by Jim Haynes
Here is the idea: to install ourselves, at the risk of bankruptcy, in Samoa. It is not the least likely it will pay (although it may); but it is almost certain it will support life, with very few external expenses.
If I die, it will be an endowment for the survivors, at least for my wife and Lloyd; and my mother, who might prefer to go home, has her own. Hence I believe I shall do well to hurry my installation.
The letters are already in part done; in part done is a novel for Scribner; in the course of the next twelve months I should receive a considerable amount of money. I am aware I had intended to pay back to my capital some of this. I am now of the opinion I should act foolishly. Better to build the house and have a roof and farm of my own; and thereafter, with a livelihood assured, save and repay . . .
The deuce of the affair is that I do not know when I shall see you and Colvin. I guess you will have to come and see me: many a time already we have arranged the details of your visit in the yet unbuilt house on the mountain. I shall be able to get decent wine from Noumea. We shall be able to give you a decent welcome, and talk of old days.
Written in Sydney, to Henry James
Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old familiar sickbed . . .
I must tell you plainly—I can’t tell Colvin—I do not think I shall come to England more than once, and then it’ll be to die. Health I enjoy in the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or semi-tropical, I come only to catch cold.
I have not been out since my arrival; live here in a nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and letters from Henry James, and send out to get his Tragic Muse, only to be told they can’t be had as yet in Sydney, and have altogether a placid time. But I can’t go out! The thermometer was nearly down to 50° the other day—no temperature for me, Mr James: how should I do in England? I fear not at all. Am I very sorry? I am sorry about seven or eight people in England, and one or two in the States. And outside of that, I simply prefer Samoa.
These are the words of honesty and soberness. (I am fasting from all but sin, coughing . . . a couple of eggs and a cup of tea.) I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems) civilisation. Nor yet it seems was I ever very fond of (what is technically called) God’s green earth.
The sea, islands, the islanders, the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier. These last two years I have been much at sea, and I have never wearied; sometimes I have indeed grown impatient for some destination; more often I was sorry that the voyage drew so early to an end; and never once did I lose my fidelity to blue water and a ship.
It is plain, then, that for me my exile to the place of schooners and islands can be in no sense regarded as a calamity . . . Even my wife has weakened about the sea. She wearied, the last time we were ashore, to get afloat again.
Written in Sydney, to Mrs Charles Fairchild
I began a letter to you on board the Janet Nicoll on my last cruise, wrote, I believe two sheets, and ruthlessly destroyed the flippant trash . . .
Well, such is life. You are quite right; our civilisation is a hollow fraud, all the fun of life is lost by it; all it gains is that a larger number of persons can continue to be contemporaneously unhappy on the surface of the globe. O, unhappy!—there is a big word and a false— continue to be not nearly—by about twenty per cent—so happy as they might be: that would be nearer the mark.
When—observe that word, which I will write again and larger— WHEN you come to see us in Samoa, you will see for yourself a healthy and happy people.
You see, you are one of the very few of our friends rich enough to come and see us; and when my house is built, and the road is made, and we have enough fruit planted and poultry and pigs raised, it is undeniable that you must come—must is the word; that is the way in which I speak to ladies. You and Fairchild, anyway— perhaps my friend Blair—we’ll arrange details in good time. It will be the salvation of your souls, and make you willing to die.
Let me tell you this: In ’74 or 5 there came to stay with my father and mother a certain Mr Seed, a prime minister or something of New Zealand. He spotted what my complaint was; told me that I had no business to stay in Europe; that I should find all I cared for, and all that was good for me, in the Navigator Islands; sat up till four in the morning persuading me, demolishing my scruples. And I resisted: I refused to go so far from my father and mother.
O, it was virtuous, and O, wasn’t it silly! But my father, who was always my dearest, got to his grave without that pang; and now in 1890, I (or what is left of me) go at last to the Navigator Islands. God go with us! It is but a Pisgah sight when all is said; I go there only to grow old and die; but when you come, you will see it is a fair place for the purpose.
Stevenson died, aged 44, four years later. His grave overlooks the sea on Samoa. Having lived life to the fullest under the shadow of death for much of his time on earth—he called it ‘fiddling under Vesuvius’—he famously wrote his own epitaph, as follows—Ed.
‘Requiem’
Robert Louis Stevenson
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
If a man knows not what harbour he seeks, any wind is the right wind.
Seneca
The ones that got away
JIM HAYNES
BUILDING STURDY SEA-GOING VESSELS in the colony of New South Wales was a risky business in the convict era. Early governors and colonial administrators were faced with a dilemma as far as shipbuilding was concerned.
Ships and boats were the only viable means of transport, not only to and from the colony, but also around the colony. However, due to the British East India Company’s government-approved monopoly, no vessel capable of trading with Asia or the South Seas could be built in the colony.
At first the two government ships, HMS Sirius and Supply, were used along with the whaleboats, cutters and other small vessels that arrived with the First Fleet. When the last of the transports departed in July 1788, leaving only the Sirius and Supply, the harbour had very few boats of any kind to do the carrying, exploring and guarding necessary to the colony’s existence. This became more apparent eighteen months after arriving, when Governor Arthur Phillip decided to set up a second settlement on better farming land at a place he considered more easily defendable than the wide expanses of the harbour. Originally called Rose Hill, this place was generally known early on as Parramatta.
The presence of a second settlement was the main reason that the first substantial vessel was built in the colony. In October 1789, the 12-ton vessel Rose Hill Packet was launched, designed to use sails, oars or poles to carry stores between the two settlements at Sydney and Parramatta. Rose Hill Packet was a rather clumsy, barge-like vessel, universally known as ‘The Lump’. Her brief life was over by 1800, as other government vessels had by then been acquired or built and small private ferries—such as those operated by colourful ex-convict Billy Blue—were operating around the harbour and the river, charging fares for passengers and freight.
Colonial authorities were constantly anxious about escape attempts and sought ways to prevent the possibility of convicts stealing away—so in 1791, after the Bryant family and seven other convicts successfully made off in the government fishing boat, a regulation was introduced prohibiting the building of vessels more than 14 feet in length.
Out of necessity this regulation was later relaxed, but a strict control was kept on boat-building, and ships were not allowed to anchor up in those places in the harbour where they could be easily seized by footloose convicts.
Needless to say, all the efforts of the guards and marines and the New South Wales Corps could not possibly prevent every cunning or desperate bid for freedom�
��and there were many.
Peter Parris
Escape attempts began as soon as the convicts came ashore. Probably the first man to escape by sea was French-born convict Peter Parris, sentenced to death for burglary in Exeter in 1783 and transported on the Scarborough.
French explorer La Perouse was camped at Botany Bay for many weeks after the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove and, within days of the convicts being set ashore, escaping convicts began visiting his camp, some seeking asylum or places in his crew. La Perouse told Lieutenant Dawes, who visited his camp, that he turned them all away, with scant rations sufficient to get them back to Sydney Cove.
La Perouse was a man of his word, but it does seem odd that Peter Parris, French-born convict, disappeared within days of the colony being established, never to be seen or heard from again. My guess is that he died on Vanikoro with the rest of the La Perouse expedition. Whether the Count knew he was taken on board or not, who can say?
Mary Bryant
While some of the more simple-minded convicts attempted to flee overland and met their death in the bush from starvation or fatal encounters with various Aboriginal tribes, the only ‘sane’ and practical way to escape was by sea. Escape of any kind was highly unlikely to succeed, but life was grim for the convicts whether they stayed or ran. After all, the whole point of sending convicts to ‘Botany Bay’ was that the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury knew it was a place ‘from whence it is hardly possible for persons to return without permission’.
‘Hardly possible’ perhaps, but not entirely impossible.
In September 1790, a former seaman and highwayman, John Tarwood, stole a leaky boat from the South Head lookout station and set off for Tahiti with four other convicts. Five years later, the four survivors of this daring escapade were found alive but somewhat emaciated at Port Stephens, where they had survived due to the generosity of the Aborigines.
Against all odds, the convict Mary Bryant escaped in 1791 and successfully returned to her home in Cornwall; what’s more, she received a pardon and financial aid, from no less a personage than James Boswell, the biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson.
Unlike the spontaneous or opportunistic escapes that occurred from time to time, the escape of William and Mary Bryant, their two children and seven convict companions was carefully planned and well prepared.
William was well qualified for the breakaway attempt. He was a Cornish fisherman sentenced to death—commuted to seven years transportation to America—for a smuggling offence (‘resisting revenue officers’) in 1784 at the age of 26. As the American option had already been lost to Britain when the American War of Independence ended a year earlier, William spent the first half of his sentence on the hulks, where he met Mary Broad (referred to as Mary Braund in the court records), daughter of a mariner and also from Cornwall.
Mary was described as being ‘marked with smallpox with one knee bent but not lame’. She was five feet four inches in height, with grey eyes, brown hair and a sallow complexion. Her family were associated with the sea and were also noted sheep-stealers. Mary was sentenced to death, commuted to transportation, for assaulting and robbing a spinster in company with two other young women when she was 20.
William and Mary both travelled on the Charlotte with the First Fleet. William was trusted with the supervision of food distribution, and Mary gave birth to a daughter during the voyage. She gave her daughter the name of the ship on which she was born, Charlotte.
The couple were married at Sydney Cove, along with several other couples, on 10 February 1788 by the Reverend Johnson.
William’s privileged position continued in Port Jackson, where he was given a hut apart from the other convicts and was made the fisherman for the colony. He was also put in charge of the colony’s small boats.
One reason for the hut being set apart from the other convicts on the eastern side of the Tank Stream was to prevent an easy trade in black-market fish developing. However, on 4 February 1789, William was caught selling some of his catch. He was dismissed from his post as fisherman, lost his hut, and received 100 lashes. Mary was forced to deliver their second child, a son, in the convict camp at The Rocks.
William continued in a lesser role, maintaining the colony’s small boats and helping with the fishing, as he was the most skilled and capable man for the job. He took extra care to maintain the government cutter, as he had a plan for escape, but he cunningly waited until there were no ships in the colony capable of pursuit.
The escape was meticulously organised. After the boat was overturned in a squall, Bryant restored it to first-class order with new sails, new masts and a complete refit—all at government expense. He and Mary stashed away 100 pounds of rice, the same of flour and also salt pork, water, tents and tools.
The Sirius was wrecked at Norfolk Island, and the Supply on its way to Norfolk Island, when Dutch supply ship Waaksamheyd sailed out of Port Jackson on 28 March 1791. The Waaksamheyd was a ‘snaw brig’—a two-masted merchant ship—which had been chartered from Batavia by Captain Ball, who had sailed there in the Supply in April 1790. She had arrived in December 1790 with much-needed supplies, having lost most of her crew to fever on the way. After difficult negotiations between Phillip and her Captain, Detmer Smit, she was then chartered to take the crew of Sirius back to Britain for the statutory court-martial, after her loss on the reef on Norfolk Island.
William Bryant knew he was technically a free man: he had served his time. However, Governor Phillip, who was waiting for the convict indents to arrive, had no record of which convicts had served their time and which had not.
Bryant approached Captain Smit for help and outlined his escape plans to the Dutchman. Sailing and rowing a small open boat to Timor meant a voyage of 3250 miles (5200 kilometres). Smit told Bryant that Captain Bligh had made the journey from Tahiti to Timor in a similar boat, and supplied Bryant with a compass, quadrant, two guns, ammunition and detailed charts of the Great Barrier Reef.
At midnight on 28 March 1791, the same day that the Waaksamheyd sailed off to Britain, William and Mary Bryant with their two infant children and seven other convicts rowed out through Sydney Heads and turned north.
They survived storms in which they were lost in ‘mountainous seas’, and encounters with hostile Aborigines who chased them in large canoes. They navigated the Great Barrier Reef, coming ashore for water and supplies and shelter many times, and crossed the Arafura Sea. Finally, after 70 days at sea, all made it safely to Koepang, on Timor.
The Dutch Governor treated them well and believed their story about being castaways from a shipwreck—until September, when Captain Edward Edwards arrived at Koepang with survivors of his crew from the wrecked Pandora, and his captured mutineers from the Bounty. Edwards questioned the fugitives, who confessed. They were taken to the fever-ridden port of Batavia, where baby Emmanuel Bryant and his father William both died in December, three weeks apart. Mary, Charlotte and the four surviving convicts were taken to the Cape of Good Hope, but three of the others died at sea. The survivors were transferred to HMS Gorgon for the final voyage to Britain, during which Charlotte also died. Ironically Charlotte died in the very same part of the South Atlantic Ocean where she was born, just four and a half years earlier.
The press took up the story and James Boswell appealed to the Home Office for clemency. The five were ordered ‘to remain on their former sentences until they should expire’, but Mary Bryant was finally pardoned in May 1793, six weeks after her original sentence had expired. The four other male convicts were released the following November, and it is believed one of them later enlisted in the New South Wales Corps and returned to the colony.
The last that history knows of the resilient Mary Bryant is a letter of thanks received by James Boswell in November 1794, from her home in Cornwall.
Looking for China
While the Bryants and their crew were well prepared and knew exactly where they were headed, there was a general feeling among the more geographically cha
llenged convicts that China was not far away and could be somehow reached by land or sea from Sydney Cove.
A group of convicts undertook one of the saddest escapes sometime during the first decade of the colony. They stole a boat and seven of them were found in 1798, living on an island near Western Port, in what was later named Bass Strait. The man who found them, a very surprised George Bass, was supposedly the first European to explore the area.
The men had been abandoned there by the rest of the group. Bass set five ashore with directions to Sydney, a compass and rations, and took the two weakest on board for the return trip to Sydney. Those set ashore were never seen again.
Naturally Bass asked them what were they doing on an island off the south coast of the continent. They replied that they had been trying to sail to China! Perhaps those who abandoned their companions on the island perished attempting to find China somewhere in the Great Southern Ocean.
Some forty years later, in an act of daring piracy, a bunch of desperate convicts did steal a ship—the brig Cyprus—and sail to China. But there were other daring escape attempts in the meantime.
The wreck of the Trial
In September 1816 the brig Trial was anchored up near the Sow and Pigs Reef, at Middle Head in Sydney Harbour, waiting for a favourable wind to make a trading trip to Launceston, then more commonly known as Port Dalrymple.
The Trial was owned by ex-convict and successful merchant Simeon Lord, who would spend many years attempting to get around the restrictions placed on his trading by the fact that he was an ex-convict, and also by the monopoly of the British East India Company in Asia. Oddly, the ship had the same name as the first British ship to ever sight the Australian coast. The earlier Tryall (sometimes Tryal or Trial ) was wrecked off the west coast of Australia in 1622 on what became known as Trial Rocks; the captain and some of the crew made it to Batavia in the ship’s boat.