by Paul Collins
Without ceremony, Kelly’s 90-ton, two-masted brig Sophia and the government brig Prince Leopold, of similar tonnage, slipped out of Hobart Town on 11 December 1821 for Sarah Island, with 111 people aboard who were to be the pioneers of the penal settlement. Among them were Commandant John Cuthbertson, Deputy Surveyor-General George Evans, the Assistant Surgeon, James Spence, the Harbour-Master and pilot, James Lucas, a constable to supervise the convicts, seventeen non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the 48th, with four soldiers’ wives and eleven children.To help with construction Sorell sent eleven convict artificers and mechanics of good character, eleven other convicts of useful avocations and eight untrained female convicts to work in the hospital and to do domestic work. The rest of the human cargo was made up of forty-four male convicts under sentence to Macquarie Harbour who were of ‘bad character and incorrigible conduct’, as His Honor described them for Under-Secretary Goulburn in Downing Street. They were to work the coal and timber resources of the Macquarie Harbour area.
It was not an easy passage to the west coast for the two brigs. As soon as they emerged from the protection of land and turned south-west, they hit the full force of the Southern Ocean. They became separated in a storm on 17 December and, after a difficult eighteen-day voyage tacking north up the west coast, the Sophia arrived off the entrance to Macquarie Harbour on the second-last day of 1821. After unloading her stores she passed through Hell’s Gates, reloaded her cargo and headed down the harbour to Sarah Island, where she arrived on 3 January 1822. The Sophia stayed three weeks at Macquarie Harbour and, after loading a cargo of Huon pine and negotiating Hell’s Gates again, she arrived back in Hobart Town with reports from Cuthbertson and Evans, having managed a four-day passage, on 7 February 1822.
The Prince Leopold, meanwhile, had run into terrible weather. She lost a seaman overboard, her main boom was carried away, her mainsail was split, one of her boats was dashed to pieces on the deck, and the bulwark was stove in by the sheer force of the sea. She had been blown right up the west coast and had to wait so long to negotiate the entrance she ran low on food and had to sail up to Bass Strait and turn east to the settlement at Port Dalrymple to be resupplied. As a result she did not arrive at Sarah Island until late February. The delay caused a severe problem for Cuthbertson because the Prince Leopold had the trained carpenters on board, so presumably the contingent on the Sophia lived either on the boat while it remained, or in tents or rough temporary shelters for the first seven weeks. This was the first of many long voyages for ships heading up the stormy west coast for Hell’s Gates and Sarah Island.There are few places to shelter: Port Davey, with its extensive bays, inlets and islands, was one possibility; and Spero Bay under Point Hibbs, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Hell’s Gates, was the other. Both are still used by local fishermen to shelter from storms.
Cuthbertson told Sorell in his first report that Sarah Island was about a mile in circumference (1.5 kilometres) and about a quarter of a mile (about 500 metres) from the western shoreline of the harbour. The island, which was about 600 metres long by about 150 metres wide, was originally thickly wooded, but during the twelve years in which it was occupied by the penal settlement all drawings and pictures show it to have been cleared completely. Even though the soil was poor and gravelly, the Commandant was confident that they would be able to grow vegetables there, which was true to a limited extent. As the settlement developed, soil and compost were brought from the mainland to try to encourage the growth of the gardens. They had some success, but there were never enough vegetables to feed everyone. Nowadays the trees and rainforest are coming back on the island and it is starting to resemble what it probably originally looked like. Cuthbertson says that they had trouble in the first couple of weeks unloading the stores because of rain squalls and rough weather. However, they eventually got everything ashore safely, and they managed to erect a store-house. In those first three weeks the convicts cut down and prepared enough Huon pine to send the Sophia back to Hobart Town fully loaded. Clearly, the Commandant was taking the ‘very hard labour’ aspect of his orders seriously.
Deputy Surveyor-General Evans, meanwhile, had been exploring the shores of the harbour, probably with Kelly, and estimating its commercial potential. On the eastern side of the island there was good anchorage protected from the severity of the prevailing west and north-westerly winds which, the Deputy Surveyor warned, could stir up a considerable sea, even in the far southern end of the harbour. Evans proposed that Sarah Island be made a headquarters camp, and suggested that the work gangs of convicts be billeted on the western shore of the harbour where water was available. This might have been a good idea, but Cuthbertson, fearing escape attempts, decided to establish everything on the island itself, including the convicts’ dormitory. Thomas James Lemprière, who lived at Macquarie Harbour from 1826 as Commissariat Officer, basically agreed with Evans; he never understood why Sarah Island had been chosen, given that there was no water there and, after all the trees had been removed, no wood for fires. All supplies had to be transported. Evans also realised that considerable work would have to be carried out to clear enough land to plant grain to supply the settlement and, while they tried many times to grow wheat, this was never successful. Evans reported that the whole harbour area was destitute of pasture, so bringing in cattle and sheep was out of the question.
The Gordon River flowed into the south-eastern end of the harbour and Evans sailed 32 kilometres (20 miles) up to the first rapid. He walked about another 5 kilometres (3 miles), probably as far as the confluence with the Franklin River. He matter-of-factly described the country as ‘closely covered with heavy timber and almost impenetrable vines and brushwood’. He perceived no commercial value in the place and he certainly made no comment about its natural beauty. Nowadays, with more sensitivity to the splendour of the environment, the Gordon is recognised as one of the wonders of the world and is an integral part of the World Heritage Area that covers so much of southwestern Tasmania.
Evans also penetrated 24 kilometres (15 miles) up the King River to where ‘it winds between a range of hills of great height, impenetrably covered’. This river flows into the northern end of Macquarie Harbour, just to the south of where the present-day town of Strahan is situated.The King also did not seem to him to be a particularly promising proposition in commercial terms.
The Deputy Surveyor was, however, pleased to inform His Honor back in Hobart Town of two important issues. First, Huon pine grew in great abundance on the eastern shore of the harbour and it could be obtained without too much difficulty by gangs of convicts. It grew, Evans told Sorell, on the banks of streams or wherever there was sufficient water. Other good timber was available too. He also commented that, even more importantly, Macquarie Harbour was surrounded by rugged, closely wooded and impenetrable country, so that escape from the settlement was next to impossible. Evans was certain that convicts sent here could not possibly have any communication with the eastern side of the island, let alone reach the settled districts, which was exactly what was intended.
Throughout the first half of 1822 Cuthbertson’s little settlement grew apace. Sixty-seven more convicts were sent before the end of March, among them William Haines, who stole an iron pot and two gallons of wine from his master, for which he received 100 lashes and Macquarie Harbour for the rest of his original sentence. William McFarlane, George Nisbitt and William Thompson stole a boat to escape from the colony. They were sentenced to 100 lashes each and Macquarie Harbour for the duration of their original sentences. Walter Simpson was sent for forging and uttering an order for £3 10 s; he received fifty lashes and Macquarie Harbour for the rest of his original sentence. Stephen Orlando, who stole a silver watch, copped fifty lashes and Macquarie Harbour for three years. Joseph Thomas and Joseph Ollery, who stole and received promissory notes to the value of £20, received fifty lashes and three years each at Macquarie Harbour. Benjamin Gibbs and Richard Johnstone, who stole two sheep, got two years; Jacob Waterhouse
stole a grubbing hoe, hemp and other articles from a lumber yard – ‘the property of His Majesty’, as the charge put it – and was sentenced to 100 lashes and Macquarie Harbour for two years. For a bit of variety a convict named J. Vicars was sentenced to Macquarie Harbour for seven years for setting fire to his overseer’s hut; John Gillespie received two years for false accusation, and Joseph Stockley and John Newton were sent there in chains for absconding into the woods.
Commandant Cuthbertson was having large numbers of prisoners foisted on him long before he could get buildings up to house them or grow sufficient food to feed them. Back in Hobart Town, however, the government was putting the best gloss on the situation. According to an optimistic report in the Hobart Town Gazette of 16 July 1822 that largely reflected the government line, the settlement continued to make good progress: houses for the Commandant and Assistant Surgeon had been completed, as had the barracks, the store, the hospital and a building large enough to lodge the convicts. The Gazette assured its readers that by the next summer the settlement would be well supplied with vegetables, that coal was easily obtainable (it soon proved to be of very poor quality and of little use) and that the timber ‘though growing mostly on marshy ground answers every expectation . . . and [affords the] most valuable product for human labour’.Timber-getting and boat-building were to be the real successes of the penal settlement.
A sour note is struck when the Gazette admits that in early March eight convicts had bolted into the bush, and that the two soldiers, three armed convicts and two kangaroo dogs who had gone in pursuit of them had not been heard of for three months. All thirteen escapees and pursuers were presumed dead. The Gazette commented that their melancholy fate had come about either from having ventured too far into the mountains where they had got lost, or that they had been killed by the Aboriginal people of the area. The newspaper speculated that it was most likely that the soldiers and trusted convicts had got lost and had perished from hunger, ‘a fate which [also] most likely attended the gang of runaway convicts of which they were in pursuit’.
Although the Gazette did not mention this, the constant cold and wet conditions meant that in Pearce’s time at Sarah Island rheumatism was widespread among convicts and officers alike. There was always a surgeon stationed at the settlement, and the ramshackle ‘hospital’ on nearby Grummet Island was staffed by untrained convict women, who sometimes also provided sexual favours to soldiers and convicts. The Gazette does mention that scurvy and dysentery had already broken out; they became endemic in the early years, largely due to the inadequate and often infected food.
So, despite the official optimism about the future of the Macquarie Harbour penal settlement, when Alexander Pearce was marched with other convicts in leg irons aboard the government brig the Duke of York under the command of Captain Chase in Hobart Town in mid-July 1822 to serve out the rest of his sentence, he was heading for a very grim place.The Duke of York was none other than the former brig Sophia, sold to the government after the death of its owner, Thomas William Birch, and renamed after the second son of George III. It set sail for Sarah Island with Convict No. 102 on board on one of its regular runs on 16 or 17 July 1822, midwinter in the southern hemisphere. The ship was used precisely because it was small with a shallow draft, drawing less than eight feet when loaded, and so it was able to negotiate Hell’s Gates reasonably well. There was no special accommodation set aside for convicts on the Duke of York, so Pearce and his companions had to doss down as best they could in the hold on top of the cargo, or on the rock used as ship’s ballast, with the stinking bilge water lapping around them. Besides Pearce there were Alexander Dalton, Thomas Murray, Dennis Redmond, Aaron Chevel, Benjamin Jackson and another unidentified convict.
On this particular trip the Duke of York sailed down the Derwent estuary, through Storm Bay and then turned west-sou’-west out into the Southern Ocean. For the next 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of the Tasmanian mainland they sailed directly into the Roaring Forties. Once the Duke of York had reached the South West Cape of Van Diemen’s Land and began to tack to the north up the western coast of the island, the brig ran into another set of contrary winds that in winter are deflected southeast onto the west coast of Tasmania from the Australian mainland. Pearce and his mates were lucky.They were on a reasonably fast trip, for the Duke of York was back in Hobart Town in late August, which means that it reached Sarah Island in late July or early August. On the two-week voyage Pearce struck up a friendship with Alexander Dalton, an ex-soldier who had been transported after a trial in Gibraltar in 1818 and was also an Irishman.
On arrival at the settlement, before they were taken ashore, Pearce and his companions were thoroughly searched. The guards were looking especially for tobacco. As part of the punishment regimen all prisoners at Sarah Island were denied tobacco completely, which for nineteenth-century lower-class men and women was a serious deprivation. Given the men’s addiction to smoking, a smuggling operation was soon in place, with the military being the main conduits and middle-men. Rum was occasionally provided as an antidote for rheumatism, but no other intoxicating drink was allowed. The convicts’ original clothing was taken, as were any foodstuffs. They were then issued with their prison uniform: a pair of dark yellow pants made out of a light canvas material, shirts, a short half-yellow, half-black coarse woollen coat, leather boots, a neckcloth, a cap, a hammock or mattress and blankets. The outfit led to convicts being nicknamed ‘canaries’. All items of clothing had the prison broad arrowhead symbol stencilled on them, plus the individual felon’s number. New uniforms were issued every six months, but at Macquarie Harbour men hung onto their old clothes and often wore them underneath their new uniforms to keep warm.
There were already about 170 prisoners at Macquarie Harbour when Pearce and his companions arrived. Much of the rainforest on the island had already been cleared and quite a number of timber buildings erected, including residences for the officials, a barracks for the soldiers and the penitentiary or convict dormitory. In such a cold, wet climate, adequate food was essential to avoid scurvy and in theory each prisoner was supposed to receive ten pounds of bread and seven pounds of salt beef or salt pork per week, plus a daily ration of four ounces of skilly, a thin gruel or porridge-like soup made from oatmeal or wheat, flavoured with meat.Vegetables were supplied when available. Sometimes in the early days of the settlement the convicts were expected to do very heavy work on virtually starvation rations. In winter when the arrival of supply ships from Hobart Town was erratic due to the weather, rations were scantier and scurvy prevalent. James Spence, the Assistant Surgeon, reported to Hobart Town eight months after Pearce’s arrival that ‘At the formation of the settlement the prisoners were very much exposed to the inclemency of the weather, which was generally rainy, and being deficient of bed and body clothing, Dysentery and Rheumatism were very prevalent, but since the barracks have been formed these diseases are very much less frequent’.
To supplement their diet, which was little different from that of the convicts, the soldiers and officers hunted the local wildlife, especially the black swans, which are native to Australia. It is estimated that about 200,000 of them lived on the harbour prior to 1821. The swans’ numbers were drastically reduced by 1833 when the penal settlement was finally closed, due to shooting and to the collection of their greenish-white eggs; a clutch could contain between four and ten. Nowadays you still do not see many black swans at Macquarie Harbour. The soldiers also hunted kangaroo, wombat and even echidna, the egg-laying spiny anteater that is a first cousin to the platypus, to get fresh meat. None of this was available to the convicts, who were denied fresh meat unless they were in hospital.
The prison regimen at Sarah Island was unremitting. Men were often forced to work in irons and shackles. An endemic part of life was the lash, which was used freely and brutally for even the slightest infraction of the regulations. As a magistrate the Commandant could order up to 100 lashes and he often did so with the vicious cat-o’-nine-tails
. Between 1822 and 1826 a total of 835 convicts received 32,723 lashes, or about thirty-nine for every man there in a five-year period. Each lash was meticulously noted and the records sent to the Principal Superintendent in the Convict Department in Hobart Town. By way of comparison, between March 1815 and November 1817 in New South Wales, the Parramatta Bench of Magistrates handed out 11,321 lashes to just 200 offenders, an average of fifty-six lashes per offender. These figures were far in excess of anything happening in the United Kingdom at the time which, with a much larger population, only had an average of 234 court-ordered floggings per year in the whole period of 1811 to 1827.
Every morning, except Christmas Day and the King’s Birthday (then always celebrated on 23 April), Pearce and the other convicts rose when the bell rang at around six in the roughly built wooden penitentiary, or prisoners’ dormitory. This was a hotchpotch of buildings divided into sections, which was eventually replaced in the middle of the decade by a stone building, the remnants of which still survive. But around the beginning of the twentieth century it seems that someone from nearby Queenstown tried to blow it up, feeling that all vestiges of convictism in Tasmania should be eliminated, so that the local population could rid themselves of the so-called ‘stain’ inherited from their early history. In a vivid demonstration of changing attitudes, Sarah Island is now to be preserved for future generations as both a historical site and as part of the World Heritage Area.