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On arrival
the examination of Botany Bay revealed it to be unsuitable for
initial settlement due to poor land and lack of fresh water in
the area.
Nine miles further north at Port Jackson a scouting party found
ideal conditions in Sydney Cove named by Phillip in honour of the
British Parliamentarian. It was here that the cornerstone was
laid in the building of the Australian Nation
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- NOTES:
The most common crime of Australian convicts was theft,
although there were some socio-political prisoners, many
of them Irish. At first, convicts were mostly used on
public works. Later, the system of 'assignment', where
convicts were allotted as paid servants to colonists,
came to be used extensively. Various forms of probation
were used, especially in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
during the 1840s and early 1850s and in New South Wales
from Macquarie's time onwards. Secondary punishment
included corporal punishment, solitary confinement, hard
labour, confinement to segregated factories for women,
and transportation to penal settlements in 19th-century
Australia for convicts who had committed further crimes
within the colonies.
- Convicts at Newcastle, New South
Wales, (1804-24) worked as coalminers, cedar-cutters, and
lime-burners. Port Macquarie (1821-30) and Moreton Bay (1824-39)
also were used as penal settlements. Norfolk Island, re-settled
in 1825 as a penal settlement, became notorious. It held
an average of 1,500 to 2,000 convicts, considered to be
of the worst type. Punishment was harsh and a number of
mutinies occurred. The last convicts left Norfolk Island
in 1856. Port Arthur, in Van Diemen's Land (modern
Tasmania), begun in 1830, was finally closed in 1877.
- Between 1788 and 1868 165,000 British
and Irish convicts made the arduous journey
Male convicts were brought ashore a day or so after their
convoy landed arrival. They were marched up to the
Government Lumber Yard, where they were stripped, washed,
inspected and had their vital statistics recorded.
- If convicts were skilled, for example
carpenters, blacksmiths or stonemasons, they may have
been retained and employed on the government works
programme. Otherwise they were assigned to labouring work
or given over to property owners, merchant or farmers who
may once have been convicts themselves.
- Women made up 15% of the convict
population. They are reported to have been low class
women, foul mouthed and with loose morals. Nevertheless
they were told to dress in clothes from London and lined
up for inspection so that the officers could take their
pick of the prettiest.
- Until they were assigned work, women
were taken to the Female Factories, where they performed
menial tasks like making clothes or toiling over wash-tubs.
It was also the place where women were sent as a
punishment for misbehaving, if they were pregnant or had
children.
- Other punishments for women include an
iron collar fastened round the neck, or having her head
shaved as a mark of disgrace. Often these punishments
were for moral misdemeanours, such as being 'found in the
yard of an inn in an indecent posture for an immoral
purpose', or 'misconduct in being in a brothel with her
mistress' child'.
- As women were a scarcity in the
colony, if they married they could be assigned to free
settlers. Often, desperate men would go looking for a
wife at the Female Factories.
- The journey was long and hard. For the
first 20 years, prisoners were chained up for the entire
8 months at sea. The cells were divided into compartments
by wooden or iron bars. On some ships as many as 50
convicts were crammed into one compartment.
- Discipline was brutal, and the
officers themselves were often illiterate, drunken and
cruel. Their crews were recruited from waterside taverns.
They were hardened thugs who wouldn't shrink from
imposing the toughest punishment on a convict who broke
the rules.
- Disease, scurvy and sea-sickness were
rife. Although only 39 of the 759 convicts on the first
fleet died, conditions deteriorated. By the year 1800 one
in 10 prisoners died during the voyage. Many convicts
related loosing up to 10 teeth due to scurvy, and
outbreaks of dysentery made conditions foul in the
confined space below deck.
- Convict ships transporting women
inevitably became floating brothels, and women were
subjected to varying degrees of degradation. In fact, in
1817 a British judge acknowledged that it was accepted
that the younger women be taken to the cabins of the
officers each night, or thrown in with the crew.
- The first fleet entered Botany Bay in
January 1788. On arrival, however, the bay was deemed
unsuitable and the transportation tarried 9 miles north,
landing at Sydney Cove six days later.
Arthur Philip
- The night the male convicts were
landed, January 26th 1788, the Union Jack was hoisted,
toasts were drunk and a succession of volleys were fired
as Captain Arthur Philip and his officers gave three
cheers.
- Australia Day is an annual celebration
commemorating the first landing of white settlers in
Australia. These days there's fireworks, parades, arts,
crafts, food and family entertainment. It's seen as a
celebration of Australian culture and way of life.
- For those convicts who disembarked in
Sydney Cove in 1788, however, the first Australia Day was
a bewildering experience. Unused to their land legs, they
stumbled cursing through the uncultivated wood in which
they had landed. It was two weeks before enough tents
huts had been constructed for the female convicts to
disembark, and in the midst of a gale they held the first
bush party in Australia - dancing, singing and drinking
while the storm raged and couples wedged themselves
between the red, slimy rocks.
- Tickets of leave were normally granted
after four years for those with a 7 year sentence, six
years for a 14 year sentence and 8 years for life. The
principal superintendent looked at the applications and
depending on how much extra punishment the prisoner had
received he'd make a decision to recommend the ticket or
not. A ticket of leave would exempt convict from public
labour and allow them to work for themselves. After this
a prisoner may receive conditional pardon, which meant he
was free but had to stay in Australia, or absolute
pardon, which meant he was free to return to England.
- If a prisoner was uncooperative or
committed further crimes there was an equally well
defined scale of punishments he would receive: first
working on a road gang, then being sent to a penal
colony, and finally capital punishment. There were also a
number of incidental punishments a prisoner could receive:
flogging, solitary confinement, treadmill, the stocks,
food depravation and thumbscrews.
John Donahue and the
Bushrangers
Bushrangers are seen as heroes in Australia, representing
rebellion and and triumph over authority. One of these
bushrangers was John Donahue, a young Dubliner who was sentenced
to transportation for life in 1823.
After his escape he roamed the bush, besieging the settlers and
living off a life of plunger. He used to hang out in the caves
near Picton.John Donahue was eventually shot dead in 1830 by a
policeman and his tale is immortalised in the Ballad of Bold
Jack, banned at the time as a treason song.
Sarah Island
The penal colony at Sarah Island was meant to have been
impossible to escape from. More than 180 escape attempts are
known to have been made but few were successful: most escapees
perished in the rainforest and many returned voluntarily after a
few days. Some did make it. Alexander Pearce escaped Sarah Island
twice, and only survived by eating his companions. He later told
his companions that he preferred human flesh to normal food.
Another great tale is of the convicts who stole the Cyprus, a
supply vessel carrying a group of convicts to Macquerie Harbour.
They seized the vessel on route, dumped the officers and crew on
shore and sailed off to Japan where they pretended to be ship
wrecked British mariners. They were sent all the way back to
Britain as poor starving shipwrecked sailors. Unfortunately one
of them was strolling through London town when who should he meet
but the ex-police constable from Hobart town who recognised his
tattoos.
William Buckley
William Buckley escaped from Sorrento in Victoria in 1803. He
spent 30 years living with the aborigines and wore a long beard
and kangaroo skins. When he returned to civilisation he had
completely forgot the English language and had to learn to speak
again. He was completely pardoned and became a respected civil
servant.
- THE SECOND FLEET
A second fleet of six ships left England - Guardian,
Justinian, Lady Juliana, Surprize, Neptune, Scarborough.
The Guardian struck ice, and was unable to complete the
voyage. She was stocked with provisions. Only 48 people
died in the first group of ships, but this time 278 died
during the voyage. This time transporting the convicts
was in the hands of private contractors.
transports: Neptune, Surprize,
Scarborough and Lady Juliana.
- THE THIRD FLEET
The third fleet of 11 ships arrived in 1791, with over
2000 convicts. The newspaper report states that 194 male
convicts and 4 female convicts died during the voyage,
and that though conditions on board ship weren't as
"diabolical" as the previous year, they were
still outrageous
ships: Atlantic, William and Ann,
Britannia, Matilda, Salamander, Albemarle, Mary Anne,
Admiral Barrington, Active and Gorgon.
"At daylight in the
morning we discovered a bay, which appeared to be tolerably well
sheltered
from all winds, into which I resolved to go with the ship"
JAMES COOK
Referring to Botany Bay Journal
28 April 1770
The third Fleet brought convicts to
Australia in 1791 and consisted of 10 ships
Capt John Hunter (1738 -
1821)
British naval officer and colonial administrator born in Scotland.
He was second captain of the First Fleet
and in command of HMS Sirius. He did much survey work in the new
colony and in 1788-89 sailed to the Cape Colony to obtain
supplies, making a pioneer circumnavigation of the world in
Antarctic latituds. He returned to England but was appointed
governor of New Sout wales in 1794. He ruled the colony 1795-1800
but was unabgle to control the New South Wales Corps which,
during the acting governorship of Francis Grose, had gained
control of trade, the courts, land management, and convict labour.
When he was recalled he had contributed much to Australian
exploration and to the knowledge of Australian zoology and botany
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