by Paul Collins
The men in the dormitory slept, as convicts in government service usually did at this period, in hammocks strung from wooden frames, or if these were not available, they simply kipped down on the floor as best they could. Hammocks were a very effective way of housing large numbers of men in a small space, while still maintaining some level of basic cleanliness. As Pearce and the other men slowly arose in the morning there would have still been some residual heat coming from the stone fireplaces in the penitentiary. This was probably the only time of the day when their clothes were reasonably dry and their bodies warm. Men could go to the privies, which were just across from the penitentiary, and were built out over a low cliff face with the high tide acting as a natural flushing mechanism. Pearce would then have dressed in his basic prison uniform.
As the weak midwinter sun was rising, the men assembled on a basic parade ground, and the convict muster began when Lieutenant Cuthbertson arrived with his small contingent of troops. They were dressed in bright red coats with narrow white stripes and silver buttons, white crossed shoulder belts, epaulettes, dark grey pants and knee-length black boots. Their colourful uniforms and black, cylindrical, peaked shako caps with regimental badges, each one crowned with a red-and-white woollen pompon, would have looked bizarrely out of place against the background of cool temperate rainforest, surrounded by a grey, miserable southern sky that threatened rain. Since this was the 48th Regiment, whose proudest moment was back in 1809 in the Iberian peninsula fighting against Napoleon, their badge had one word emblazoned on it to remind them of their day of glory – ‘Talavera’.
At the muster the convicts were counted, and then Cuthbertson made announcements and assigned the work gangs to their duties in either logging operations or mining the superficial and useless coal. Better behaved prisoners on ‘billets’ (lighter duties) were sent either to work in the gardens on Sarah Island or to serve as tradesmen and overseers. But the unskilled majority laboured in the gangs over on the mainland around Kelly’s Basin or up the Gordon River. Once assigned, those working off the island were marched the short distance down to the jetty, and before getting into their boats they were searched for food that could supplement their diet, or be used in an attempted escape.The men then rowed themselves away from the jetty and out onto Macquarie Harbour.Throughout winter it was damp and cold in the early morning, and the sea could often be turbulent, especially when there was a big swell running or the wind was a westerly or sou’-westerly.
The convicts quickly came to hate the dark brown, tanninstained water, which they thought looked like discoloured piss. In a rough sea it often whipped up into an ugly froth. The stale urine colour was the result of the thick peat deposits through which the fresh water percolated before joining the rivers and creeks that flowed into the harbour. As is usual where fresh and sea water mix, the harbour’s surface water was fresh, whereas the deeper water was salt. Despite its colour the water was perfectly pure, and serious pollution did not come to Macquarie Harbour until the early twentieth century when the Mount Lyell Mining Company of Queenstown began dumping its toxic waste there via the King River. As the convicts rowed their whaleboats across to Kelly’s Basin, the large black swans took off slowly and awkwardly into the cold, misty air, white under-wing-tips and bright red beaks a striking contrast to their jet-black bodies.
When he arrived at Sarah Island Pearce had quickly marked himself as a man who could not adjust to prison life and for whom penal discipline was an almost impossible burden. For him escape was the only option. It was quite clear from his previous three ill-planned and impulsive attempts at bolting into the bush that it did not matter where he went, or with whom. He also did not care what the consequences of running away might be, as long as he was free from detention. Sarah Island had been established precisely for men like him, its operating premise being that if the Pearces of this world were isolated completely in a dank, jungle wilderness and subjected to rules and regulations, unremitting supervision and very hard work, they would eventually knuckle under and submit. Having been broken, they could then be trained to abandon their ungodly, criminal ways and become obedient prisoners who would be transformed into productive and law-abiding subjects of the Crown.
Pearce was assigned to a work gang in which escape was very much the topic of conversation. This gang of eight men worked around Kelly’s Basin in logging operations.Together they felled, prepared and lashed together logs of Huon pine, celery-top pine, blackwood and myrtle, which were rafted to the island where they were processed and loaded on the Duke of York and other ships for transportation to Hobart Town. The most prized of these trees was Huon pine, a yellowish timber that was – and still is – highly regarded for ship-building. Found only in Tasmania, the trees are extremely slow-growing, needing heavy rainfall for them to prosper. At 30 metres (95 feet) high, a mature tree could have been a sapling when Socrates flourished in Athens 2500 years ago. Even after it has been chopped down the wood has an amazing ability to survive, so that timber from a tree in Pearce’s time can still be used today. Its longevity is derived from a special oil it produces, which retards the growth of destructive fungi.
The convicts not only felled the trees and prepared the logs for flotation across the harbour by stripping them of their branches and bark, but at day’s end they had to assemble and tow the large rafts of logs back to the island’s saw pits. Working in freezing water up to their chests, they lashed the logs together in lateral groups to construct the rafts. If there was any swell at all running, towing these huge rafts behind them as they rowed across the harbour became a dangerous as well as an exhausting job. A drawing from about 1831 by Lemprière depicts three of these boats towing fifty logs, bound together in five groups of ten each to make up one enormous raft. The smaller lead boat has six oarsmen and the two larger boats behind have eight apiece. The boats are attached to each other by ropes and look like diesel locomotives hauling an extremely heavy freight-train.The water is dead calm, which would have been essential for such an operation.
Thomas James Lemprière, Philips Island (from the eastern shore of Macquarie Harbour), ca 1828. Grey ink wash on paper. The whale boat is the kind used for getting logging crews across to the mainland for logging operations. (Courtesy Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania.)
Back at Sarah Island the logs were landed and milled into sawn timber. The major difficulty facing the government was in getting the prepared timber from Sarah Island to Hobart Town in heavily laden ships which had to navigate the narrow entrance, treacherous rip and sandbar at Hell’s Gates, as well as the perilous seas between Macquarie Harbour and the colony’s capital. The authorities soon realised that it would be much more efficient to use the timber to construct ships on the island itself, and as a result a ship-building industry was established in 1824. It grew rapidly after the arrival in 1828 of the Scottish-born and Boston-trained shipwright, David Hoy, under whom the shipyard became by far the most productive in Australia. Before its closure in 1833 Hoy had designed and built ninety-six ships and boats. Largely as a result of his efforts, Macquarie Harbour became an industrial site where the prisoners were able to gain some autonomy and ability to use the system because their labour was needed for boat-building.
Thomas James Lemprière, Grummet Island Off Sarah Island, ca 1828, Grey ink wash on paper. Note the two whale boats towing a large raft of logs from Kelly’s Basin to Sarah Island. (Courtesy Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania.)
Given the hardship at Sarah Island in the early days of the settlement and his own obstreperous nature, Pearce was lucky to find himself in a work gang determined to escape. The most influential man in his group was an Englishman named Robert Greenhill, who also seemed to find the constraints of convict existence unbearable. He had been sentenced to transportation for fourteen years for ‘larceny from a person’ at the Middlesex Assizes in the session commencing 28 June 1820. He had been born in 1790 and his occupation is listed in the Ne
wgate Jail records as ‘mariner’. He had stolen a coat. The person from whom he had filched it and who had had him charged was none other than his wife, Judith Greenhill! Perhaps he had been away at sea for too long and Judith had taken up with someone else. Or perhaps he was a violent drunk who was obnoxious to live with when he was on shore leave. Perhaps she was just sick of him. Whatever the cause, there was obviously no love lost between the two. Greenhill arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, aged thirty-one, on the Lady Ridley on 27 June 1821.
Greenhill’s closest mate was Matthew Travers (sometimes called ‘Trevors’ or ‘Travis’), a 27-year-old Irish labourer from County Dublin, who had been given a life sentence for the crime of stealing at the County Kildare Sessions in July 1816. He had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land on the ship Pilot in late 1817. Greenhill and Travers had met in the colony and struck up a friendship, apparently when they were working as convict shepherds in the back country beyond the settlement of New Norfolk, north-west of Hobart Town in the Derwent valley. In the early 1820s this isolated and dangerous area was only just being settled by Europeans, and the frontier between white settlement and Aboriginal land was about 55 kilometres (35 miles) beyond New Norfolk. The Aborigines of the Big River tribe, who traditionally occupied this region, strongly resented European incursions into their land, and they actively resisted white settlement. Convict shepherds such as Greenhill and Travers were especially vulnerable to Aboriginal reprisal raids with spears and clubs. So men tended to look out for one another and especially for their good mates.
Until he met Greenhill,Travers had been a well-behaved convict and had even rented some land on which he ran about 150 sheep of his own. However, despite his good record, and no doubt influenced by Greenhill,Travers began to chafe against the constrictions of convict life. In September 1821 he ‘concealed himself on board the ship Grace with intent to escape from the colony’. He was caught, lost his leave pass and received twenty-five lashes. He was twice more before the magistrates in December: first for missing the church muster, and secondly for neglect of duty, for which he received another twenty-five lashes from Magistrate Humphrey. Then on 30 March 1821 Travers and Greenhill, together with three other prisoners, Richard Hurlstone, John Wilkinsen and William Walker, attempted to escape from Van Diemen’s Land by ‘absconding from the public works and feloniously stealing and carrying away a schooner’ moored on the Derwent River near Hobart Town, owned by none other than Sorell’s and Mrs Kent’s nemesis, Anthony Fenn Kemp. While many convicts bolted into the bush in escape attempts, it was more unusual to try to flee by stealing a boat. Indeed, the attempted hijacking of a boat was a serious offence, for it amounted to an act of piracy.
Greenhill, Travers and Hurlstone were caught and sentenced to 150 lashes each and incarceration in a place of secondary punishment – Sarah Island. On the night after they were caught trying to steal the schooner, they again attempted to escape.They were quickly recaptured but only received 25 lashes because, as the Hobart Town Gazette put it, ‘They appeared very sorry for their offence’. An excess of mercy toward the convict population was not the usual characteristic of Hobart Town magistrates, including the Reverend Robert Knopwood, who was on the bench at the time. Perhaps it was because the men were already up for 150 lashes? Whatever happened is not clear, but the second part of their sentence stood, and they were shipped to Sarah Island in early May 1822 on the Duke of York. Walker and Wilkinsen were not caught until early October. They were tried before Knopwood and received the same sentence of 150 lashes and transportation to Macquarie Harbour. But by then both Greenhill and Travers were dead.
Besides Pearce, Greenhill and Travers, the work gang also included No. 102’s new mate, Alexander Dalton, the pock-pitted, 25-year-old Irish ex-soldier from Kilkenny who had served in Gibraltar and who had been transported from there to Van Diemen’s Land. After working on assignment in the colony, he had been up on charges of being drunk and disorderly, assaulting and kicking his overseer (for which he received fifty lashes), and neglect of duty (twenty-five lashes). On 6 July 1822 he perjured himself when giving evidence on behalf of a convict mate, for which offence he was sentenced to 100 lashes and transportation to Sarah Island for the rest of his original sentence.
The 22-year-old English farm labourer, Thomas Bodenham, was the only one in the work gang who had any record of violence. He had been before the bench ten times during his first three years in Van Diemen’s Land. The charges included stealing and receiving stolen goods, neglect of duty, being drunk and disorderly, and missing church muster. On 2 May 1822 he was charged with ‘Assaulting and beating William Reason on the King’s Highway [between Hobart Town and Launceston] and putting him in bodily fear and stealing from his person £4-3-6 and a pocket book with several notes of hand in it’. The attack earned him the penalty of working out four years of his seven-year sentence at Sarah Island.
Also in the work gang was William Kennerly, who occasionally used the alias ‘Bill Cornelius’. He would be the first among them to bruit the notion of cannibalism in the days ahead. Probably of Irish origin, he had received a seven-year sentence at Middlesex. After serving some time near George Town in the north of Van Diemen’s Land, he was sentenced to Sarah Island for ‘absconding from the public works gang . . . and remaining absent until apprehended’. John Mather, a 24-year-old bread baker by trade, was a fair-headed and ruddy-faced Scotsman from Dumfries who had received fifty lashes for misconduct and abusing his overseer, and twenty-five more for being absent from his lodgings. He had been sent to Sarah Island for forging an order for £15.
The oldest man among them, probably in his late fifties, went by the nickname of ‘Little Brown’, no doubt an ironic reference to his height. In official documentation he was known as both ‘William’ and ‘Edward’ Brown. There is good evidence that Brown might have at one time been an assigned convict servant for the Reverend Knopwood. Certainly, an Edward Brown, one of the parson’s convicts, was given twenty-five lashes and sent to Macquarie Harbour for five years for ‘stealing two shirts, the property of his master’. In any event, Little Brown was an ‘old lag’, a long-term convict who had had the life beaten out of him by the system. It is apparent that he went along with the others in the work gang not really knowing what he was getting himself into, and in the end he simply did not have the stamina to keep up with them.
Greenhill was intelligent and a natural leader and he soon quietly suggested to the men in his work gang that despite what their jailers said, escape from Macquarie Harbour was possible. In fact, within two months of the establishment of the penal colony in January 1822, eight convicts had already escaped into the bush: John Green and Joseph Saunders absconded on 4 March 1822, to be followed six days later by Patrick Cheevors, Henry and Philip Flanagan, Patrick Hickey, Matthew McKivion and John Martin. They were all ‘supposed to have perished in the woods’, either through becoming lost or being killed by the local Aborigines. On 17 March Cuthbertson sent two of his soldiers, Reynolds and Parker, along with three trusted convicts, George Groves,William Smith and John Walker, as well as kangaroo dogs, in pursuit, but they also disappeared. An argument had broken out among them soon after they had landed on the mainland, but no sign was ever seen of any of them again.The cold banality of the official explanation ominously notes that ‘they were all armed’. The total disappearance in the bush of convicts and soldiers within two months of the foundation of Sarah Island seemed to support Sorell’s view that a successful escape in a southerly or easterly direction toward the settled parts of Van Diemen’s Land was impossible, and that it would lead to disaster and death for the escapees, either from starvation or from the action of hostile Aborigines. But Greenhill reassured his mates that this was merely propaganda, arguing that the previous escapees had disappeared completely because they had already reached the settled districts and had not been recaptured. He suggested that they might even have escaped from Van Diemen’s Land altogether.
Whether the previous escape had been succ
essful or not was irrelevant now to Pearce, Greenhill and the others because they were not going to try the overland route at all, but planned instead to seize a whaleboat while they worked over on the mainland at Kelly’s Basin, and sail it out through Hell’s Gates to freedom. Presumably they were going to attempt this ambitious plan under the cover of darkness to avoid detection by the pilot and the four soldiers stationed at the harbour entrance. Once out in the Southern Ocean they would sail to any port in the world that would put them beyond the reach of British justice.
A rural labourer like Pearce might never have travelled much further than 35 kilometres (20 miles) from where he was born, except if he were unlucky enough to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land. Hence he would have only had the vaguest idea of the exact locations of foreign countries, as would most of his fellow convicts, the majority of whom were transported on ships which either made non-stop trips to Sydney and Hobart Town, or at the most stopped at one port, usually Rio de Janeiro. As a sailor Greenhill, however, would not have been so geographically naïve and may well have had a destination in mind for the whaleboat escape. He would almost certainly have known about Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies, a journey of about 8850 kilometres (5500 miles) nor’-nor’-west of Van Diemen’s Land, as well as ports in southern China, or even Japan. And then there was the vast Pacific Ocean and its many islands.
While it may seem inconceivable to us today that men would undertake a long and precarious journey in such a small boat, we need to remember how desperate they were and that they knew that escape by sea was not impossible. For instance, in 1819 a party of convicts boarded and stole the 40-foot brig Young Lachlan from Hobart Town, and sailed her to Java, where they destroyed the ship and disappeared. The Governor Sorell was seized in 1820 and the Sea Flower in 1822. Even a ship as large as the Castle Forbes was briefly taken over after it had dropped its convicts and sailed south down to the Huon River to pick up a timber consignment for India. The spot is now known as Castle Forbes Bay. And two years after the Pearce escape, in June 1824, thirteen convicts led by one Matthew Brady grabbed the whaleboat Blue-Eyed Maid in Macquarie Harbour and sailed her to the Derwent, where they abandoned the boat and turned to bushranging. The brig Cyprus was seized in Macquarie Harbour in the late 1820s and sailed to Polynesia, and in January 1834 ten convicts from Macquarie Harbour seized a 121-ton brig, the Frederick, and sailed her to Chile. So Greenhill’s idea was plausible. The hardest task would be to get the whaleboat out of Macquarie Harbour without it being spotted.