1788

by David Hill

  The first ship of the Second Fleet, the Lady Juliana, with two hundred and twenty-six women convicts and supplies on board, took almost a year to reach Sydney. It left England six weeks before the Guardian, on 29 July 1789, but was still in Rio de Janeiro harbour – where it would spend a leisurely six and a half weeks – when the Guardian reached Cape Town. By the time the Lady Juliana finally reached Cape Town, the wreck of the Guardian was back in Table Bay, having struck the iceberg almost two months before.

  It has been suggested that part of the reason for the slow passage of the Lady Juliana was that the entire crew had partnered with the convict women aboard the ship and were in no hurry to reach the penal settlement. In the words of John Nicol, a steward on the ship:

  When we were fairly out to sea, every man on board took a wife from among the convicts, they nothing loath. The girl, with whom I lived, for I was as bad on this point as the others, was named Sarah Whitelam. She was a native of Lincoln, a girl of modest reserved turn, as kind and true a creature who ever lived. I courted her for a week and upwards and would have married her on the spot, had there been a clergyman on board … I had fixed my fancy upon her from the moment I knocked the rivet out of her irons upon my anvil and as firmly resolved to bring her back to England when her time was out, my lawful wife … She bore me a son on the voyage out. What is become of her, whether she is dead or alive, I know not.3

  The settlers in Sydney were initially unimpressed by the arrival of another two hundred convicts, all of whom were women, when they were so desperate for additional provisions. As Judge Collins commented:

  In the distressed situation of the colony, it was not a little mortifying to find on board the first ship that arrived, a cargo so unnecessary and so unprofitable as two hundred and twenty two females, instead of a cargo of provisions; the supply of provisions on board her were so inconsiderable as to permit only the addition of one pound and a half of flour being made to the weekly ration.4

  Arthur Phillip and his colleagues were to learn from the Lady Juliana that the other three ships would be bringing more than a thousand new convicts – and supplies. They were also told that the Second Fleet would bring a new force, the New South Wales Corps under the command of Major Francis Grose, to relieve and replace the entire Marine Corps. The marines who wished to stay in the colony would be allowed to sign up with the new corps or could accept land grants and stay on as farmer settlers.

  When the women convicts were unloaded from the Lady Juliana, many were found to be old, weak or ill and unlikely to be of much use in working for the new colony. Even so, the convicts were in relatively good shape compared with those who would arrive on the other three transports – the Surprize, the Neptune and the Scarborough – a few weeks later.

  The next ship to reach Sydney was the supply ship the Justinian on 20 June. The convict transport the Surprize followed five days later. Three weeks after the arrival of the Lady Juliana, on the morning of 23 June, a lookout at South Head reported seeing a sail that then disappeared from sight in the wild seas and high winds. Two days later the Surprize came through the heads and anchored at Sydney with two hundred and eighteen male convicts and a detachment of the New South Wales Corps on board.

  The settlers were in for a rude shock. Forty-two convicts had already died on the Surprize during the voyage, and more than half of the survivors were ill or dying.

  The Reverend Richard Johnson was the first to go down into the holds of the Surprize amid the stench of the dead and dying. He described what he saw in a private letter he sent to a friend, Mr Thornton, in England. Such honesty and anger would never have appeared in any official report:

  Was the first on board the Surprize. Went down among the convicts, where I beheld a sight so truly shocking to the feelings of humanity, a great number of them laying, some half and others nearly quite naked, without either bed or bedding, unable to turn or help them selves. Spoke to them as I passed along but the smell was so offensive that I could scarcely bear it.5

  The following day the other two transports, the Neptune and the Scarborough, arrived, having anchored the night before off Garden Island in Port Jackson. On both ships the convicts were in an appalling condition: ‘I then went aboard the Scarborough; proposed to go down amongst them, but was dissuaded from it by the captain. The Neptune was still more intolerable, and therefore never attempted it.’6

  Johnson tried to help save some of the convicts but was warned of the danger of entering the transports, ‘where the air must be always putrid from the breath of a crowd of passengers’. He then described the terrible scenes when it came to unloading the dreadful human cargo:

  The landing of these people was truly affecting and shocking; great numbers were not able to walk, nor move a hand or foot, such were slung over the ship side in the same manner as they would sling a cask, a box or anything of that nature. Upon their being brought up to the open air some fainted, some died upon the deck and others in the boat before they reached the shore. When come on shore many were not able to walk, to stand, or to sit themselves in the least, hence some were led by others. Some crept on their hands and knees and some were carried on the backs of others.

  The bodies of the dead continued to be thrown overboard until the Reverend Johnson complained to Phillip, after which point they were taken over to the north side of Port Jackson to be buried.

  Judge David Collins also recorded the scene, noting that even those who were not sick were close to death from starvation:

  The appearance of those who did not require medical attention was lean and emaciated. Several of those miserable people died in the boats as they were rowing on shore, or on the wharf as they lifted out of the boats; both the living and the dead exhibited more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed.7

  Captain Tench, who was another who witnessed the arrival of the Second Fleet and its sorry cargo, was angry at the shipping contractors, who he believed were paid enough to deliver the convicts in reasonable condition but ‘violated every principle of justice and rioted on the spoils of misery’.8

  Arthur Phillip wrote a letter of complaint to London about the treatment of the convicts. He wrote that while he did not want to ‘dwell on the scene of misery’ that came with the Second Fleet, ‘It would be a want of duty not to say that it was occasioned by the contractors having crowded too many on board those ships, and from their being too much confined during the passage.’9

  In another letter Phillip pointed out that, in the month following the arrival of the Second Fleet, there were more patients receiving urgent medical treatment in Sydney (four hundred and thirteen) than those fit for work (three hundred and sixteen),10 and in the following six weeks a further eighty-nine would die.

  There were almost five hundred convicts too sick to stand and in need of hospitalisation, but John White’s little hospital on the western side of Sydney Cove could only cater for fifty or sixty. It was totally inadequate to deal with a tragedy of this dimension. The situation was made even more desperate by the fact that most of the medical supplies that White had pleaded to be brought from England had been lost on the Guardian when it had hit the iceberg six months earlier.

  The recently arrived Justinian had aboard a large number of tents, and a hundred were pitched for the sick. Still, there were no beds or bedding, and it was the beginning of winter. As Reverend Johnson described it:

  At first they had nothing to lay upon but the damp ground, many scarcely a rag to cover them. Grass was got for them to lay upon, and a blanket given amongst four of them … The misery I saw among them is inexpressible; many were not able to turn, or even to stir themselves, and in this situation were covered over almost with their own nastiness; their heads, bodies, clothes, blanket, all full of filth and lice.11

  The convicts soon described the conditions on the ships that had led to their terrible state. They were kept below deck where the ceilings were too low for them to stand and chained to each other for most of the voyage, even when th
e ships were leaking and they were sitting under water, often chained to the sick and the dying.12

  The appalling story of the worst of all of the ships, the Neptune, was reported in the Dublin Chronicle on 12 January the following year. The article was based on the story of Thomas Evans, who described the convict quarters as being seventy-five feet long by thirty-five feet at the widest point (22.8 by 10.6 metres) and the height five feet seven inches (1.7 metres) at the lowest point. Within this space were the ‘miserable apartments for confining, boarding and lodging’ four hundred and twenty-four male convicts. Each cabin was six feet square, giving each man only thirty-seven cubic feet of airspace – about the size of two coffins.

  It appears that before leaving London the navy agent on board the Neptune, Lieutenant Shapcote, had ordered that all convicts ‘except those of good character or ill health’ be put in irons. Many died before the ship had even left the port, only to be ‘thrown overboard unhammocked and unweighted’. During the voyage fifty or sixty convicts at a time were allowed up on deck for two hours but were never released from their chains.

  On all the ships the water and food rations were limited and soon ‘a violent epidemic fever’ and scurvy broke out. Sometimes deaths were concealed so the other convicts could draw on the extra food ration – until the stench of the corpse revealed its presence to the ship’s surgeon.

  Some of the details of what happened on the Surprize were recorded in a letter written by Captain Hill, a second captain of the New South Wales Marine Corps, to his friend Samuel Wathen, a philanthropist, Gloucester county sheriff and friend of William Wilberforce, the antislavery campaigner. The long letter, sent after the ship arrived in Sydney Cove, gives an account of the ‘villainy, oppression and shameful peculation’ during the voyage:

  The bark I was on board of was indeed unfit for her make and size to be sent so great a distance. If it blew but the most trifling gale she was lost in the waters … the unhappy wretches, the convicts were considerably above their waists in water … In this situation they were obliged for the safety of the ship to be penned down but when the gales abated no means were used to purify the air by fumigations, no vinegar was applied to rectify the nauseous steams issuing from their miserable dungeon. Humanity shudders to think that of nine hundred male convicts embarked on this fleet, three hundred and seventy are already dead and four hundred and fifty are landed sick and so emaciated and helpless that very few if any of them can be saved.13

  Hill said that the maltreatment had been made worse because of the tight chains with short bolts that pinned the convicts to the floor below the decks, which meant ‘it was impossible for them to move but at the risk of both their legs being broken’.14

  The Times newspaper pointed out that the Second Fleet shipowners were paid for each convict loaded, not landed, and the greater the number that died, the lower their costs in feeding and clothing them:

  It may be proper to observe, that the sum allowed by the government for each convict to Botany Bay is fully adequate – but it unfortunately happens, that the owners farm the benefit to the owners of the ship, and therefore the more that die on the passage, the greater his gain … As the matter now stands, the less of his cargo the Captain brings into port, the more profit he makes.15

  The Second Fleet was the beginning of a program of transportation that would continue for another fifty years and involve the shipment of thousands more convicts. The government had written to Phillip in December 1789 to warn him that many more would be coming:

  From the current crowded state of the hulks and the increase which might be expected of the number of felons under sentence of transportation, not only in this kingdom but in Ireland, after the next Spring Assizes, it is intended that about one thousand men shall be sent abroad, and preparations must be made for their reception.16

  There was a very big difference between the treatment of the convicts on the First Fleet and of those on the Second Fleet. On the First Fleet it was the responsibility of the officers to inspect the quality of food and ensure that the convicts received their rations from the contractors. On the Second Fleet the responsibility for the distribution of provisions rested entirely with the master of the contracted ship.

  Captain Tench contrasted the record of the First Fleet with that of the Second, where two hundred and seventy-three died before they reached Sydney and a further four hundred and eighty-six were sick on arrival:

  On our passage from England, which had lasted more than eight months and with nearly an equal number of persons, only twenty-four had died, and not thirty were landed sick. The difference can be accounted for, only by comparing the manner in which each fleet was fitted out and conducted. With us, the provisions served on board were laid in by a contractor, who sent a deputy to serve them out and it became a part of duty for the officers of the troops to inspect their quality, and to order that everyone received his just portion. Whereas the fleet now arrived, the distribution of provisions rested entirely with the masters of the merchantmen, and the officers were expressly forbidden to interfere in any shape farther about the convicts than to prevent their escape.17

  Tench hoped that the government would intervene to stop it happening again: ‘No doubt … a humane and liberal government will interpose its authority to prevent the repetition of such flagitious conduct.’18

  The Neptune’s captain, Donald Trail, and his chief mate, William Elerington, were charged when they returned to England with wilful murder. However, The Times was later to report that both men were ultimately acquitted:

  Yesterday the Admiralty sessions finished at the Old Bailey … Captain Donald Trail late commander of the Neptune Botany Bay ship and William Elerington the chief mate were indicted for the wilful murder of one of the convicts on the passage over, after a trial that lasted three hours they were both honourably acquitted.19

  On a less troublesome note the Second Fleet was also to provide a solution to Arthur Phillip’s strained relationship with the marines and their commander Robert Ross. Lord Grenville informed Phillip:

  The discontents which have prevailed in the marine detachments and the desire expressed by most of the officers and men to return home as soon as they have performed the tour of duty they have undertaken, have led to the making arrangements for relieving them. With that view his Majesty has ordered a corps to be raised for that particular purpose, consisting three hundred rank and file and a suitable number of officers under a major commandant.20

  The new marine corps would be led by Captain Nicholas Nepean, the brother of the undersecretary of the Home Office, Evan Nepean, until the arrival of their commanding officer Major Francis Grose on the Pitt in February 1792.

  Also arriving with the Second Fleet was 23-year-old Lieutenant John Macarthur, who would play a major role in the military, commercial and political life of the colony over the next forty years. This would include the overthrow of Governor Bligh in 1808 in what would be Australia’s only military coup.

  Macarthur was controversial from the start. Before leaving England on the Neptune, he fought a duel with the master of the ship and later had a disagreement with his successor, Donald Trail. He is said to have quarrelled so much with Trail on the voyage that he transferred with his wife Elizabeth and young son Edward to the Scarborough even before reaching the Cape of Good Hope.

  The Second Fleet also brought Phillip new instructions for the management of the colony from King George III that effectively changed its destiny from a penal colony to a permanent settlement:

  It is probable … that some of these people will be desirous of continuing there as settlers of that description will be of great utility, not only for the purposes of protecting and defence but for the cultivation of the land, it is thought advisable that every reasonable encouragement should be held out to them to remain there … It is therefore Our Royal Will and Pleasure that you do issue your warrant to … such non-commissioned officers and men as shall be disposed to become settlers within your Governm
ent … the proportion of land herein mentioned.21

  The instructions specified that non-commissioned officers could take up to one hundred acres (about forty hectares) and the privates fifty acres (about twenty hectares). An extra four acres was given for each child. Those who enlisted in the new corps were given a bounty of three pounds and would receive double the land grant after five years.22

  The new instructions also asked that land be granted to any settlers who emigrated from Britain, as ‘every encouragement’ was to be given to them to become farmers in the new colony. Phillip was told he could allocate convicts as labourers to the new farmers ‘on condition of their maintaining, feeding and clothing such convicts’.

  After the return of the ships of the Second Fleet to England the colony would again begin to struggle, as the consumption of food outstripped what they could harvest or catch.

  Captain Watkin Tench was to complain that by late in the year 1790 there had been very little rain and ‘all the showers of the last four months put together would [not] make twenty four hours rain’.

  Our farms, what with this poor soil, are in wretched condition. My winter crop of potatoes, which I planted in days of despair (March and April last), turned out very badly when I dug them about two months back. Wheat returned so poorly last harvest, that very little besides Indian corn had been sown this year.23

  On 9 July the following year the first convict transport ship of the Third Fleet, the Mary Ann, arrived with one hundred and forty-one women convicts and six children on board. The Mary Ann had reached Sydney remarkably quickly, in only four months and twelve days, and the ship arrived with the convicts in near perfect health. Only three had died on the entire voyage. With the Mary Ann came the news that another ten ships were on their way with more than two thousand more convicts for the colony.