most desponding reflections, and adopted the most extravagant conjectures. Still we were on the tip toe of expectations … every morning from daylight until the sun sank did we sweep the horizon, in hope of seeing a sail. At every fleeting speck which arose from the bosom of the sea, the heart bounded and the telescope was lifted to the eye … all our labour and attention were turned to one object – the procuring of food.37
By the end of 1789, two and a half years after leaving England and nearly two years after arriving at Sydney, the only food in addition to that which had been brought with them had been the few months’ supply of flour brought by the Siriu
s and some very small harvests of locally grown crops.
The settlement was running out of other supplies as well. Towards the end of 1789 the colony ran out of candles ‘so that everyone was obliged to go to bed the moment it was dark’.38
On 1 November 1789, following a calculation of the remaining food, a decision was made to further cut the food ration: ‘[E]very man from the Governor to the convict’ had their ration cut by a further third – except for women feeding babies.39
By the end of December the new settlement at Rose Hill had, thankfully, registered its first decent harvest – two hundred bushels of wheat and thirty-five bushels of barley. By comparison Sydney Cove only produced twenty-five bushels of grain, which vindicated Phillip’s decision to establish the new settlement.
Welcome though the harvest was, for the hungry mouths of Sydney it was not to be enough. By early in the new year the flour they had brought from England had completely run out and they were forced to begin eating into the modest supply that had been brought back from the Cape of Good Hope. By May the following year almost all the food in the colony would be gone.
In the letters written from Sydney Cove in 1788 Phillip had asked for the urgent supply of additional food and provisions but also for convicts who had skills required in the colony and overseers to supervise the convicts at work.
In April 1789 Lord Sydney had written to the lords of the Admiralty to say that King George III had authorised the urgent dispatch of a supply ship to relieve the colony:
The letters which have been received from Captain Phillip Governor of New South Wales representing that a great part of the provisions sent out with him to the settlement lately made upon the coast has been expended and that there is an immediate occasion for a further supply, together with certain articles of clothing, tools, implements for agriculture, medicines etc …. His Majesty has given orders that one of his ships of war of two decks, with only her upper tier of guns, shall forthwith be got ready to carry out the said provisions and stores.40
Within a month the Admiralty had responded by appointing Lieutenant Edward Riou as captain of the HMS Guardian, which would take fresh supplies to New South Wales. The Guardian had been built five years earlier in the Limehouse shipbuilding docks in London, a big forty-four-gun naval frigate. At one hundred and forty feet long (forty-two and a half metres), it was bigger than all the ships of the First Fleet. When it was converted for transporting cargo, and the guns on the lower decks taken out, it was capable of carrying more than nine hundred tons of food and other supplies.
The 27-year-old Riou had joined the navy as a 14-year-old midshipman in 1776 and had sailed with Cook on his third great voyage up the west coast of America. He later served on the Romney under Vice-Admiral John Montague in the British North Atlantic station and was promoted to lieutenant in 1780.
The Admiralty had also instructed that twenty-five convict tradesmen and farmers be sent out in response to Phillip’s request for more convicts with skills to further the development of the settlement. This was to be the first time that convicts were chosen because they might be suited to serving out their sentences in the new colony.
Another of Phillip’s concerns was addressed by the Admiralty, who had been asked by Lord Sydney to ensure that convict overseers also be sent on the Guardian. Phillip had complained that the convicts had no effective supervision, since the marine officers refused to oversee the convicts at work and relying on other convicts as supervisors had not succeeded:
About eight to ten persons should also be engaged and take their passage in the said ship, to be employed as overseers of the convicts. These measures … have been strongly recommended by Captain Phillip … from having found by experience that the convicts placed as overseers have not been able to enforce their orders and carry that command which persons in a different situation would be likely to do.41
The overseers who sailed on the Guardian included Philip Divine and Andrew Hume, who had been supervisors of convicts in the hulks at Woolwich, John Barlow, who had served as an officer in the army, and John Thomas Dodge, a former surveyor, gardener and commander of an American merchant ship.
In addition to being loaded with food and other provisions the Guardian was to have a special shed built on its quarterdeck for trees and plants that were to be transplanted in Sydney. This addition was the result of botanist Joseph Banks’ direct lobbying of King George III, who gave instructions for it to be built and two gardeners sent on the ship:
Having laid before the King a letter from Sir Joseph Banks, proposing that a small coach may be erected on the quarterdeck of the Guardian for the purpose of conveying to Port Jackson in pots of earth such plants and trees as will be useful in food or physique and cannot conveniently be propagated by seed … I am commanded to signify your Lordships pleasure … that you do give orders that it may be immediately erected.42
It took several months to organise, transport and load the supplies onto the Guardian – almost a thousand tons in all. The cargo included a large amount of grain, ninety-three pots containing vegetables, herbs and fruit, and livestock, including sheep, horses, cattle, goats, rabbits and poultry. Also on board were the twenty-five ‘artificers’, or qualified convict tradesmen, and ten agricultural supervisors, or overseers.
The Guardian had been due to sail at the end of June 178943 but was delayed and did not leave until 12 September. By the time the Guardian left Portsmouth, the Lady Juliana, the first of the Second Fleet ships, carrying more than two hundred women convicts, had already been gone a month. However, by sailing the more direct route down the African coast rather than going across the Atlantic, the Guardian was able to overtake the Lady Juliana and reached Cape Town on 24 November while the Lady Juliana was still in Rio de Janeiro.
At the Cape of Good Hope Riou was made further aware of the plight of the colonists in New South Wales when he was told how John Hunter had been there in the Sirius earlier in the year, using Admiralty bills of credit to buy much-needed food before hurrying off with the supplies for the hungry settlement.
Realising the urgent need for his relief supplies, Riou wasted no time in topping up, loading the ship with more cattle and horses as well as one hundred and fifty fruit trees, before leaving Cape Town on 11 December. They had stayed in port for only two weeks.
As Christmas approached, the Guardian was making good time. It was more than a thousand kilometres to the east and south of Cape Town, deep in the Great Southern Ocean, sailing in fresh breezes and surrounded by fog and large ‘islands of ice’, as Riou described.44
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, in need of drinking water for both the crew and the livestock, the Guardian lowered its small boats over the side. According to the master of the ship, Clements: ‘The cutter and the jolly boats were hoisted out and sent with a petty officer and a boats crew in each to gather up the broken pieces of ice, which were floating at a distance from the main body.’45
The ship’s captain, Edward Riou, was well aware of the hazards of sailing in these waters and noted the conditions in his journal:
We found the great emission of fog from this mountain of ice darken the hemisphere to the leeward of it … The horizon became clouded all around and in less than a quarter of an hour we were again shut up in a thick, close general mist and scarce able to see the ship’s length before us. From this it was apprehended there were many more such islands of ice floating in these seas, which appeared very dangerous.46
At 7.45 pm, as the watch was changing, the Guardian crashed into an iceberg. Clements recalls that as it happened he was handing over the watch to Mr Harvey, the master’s mate, and had just remarked ‘how much more dreadful it would be to be ship wrecked before an island of ice than among rocks, when the noise reached the cabin and gave the fatal signal of failure’.47
As the ship shook from end to end, Riou ran immediately up onto the deck. ‘[T]he scene appeared abysmal beyond relief’48 the front of the Guardian had wedged under a giant iceberg that a
ppeared to be twice as tall as the mainmast of the ship.
It was quickly established that the rudder had broken away and the tiller was broken in two places, but the extent of any damage below the waterline was not yet apparent. As Clements was to later recall:
When at last the sails filled she began to forge off but struck again and continued crashing on the ice underneath her until she at last got clear … The wind was blowing hard [and] we soon lost sight of the ice. Our spirits then gained new vigour and served to supply fresh strength.49
The joy was short-lived, however, because within half an hour it was discovered that there was more than two feet of water in the hold, and the water level was rising fast. All available hands were put to the pumps, but they were unable to stem the rise.
To lighten the ship Riou immediately ordered the crew to jettison as much of the cargo as possible that was destined for New South Wales: ‘All hands that could be spared were set to work to clear the deck of cattle, booms, the hay, gun carriages, bows and spare anchors, and below decks aft, of provisions.’50
By nine o’clock at night the pumps were all at work but the water level had risen in the hold to over three feet and gaining. At ten the water reached five feet and men were tiring at the pumps, so they were split into two shifts to work alternately every half-hour, with breaks in between:
The captain ordered refreshments to be allocated to each man, taking particular care that the grog should not be made too strong. Every man received the first supply with biscuits and cheese, which seemed to give them fresh spirits to return to their laborious duty. The rum was soon nearly expended but the captain thought it would be extremely dangerous to open the hold to get at more, for fear the men’s getting at it; wine and water was accordingly given in lieu of it.51