1788

by David Hill

  Following the shipwreck Edwards and the surviving crew and convicts embarked on their own epic voyage in three small open boats for some three thousand kilometres, heading westward to Koepang. They arrived nearly three weeks later in September 1791, about three months after the Bryants and their fellow escapees, who had then been in custody for a month in the port’s prison.

  Edwards ‘clapped in irons’ the convicts from New South Wales. He chartered a Dutch East Indiaman, the Rembang, to take them to Batavia, along with the captured mutineers and his surviving one hundred and twenty crew from the Pandora. They arrived there in December. The convict escapees were placed in prison while Edwards awaited a ship to take them on the final leg of the journey to face justice back in England. Shortly before Christmas William Bryant and his son, Emanuel, died of a fever in the disease-ridden prison.

  Edwards then took Mary Bryant, her daughter, Charlotte, and the other surviving convicts on to Cape Town, during which time another three died: James Cox, Samuel Bird and the navigator William Morton.

  At Cape Town Mary and Charlotte and the remaining four convicts – James Martin, William Allen, Samuel Broom and Nathaniel Lilley – were transferred to an English ship, the Gorgon. The Gorgon was on its way back to London with the First Fleet marine detachment from Sydney, having delivered a new marine corps to relieve them.

  According to James Martin, ‘We was well known to all the marine officers [on board] which was all glad we had not perished at sea.’17

  The marine captain Watkin Tench was also on his way home to England on the Gorgon and had been impressed by the escape the year before:

  Among them were a fisherman, a carpenter, and some competent navigators, so that little doubt was entertained that a scheme so admirably planned would be adequately executed … After the escape of Captain Bligh, which was well known to us, no length of passage or hazard of navigation seemed above human accomplishment.18

  When Tench saw the six surviving escapees being brought aboard the Gorgon, he remembered Mary Bryant and one of the other convicts and was moved to express sympathy for their plight:

  I confess that I never looked at these people without pity and astonishment. They had miscarried in a heroic struggle for liberty and having combated every hardship and conquered every difficulty. The woman and one of the men had gone out to Port Jackson in the ship, which had transported me thither. They had both of them been always distinguished for good behaviour and I could not but reflect with admiration at the strange combination of circumstances which had again brought us together.19

  On 5 May 1792, only a month before the Gorgon was to reach England, Mary Bryant’s daughter, Charlotte, died and was buried at sea.

  Back in London the story of the escape captured the public imagination. There was considerable public sympathy, which led to the eventual pardon of Mary Bryant and the four others in May 1793, although by that time their original sentences had either been served or were nearly expired.

  The well-known London diarist James Boswell had taken up Mary Bryant’s cause and campaigned for her release. There were rumours that Boswell and the ex-convict were lovers, perhaps not helped by the fact that he had agreed to pay her an annuity of £10. Whatever the truth of it, she went to live back with her family in Cornwall.

  Of the other pardoned convicts, Samuel Broom (alias John Butcher) immediately enlisted as a volunteer with the New South Wales Corps and returned to the colony the same year. Two years later, in 1795, he was granted twenty-five acres (about ten hectares) of farming land in Petersham, now one of Sydney’s inner-western suburbs.

  One of the most bizarre escapes of the early settlement occurred in November 1791 when a large group of twenty convict men and a pregnant convict woman made their escape from Rose Hill taking with them food, clothing, bedding and some working tools. They planned to head overland for China!

  A detachment of troops was sent in pursuit but, after a difficult march, returned without having seen the party. Over the next few weeks a number of the escapees progressively returned to the settlement, desperate for food. Two had been killed and a number of others wounded by Aboriginal people.

  When questioned in the hospital by Captain Tench, the recovering survivors said they thought China was only a hundred miles away:

  I asked these men if they really supposed it possible to reach China. They answered that they were certainly made to believe (they knew not how) that a considerable distance to northward existed a large river, which separated this country from the back part of China and that when it should be crossed, (which was practicable) they would find themselves among copper coloured people, who would receive them and treat them kindly.20

  18

  THE DEPARTURE OF PHILLIP

  I cannot conclude this letter without assuring you [Arthur Phillip] how much I lament that the ill state of your health deprives his Majesty of your further services in the Government of New South Wales …

  After three years in New South Wales many of the naval officers, sailors, marines and civil officials who had come out with the First Fleet began to return to England.

  At the end of their sentence, or if they were pardoned, the convicts were also legally free to go home. However, the practical realities of trying to secure a passage aboard a ship bound for England – bearing in mind they lacked both money and sailing experience – combined with official opposition, made it virtually impossible. Very few ex-convicts realised their dream of making it home again.

  By March 1791 the population of the colony had doubled to a little over two thousand people, with about two-thirds living in Sydney and the remainder on Norfolk Island. About three-quarters were convicts and one hundred and nine were children.1

  The first group from the First Fleet to return to England included Captain John Hunter and many of the naval officers and crew of the sunken Sirius. Phillip extended the charter of the Dutch vessel the Waaksamheyd, which had followed the Supply back from Batavia with supplies, so the ship could be used to carry the crew of the Sirius back to England. A total of eighty-five officers and crew boarded the Waaksamheyd for the long journey home. On board, in addition to the captain and crew of the Sirius, were a number of people who had both shaped and recorded the story of the First Fleet, including Lieutenant William Bradley, Jacob Nagle and Captain Watkin Tench. Bradley, who had painted and drawn many features of the colony of Sydney and Norfolk Island, would also produce a range of drawings and charts of the voyage home.

  Under the charter arrangements the Waaksamheyd was to have an awkward line of command. The ship’s captain was the Dutchman Ditmar Smith, but Captain John Hunter decided where they went, and it was the British officers aboard, rather than the Dutch, who possessed the navigation skills required for the course they were to take in the largely uncharted waters north of New Guinea. Further tension arose from the fact that the English officers regarded themselves as more refined than the uncouth Dutchmen.

  According to Jacob Nagle it had originally been planned to sail the Waaksamheyd south under Tasmania then west across the Great Southern Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, but after struggling into a headwind unsuccessfully for several weeks the plans were changed:

  We steered to the South and when we got off Van Diemans land we found the wind continued from the westward, and we beating for three weeks in vain, we bore up and steered to the north and east for the middle passage.2

  Only two weeks out from Sydney Lieutenant George Maxwell, one of the marines, died and was buried at sea. Maxwell had been one of two original lieutenants on the Sirius, but he had displayed the first signs of insanity more than two years earlier and had been an invalid in the colony ever since. He died after lying in his cabin for several days ‘in a dreadful condition, constantly delirious and insensible to anything whatsoever’.3

  The longer route taken north of New Guinea allowed the Waaksamheyd to chart areas beyond those already mapped by earlier explorers, but it also meant the ship would take six months to reach Bat
avia. Running low on food, they stopped for fresh supplies near Balut Island south of the Philippines, where the crew narrowly avoided being massacred. A few hundred natives had brought food aboard and were trading with the Europeans when Captain Smith’s Malaysian mistress overheard the outline of a plan to kill all the Europeans aboard and take the ship. Jacob Nagle described the incident:

  About this time there was between two and three hundred on board with a pretence of trade, the Dutch Captain had a Malay girl sitting on the quarter deck which he kept as a miss, and she was very fond of him. She, understanding the language heard … they were then determined to massacre all the whites on board … The girl informed the Captain and he sent the mates below for an armful of cutlasses … The king [of the natives] finding they were discovered made a spring on the gunnels of the vessel and from thence into his boat … Though the decks were full of Malays and all armed with dirks, and seeing the king and general fly, they all jumped overboard and swam to the canoes, which were numerous, laying off waiting for the massacre.4

  In late August, five months after leaving Sydney, the ship passed below Makassar Strait, where they saw a number of local Malay boats before reaching Batavia on 27 September. The Waaksamheyd was in poor shape by this point and needed several weeks of repairs before it could embark on the next leg of the journey.

  While in Batavia, the British decided to buy the ship outright and discharged the Dutch captain. With the ‘English colours and pennant hoisted’,5 the vessel came under the full command of Captain John Hunter for the remainder of the journey back to England.

  They were in Batavia for nearly two months, and when they left there was evidence among the crew of the notorious fever for which that port was renowned. Lieutenant Bradley described the port as the ‘grave of Europeans’,6 and Jacob Nagle claimed that ‘when we arrived we had not a sick man on board, and when we left it, we had not a well man on board’.7

  After the Waaksamheyd left Batavia for the Cape of Good Hope, Hunter’s log contains regular reports of crew who died from fevers caught in the Dutch provincial city. When they reached the Cape in December 1791, many of the crew were still ill and several died. A number of the seriously ill were laid in wagons and taken to the local hospital, while others were nursed back to health on the boat. Even by the time the Waaksamheyd was to leave Table Bay, a number of the crew were still too ill to travel and would be left behind, while many of those who sailed would still not have entirely recovered from the illnesses contracted in Batavia.8

  While in Table Bay, the ship experienced the same hostile winds that earlier captains had complained of. On one occasion the Waaksamheyd was blown off its anchor and out to sea. It was to take two days to sail back into the port.

  One night when Captain Hunter was on shore, Lieutenant Bradley gave the crew a party, or ‘frolic’, to celebrate the fact that after nearly five years they would soon be back in England. There was much noise from the ‘drink and carousing’ on the quarterdeck, which led the captain of the English ship the Swan, also anchored in the bay, to fear a mutiny was in progress and send a boat with armed officers and men over to restore order. When Bradley assured them that everything was fine, ‘they all drinked hearty and laughed till we sent them back nearly as well intoxicated as we were on board’.9

  It was while the Waaksamheyd was in Cape Town that John Hunter met Captain William Bligh for the first and probably the only time. Bligh was in command of the HMS Providence and, with the HMS Assistant, was on his second attempt to collect tropical breadfruit from the south Pacific for replanting in the West Indies.

  His first attempt, two years prior, had ended in mutiny, when the crew of the Bounty had risen up against him in April 1789.

  On Captain Cook’s voyage more than eighteen years earlier the English had observed the breadfruit growing on trees in Tahiti and other places, and how it formed a staple part of the native diet when simply roasted on a fire. The British were keen to collect a large number of the fruit plants for transplanting into the British-controlled West Indies, where it was hoped they would provide a cheap form of food for the slaves working on the sugar plantations. The sinking of the Bounty, which the mutineers subsequently scuttled at Pitcairn Island, and the loss of all of the breadfruits that were thrown overboard did not discourage the British. With Joseph Banks’ prompting, Bligh was sent again on the same mission, this time with two ships.

  Bligh was unimpressed with Hunter, who was highly critical of the new colony he was now leaving. In a letter Bligh sent to his friend and patron Joseph Banks, he wrote that Hunter did not seem to have the leadership qualities necessary for his current position: ‘I may pronounce with some certainty that the present second in command [of New South Wales] … is not blessed with a moderate share of good knowledge to give much stability to the new settlement.’10 Bligh, of course, had no idea that within four years Hunter would become the governor of New South Wales and that he himself would follow him into the office ten years later.

  The Waaksamheyd left the Cape on 18 January 1792 and sailed north-west with the prevailing winds to the island of St Helena, some sixteen hundred kilometres across the Atlantic. Two weeks later they sailed on and by April were off the English coast, where they sailed alongside a British frigate that was patrolling the English Channel.

  As they approached Portsmouth, they were told that Lieutenant Ball had passed up the Channel on the Supply just the day before and had asked about the Waaksamheyd. When told that the ship had not been seen, Ball, who had left Sydney seven months later than the Dutch ship, believed it must have been lost.

  Immediately after the arrival in Portsmouth a court martial was held on the Brunswick to try Captain John Hunter and his crew for the sinking of the Sirius. Such a trial was automatic following the loss of a navy ship, and the court martial found that ‘every thing was done that could be done’ to save the ship from being wrecked on the Norfolk Island reef. Hunter and his crew were all honourably acquitted.11

  On reaching Portsmouth, too, the crew were paid off. For Jacob Nagle this meant an unexpected windfall: he received not only all the back pay owed to him but also the money due to his fellow American Terrence Byrne, who had died on the way home. Byrne and Nagle had signed on with the First Fleet at the same time and had been on the Sirius together for all of its adventures, including the original voyage to Australia, the circumnavigation of the globe to fetch food from the Cape and, finally, its sinking on Norfolk Island. The two men were single and had nominated each other as beneficiaries in their wills.12

  Arthur Phillip had finally been able to release the Supply from the colony after being assured that regular convict convoys would be coming to Sydney. In addition to taking back official dispatches and letters, the Supply carried on board the first live kangaroo taken to England, as a gift for King George III.

  After leaving Sydney in November 1791, Lieutenant Ball headed south and east below New Zealand to return via Cape Horn. He was well aware of what to expect on the route, which Captain Hunter had taken on the Sirius to fetch food from Cape Town two years earlier. By Christmas Day they were almost fifty-eight degrees south, below Cape Horn, in squalls, hail and snow. They were out of fresh food and reduced to a diet of portable soup, essence of malt and ‘sour krout’, which was thought to be anti-scorbutic.

  By 6 January they were making good time, and after only six weeks’ sailing they saw Cape Horn. At this time Hunter and the Waaksamheyd were still at the Cape of Good Hope, coming the other way. A month later, on 3 February, those aboard the Supply reached Santa Cruz, where they stayed for only four days to load up with fresh food and water before heading off to the north-east across the Atlantic.

  At about noon on 20 April they saw the Lizard peninsula on the Cornish coast, which had been the last sighting the First Fleet had had of England five years earlier. They arrived in Portsmouth a few days later.

  On reaching England, the now 36-year-old Ball returned to naval duty. He was promoted to captain in 1795
and served on a number of ships over the next twenty years before being appointed vice-admiral in the blue in 1814. Ball married Charlotte Foster in London in 1802. Sadly, she died the following year, and he was married again seven years later to Anne Johnston. When he died in 1818 aged 62, he was survived by his wife as well as a daughter, Anna Maria, in Sydney, whose mother was the convict Sarah Partridge.

  Despite being the smallest ship of the First Fleet, the Supply had achieved a great deal. It had been the first to reach Botany Bay; it had taken Philip Gidley King and his small party to colonise Norfolk Island; it had sailed to Batavia for vitally needed food for the starving settlers in Sydney; and it had brought back the shipwrecked crew of the Sirius. Until the arrival of the Second and subsequent convict fleets it was for a time the only ship available to the new colony and the only contact the settlers had with the outside world. However, the Supply was to have an inglorious ending. After it returned to England, the navy sold the ship. It was renamed the Thomas and Nancy and carried coal on the River Thames until 1806, after which it disappeared from the official records.

  The next group from the First Fleet to return home were the marines. They left Sydney on the Gorgon after almost four years in the colony, sailing out on 18 December 1791, nine months after the Waaksamheyd and less than two months after the Supply.

  Of nearly two hundred and fifty marines and their officers who had come with the First Fleet, sixty-three decided not to go home but to stay as farmer settlers on either Norfolk Island or Rose Hill. The British Government was disappointed that so few had chosen to stay on, having authorised Arthur Phillip to make land grants and cash bonuses to the marines to encourage them to stay when their term of duty expired.13 Captain Watkin Tench said that only some of them were sufficiently skilled to succeed as farmers and that most of those who stayed did so because they were attracted to female convicts, which would promise ‘neither honour, nor tranquillity’. Others, he said, were comfortable enough to stay because they had recently been paid almost four years’ dues, with money that had arrived in Sydney on later ships.