Bound to Sarah

by Craig Brennan

  The west coast region of Van Dieman’s Land was uninhabited, and the only way to Macquarie Harbour was by sea, no roads having yet been laid. Dense impenetrable forest fringed the shoreline around the harbour, making escape into the settled regions virtually impossible.

  The supply ship had arrived at Hell’s Gates and dropped anchor, awaiting the arrival of the pilot from his station, where he was housed in virtual isolation at the entrance to the harbour. It was his job to guide any ships in and out. Considered one of the most important jobs at the settlement, it was also a dangerous one. The wind was causing high swells across the bar and though it did not look too serious, the pilot did not want to take the risk. They would have to wait for calmer waters before an attempt could be made, and there was tension in the air. The convicts were chained to the decks and their life was now in the hands of the pilot. If something went wrong there was no escape; they would go down with the ship. At least the soldiers and crew would be able to swim for their lives.

  Since Pat had seen Sarah he had been in good spirits and now had a reason to battle on with his life again. He had wished so many times just to have a few moments with her, and he had now been granted that wish. It made him question his faith. Maybe there was a god after all, but still he could not commit himself. He worried about how Sarah had come to be in Van Dieman’s Land and now about his immediate situation. As the ship made an attempt to clear the bar, he had never clung to life so dearly, apart from on the battlefield. The effect of seeing Sarah again occupied his mind so much, he forgot the dreads of the coming place.

  Joe did not seem too concerned about what was happening at the entrance to the harbour; the danger of drowning did not appear to register with him. He was more interested in listening to Pat reflecting on his fleeting encounter with Sarah and his memories of them together. Joe then became melancholy himself, reminiscing about home and his life back in Liverpool and his dear old dad. He missed him terribly and wondered how he was coping without him at the lumberyard. Joe’s father had always made him feel important, by telling him how much he needed him to help out. He needed that praise in his life and missed the feeling of being wanted.

  There was no female or sexual interest with Joe, he had grown up without a mother and had always been around men. He found his comforts in a structured routine, and was content so long as he was with somebody he knew and trusted. He found it hard to cope with change and was anxious about their new place, having heard tales of torture and suffering on Sarah Island, and how convicts would get flogged all the time, under a regime of strict discipline, excessive work and harsh treatment. Joe had developed a phobia for the lash, the mere mention of it made the poor fellow tremble with fear. Pat was a constant source of reassurance, but deep down he was concerned for Joe, after seeing the effects of the last flogging.

  Tension eased on the ship after a loud cheer went up from the deck, marking the successful crossing over the bar, and the prisoners were unchained once more. Apparently, they had been chained down because of the risk of escape. It was judged that, whilst at the bar they could jump overboard, as they were so close to land. The ship navigated the choppy waters of the harbour, with no sign of human life anywhere, just birds in flight, or bobbing about on the jagged water. Pat and Joe soaked up the beautiful scenery, in a rare period of tranquillity, with no chains or restrictions on the main deck. For those last few hours they felt free.

  Once past the pilot station and Wellington Head, the harbour opened out, and to the right, the King’s River flowed into it and a great lump of a mountain – Frenchmen’s Cap, standing at five thousand feet, just east of the Gordon River – provided a picturesque backdrop. Further south, on the right-hand side, was Liberty Point, stretching out into the harbour, with Coal Head on the left, where the mines were; although the attempts to mine coal had failed miserably. Further down was tiny Phillip’s Island, where vegetables were grown solely for the indulgence of the military guard. Finally, past Sarah Island and before you hit the Gordon River, were Farm Cove and Kelly’s Basin where a lot of the tree felling took place. This was their new home; Macquarie Harbour, where so much beauty surrounded such a beastly settlement.

  As the ship drew closer, Sarah Island came into view and so did the first signs of life. The new prisoners looked on anxiously, keen to see what they were about to face. The north side seemed quite deserted, but as they sailed around to the south, the island came alive. Their immediate attention was drawn to the huge tree trunks floating on the shoreline and they watched as prisoners struggled to lug them ashore and stack them to dry out ready for cutting – one of the worst tasks at the settlement. Finally, after fourteen days at sea, they docked at the jetty and walked down the gangway to be met by a sergeant, who ordered them to line up for inspection. He looked them all up and down, trying to appear intimidating, before introducing himself.

  ‘I’m Sergeant Turnbull, and this fellow ‘ere …’ pointing to an officer watching at the side of the jetty, ‘… is Lieutenant Jackson. ‘e’s the superintendent on this island and doesn’t want to be bothered with scum like you, so I do the talking for ‘im.’ He paced up and down leering at the newcomers. ‘So that means you will answer to me, and you will address me as Sergeant. Now ye’ve been sent ‘ere ‘cos ye scum, and the only way to deal with scum is to treat ‘em like scum. Don’t expect no favours ‘ere, ye’ll work from dawn to dusk and if ye disobey orders, or step out o’ line, ye’ll be severely punished. Now before ye get shown ye sleepin’ quarters, ye’ll unload this supply ship, what ‘as so kindly ferried you ‘ere,’ and here the sergeant indicated the ship with his eyes.

  The disgruntled prisoners begrudgingly set to work taking the supplies off the ship. It was hard heavy work and by the time they had finished it was dark and they were taken to their cells and locked up for the night. At the time, the island held about three hundred prisoners, and over fifty infantry soldiers were housed in the military barracks, which stood between the prison and the commandant’s house in the middle of the island. A high fence had been erected around the settlement, making it look a bit like a fort, or an old Saxon village. Its purpose was to shelter the settlement from the harsh winds that could destroy buildings.

  There was a whole convict community at work on the island, with lumber yards and stackers, sawpits and sawyers, boatsheds and boat builders, shoemakers and blacksmiths, clerks and servants, cooks and shopkeepers. It was primarily a little shipbuilding community and overall some five hundred ships were built at the settlement during its twelve-year existence. The prisoners’ quarters on Sarah consisted of three brick buildings of two storeys, with two large rooms on each level, housing between ten thirty prisoners. They slept in hammocks, and there was a fireplace in each of the dirty grey dismal rooms, but all fires and lights were extinguished by eight o’clock at night, even in the colder seasons. In summer it was fine, but pure hell in the winter. Pat and Joe shared a dormitory, along with about thirty other men, who had given them plenty of notice to stay away from the left- hand corner – the area where Silas Wilson slept. Silas was the unofficial governor of the island among the convicts. He was a madman and Pat and Joe had the dubious privilege of sleeping next to him.

  Silas Wilson was known as ‘The Terror,’ and was proud of the title, earned during his days as a fist fighter in the back streets of London’s east end. He was sentenced to transportation for the murder of another fighter, who had dared to boast that he could beat Wilson. On hearing this claim, Wilson was not going to wait for a fight to be arranged, but tracked the man down to a pub near the docklands, where he pounded the life out of him. He didn’t stand a chance. That pub was soon saturated with the victim’s blood and witnesses found it difficult to put into words what they had seen that night, but one thing was certain – Wilson was a complete and utter maniac.

  He had spent a lot of time in the solitary of Grummet Rock, where a small penitentiary had been fashioned by both man and Nature. A number of naturally carved out caves, big
enough to shelter a man, made ideal cells. Perched on the top of the twenty-foot rock was a small man- made building, which also housed the settlement’s most incorrigible villains. Between eighty and one hundred men could be crammed inside at any one time, though sometimes there might only be a single individual. Grummet Rock was reserved solely for the purpose of solitary confinement; the worst offenders being taken there and left for as long as thirty days, entirely separate from the other prisoners, for fear of encouragement to riot.

  Those housed on Grummet were also restricted to working on the settlement at Sarah, rather than on the mainland. In some ways this was a relief, as they no longer had to row over there each morning. But life on Grummet was fearful; as there was no military guard on duty, once they were put on that island, they had to fend for themselves. Silas had spent a lot of time on the rock and he was to be kept there for at least another week. He had been flogged so many times without effect, that the commandant had no choice but to put him in solitary, out of trouble. So Pat and Joe had a week to get used to their new surroundings in relative peace.

  Every morning at six o’clock, before the sun had reached the open sky, the prisoners were woken from their hammocks for morning muster. Each was given a bowl of thick lumpy gruel, which had to last them all day. They would not eat again until at least seven or eight that evening, and by the time their hard day’s labour was over, they were ravenous. This had a profound effect on Joe. He could not understand why they were not given any lunch. He did not object to the hard work, but he could not cope with going without food all day. After breakfast and inspection, the prisoners were divided up and chained together in gangs, and then some would be put into large rowing boats, of the type used for whaling. Each held sixteen men and they then had to row themselves over to the mainland under the watchful eye of the guards.

  The rowing was a trial in itself, since it was between a ten and fourteen mile round trip to the felling areas – a long time in choppy waters – and the prisoners would be tired before their day’s work even began. Once there, they would set about felling the enormous Huon pine trees, some measuring up to five metres in diameter. The wood of the Huon pine was amongst the strongest in the world, very durable and ideal for shipbuilding, but notoriously difficult to cut down and transport. Since the use of animals was forbidden at the settlement, everything had to be lifted, carried and dragged by human hand.

  The trees would be cut down and then trimmed of their branches. It could take up to fifty men to surround a log and then lift the monster on to their shoulders. If a log was too big and heavy they would use rope coiled around their shoulders and under the logs to drag them. The rough bark and notches often grazed or ripped open their skin, as they tugged the logs across the rugged undergrowth and on to the roadway. Straining under the massive weight, their eyes would bulge, their faces practically bursting with the pressure. It was an excruciating punishment. From a distance, the toiling men looked like a giant centipede making its way from the forest to the opening known as the Pine Road. There the logs were dropped and rolled into the water at the shoreline.

  All this was done wearing ankle chains, which made it an even more laborious process, the links often getting caught up in the undergrowth, or on stones. They had to limit their steps so as not to drag under the feet of the man behind, or kick the man in front. Once at the shoreline, the logs would be rolled into the water, where they would be tied together and rafted back to Sarah Island.

  Pat and Joe were put to work in the sawpits in their first week, to break them in. This job consisted of sawing down the length of the tree trunk following a string line for guidance. The huge logs would be suspended over a sawpit, in which one person would take one end of a two-man crosscut saw working backwards along the log, while the other stood underneath in the pit, which could be dangerous, and they would alternate pulling the saw through the log. It was back-breaking work, but Joe was familiar with it, and he was quite strong, so the pair of them had an advantage and picked it up quite quickly, without much trouble. But every night when work was finished they were completely spent, their muscles aching and their hands blistered. They would come back starving, but the inadequate rations could not satisfy their hunger.

  Then one morning, on the fifth day, and after a particularly hard previous day, Pat got his first taste of the harsh discipline of the settlement when he was late for morning muster. Sergeant Turnbull took the opportunity to stamp his authority on the newcomer. He was taken out, tied to the triangle, given two dozen lashes, and then sent back to work. Such punishment was seen as a deterrent to the wrongdoer and a warning to all – slackers would not be tolerated. It was tough, he was exhausted and Pat was no slacker, he was just lost in his dreams of being back with Sarah and Sam, he did not want to wake up he wanted to stay with them a while longer. Pat was a hard-working man but the regime was too hard, even for him, and it had still only been a week. Now that Silas was due back, things were going to get a lot worse.

  Two days after his lashing, Pat’s wounds still bled and the back of his shirt was wet with blood. The constant bending down stretched the skin and meant the cuts kept reopening. The pain was excruciating. Pat had just taken his shirt off, so that one of the other convicts could inspect his wounds, when Silas swaggered back into the dormitory. He gave Pat a contemptuous look, immediately identifying him as a newcomer. He walked over to him and pushed the convict inspecting his wounds away. Pat turned round and instantly knew that he must be Silas. There was not a single hair on his head, and his dark sunken eyes were hidden under a prominent heavy brow. Standing over six feet in height, with shoulders almost as wide, his hands were big enough to grip a human skull, and now he was back in the main penitentiary.

  ‘S’pecs ye’ve ‘eard about me, ‘ave ye?

  Pat was determined not to show his fear and turned his back on Silas and started putting his shirt back on. This needled him and he grabbed hold of Pat, launching him into the air. He crashed against the wall and fell to the floor in agony, shocked at the brute’s strength. His back began to bleed heavily.

  ‘Don’t turn ye back on me again, new boy!’

  Joe stood up from his hammock and went straight for Silas.

  ‘Leave ‘im alone, ‘e’s me mate.’

  Silas punched him to the floor and Joe stayed down, helpless against Silas’s might.

  ‘Now, you boys listen ‘ere, this is my island, so don’t go tryin’ to get smart wi’ me.’

  Safe in the knowledge that he had put down any potential challengers to his domain, he then ambled over to his hammock. The painful initiation over with, now all they had to do was keep out of Silas’s way and wait until he hopefully got sent back to Grummet Rock.

  It would take weeks for the pain of his flogging to ease and Pat had learnt a hard lesson. Apart from the pain, the flogging had also brought with it self-pity and melancholy, and he desire to be back with Sarah burned through his heart and soul. The thought of escaping constantly ran through his mind, but it seemed impossible at the moment, he had not been there long enough to work out a possible means.

  With the first week over, Pat and Joe were now assigned to the felling gang and they were glad to get away from the island, especially since Silas, who was back in chains in the sawpits, was not being permitted to work on the mainland. As the days went by, Pat found Silas’s bullying ways more and more intolerable, but he was only too aware that he was no match for that monster of a man and the other convicts were too cowed to gang up on him through fear of reprisals. They all seemed to be content to live in fear, and even Pat himself was beginning to feel comfortably numb.

  The sun shone in the bright sky, but there was no heat, just a glow, that was felt briefly stroking their bare cheeks, only to be blown away again by the frosty chill that filled the air – a reminder that winter was fast approaching – a winter that would be cruel to the convicts, biting without mercy into their bones. The situation was made worse by poor diet, totally inadequate clo
thing and the fires in the dormitories, which were too small for thirty men to huddle around. It was the season of every man for himself. They would steal one another’s clothing in order to keep warm and fight for a decent place by the fire; the weakest left out in the cold. Pat and Joe’s proximity to Silas meant it would be they who had their blankets stolen in the night and Joe would have his clothes stolen, because he was a similar size to Silas.

  Another month had passed and the air had turned bitterly cold, blowing straight from the South Pole, to take away the weak and torment the strong. The supply ship had battled through and brought along a few new guests, among them a pair of old acquaintances – John and Charlie. Apparently they had tried to pass as free men, and entered a public house in Hobart town, getting themselves blind drunk and forgetting to return to the barracks on time. The punishment was overly harsh, as they had behaved very well up until then, and was administered by none other than Lieutenant Flynn. They had not offended anybody, simply taken advantage of an evening of freedom. Watching free settlers going about their daily lives as happy as day, they had wanted to add a little enjoyment to their own dismal existence, but by doing so, they were downgraded in their prison class and sent to Sarah Island.