An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales Volume I Part 14

When the women were disembarked, and the provisions and stores landed, it was found that twenty casks of flour (from the unfitness of the s.h.i.+p to perform such a voyage, being old and far from tight) were totally destroyed. This was a serious loss to us, when only four pounds of flour const.i.tuted the allowance of that article for one man for seven days.

From this situation of distress, however, we were in a short time afterwards effectually relieved, and the colony might be p.r.o.nounced to be restored, by the arrival (on the 20th) of the _Justinian_ stores.h.i.+p, Mr.

Benjamin Maitland master, from England, after a short pa.s.sage of only five months. Mr. Maitland, on the 2nd of this month, the day preceding the arrival of the _Lady Juliana_, was off the entrance of this harbour, and would certainly have been found by that s.h.i.+p at anchor within the heads, had he not, by a sudden change of the wind, aided by a current, been driven as far to the northward as Black Head, in lat.i.tude 32 degrees S. where he was very nearly lost in an heavy gale of wind; but which he providentially rode out, having been obliged to come to an anchor, though close in with some dangerous rocks. The wind was dead on the sh.o.r.e, and the rocks so close when he anch.o.r.ed, that the rebound of the wave prevented him from riding any considerable strain on his cable. Had that failed him, we should never have seen the _Justinian_ or her valuable cargo, which was found to consist of stores and provisions, trusted, it was true, to one s.h.i.+p; but as she had happily arrived in safety, and was full, we all rejoiced that we had not to wait for the arrival of a second before the colony could be restored to its former plenty.

We now learned that three transports might be hourly expected, having on board the thousand convicts of whose destination we had received some information by the _Lady Juliana_, together with detachments of the corps raised for the service of this country. The remainder of this corps (which was intended to consist of three hundred men) were to come out in the _Gorgon_ man of war, of forty-four guns. This s.h.i.+p was also to bring out Major Grose, who had been appointed lieutenant-governor of the territory in the room of Major Ross, which officer, together with the marines under his command, were intended to return to England in that s.h.i.+p.

Of the change which had been effected in the system of government in France we now first received information, and we heard with pleasure that it was not likely to interrupt the tranquillity of our own happy nation--happy in a const.i.tution which might well excite the admiration and become the model of other states not so free.

The _Justinian_ had sailed on the 17th of last January from Falmouth, and touched only at St. Iago, avoiding, as she had not any convicts on board, the circuitous pa.s.sage by the Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope.

On the day following her arrival, every thing seemed getting into its former train; the full ration was ordered to be issued; instead of daily, it was to be served weekly as formerly; and the drum for labour was to beat as usual in the afternoons at one o'clock. How general was the wish, that no future necessity might ever occasion another deduction in the ration, or an alteration in the labour of the people!

That Norfolk Island, whose situation at this time every one was fearful might call loudly for relief, should as quickly as possible reap her share of the benefit introduced among us by these arrivals, it was intended to send the _Lady Juliana_ thither; and as she required some repairs, without which she could not proceed to sea, some carpenters from the sh.o.r.e were sent on board her, and employed to sheath her bends, which were extremely defective.

A shop was opened on sh.o.r.e by the master of this s.h.i.+p, at the hut lately occupied as a bakehouse for the _Supply_, for the sale of some articles of grocery, gla.s.s, millinery, perfumery, and stationary; but the risk of bringing them out having been most injudiciously estimated too highly, as was evident from the increase on the first cost, which could not be disguised, they did not go off so quickly as the owners supposed they would.

A report having been circulated soon after the establis.h.i.+ng of this settlement, that a considerable sum of money had been subscribed in England, to be expended in articles for the benefit of the convicts who embarked for this country, which articles had been entrusted to the Rev.

Mr. Johnson, to be disposed of according to the intention of the subscribers after our arrival, Mr. Johnson wrote to his friends in England to confute this report; and by accounts lately received, it appeared that no such public collection had ever been made; at Mr.

Johnson's request, therefore, the governor published a contradiction of the above report in the general orders of the settlement. The convicts had hitherto imagined that they had a right to the articles which had from time to time been distributed among them; but Mr. Johnson now thought it necessary that they should know it was to his bounty they were indebted for them, and that consequently the partakers of it were to be of his own selection.

The female convicts who had lately arrived attending at divine service on the first Sunday after their landing, Mr. Johnson, with much propriety, in his discourse, touched upon their situation, and described it so forcibly as to draw tears from many who were the least hardened among them.

Early in the morning of the 23rd, one of the men at the Lookout discerned a sail to the northward, but, the weather coming on thick, soon lost sight of it. The bad weather continuing, it was not seen again until the 25th, when word was brought up to the settlement, that a large s.h.i.+p, apparently under jury-masts, was seen in the offing; and on the following day the _Surprise_ transport, Nicholas Anstis master (late chief mate of the _Lady Penrhyn_) anch.o.r.ed in the cove from England, having on board one captain, one lieutenant, one surgeon's mate, one serjeant, one corporal, one drummer, and twenty-three privates of the New South Wales corps; together with two hundred and eighteen male convicts. She sailed on the 19th of January from Portsmouth in company with two other transports, with whom she parted between the Cape of Good Hope and this place.

We had the mortification to learn, that the prisoners in this s.h.i.+p were very unhealthy, upwards of one hundred being now in the sick list on board. They had been very sickly also during the pa.s.sage, and had buried forty-two of these unfortunate people. A portable hospital had fortunately been received by the _Justinian_, and there now appeared but too great a probability that we should soon have patients enough to fill it; for the signal was flying at the South Head for the other transports, and we were led to expect them in as unhealthy a state as that which had just arrived.

On the evening of Monday the 28th, the _Neptune_ and _Scarborough_ transports anch.o.r.ed off Garden Island, and were warped into the cove the following morning.

We were not mistaken in our expectations of the state in which they might arrive. By noon the following day, two hundred sick had been landed from the different transports. The west side afforded a scene truly distressing and miserable; upwards of thirty tents were pitched in front of the hospital, the portable one not being yet put up; all of which, as well as the hospital and the adjacent huts, were filled with people, many of whom were labouring under the complicated diseases of scurvy and the dysentery, and others in the last stage of either of those terrible disorders, or yielding to the attacks of an infectious fever.

The appearance of those who did not require medical a.s.sistance was lean and emaciated. Several of these miserable people died in the boats as they were rowing on sh.o.r.e, or on the wharf as they were lifting out of the boats; both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country. All this was to be attributed to confinement, and that of the worst species, confinement in a small s.p.a.ce and in irons, not put on singly, but many of them chained together. On board the _Scarborough_ a plan had been formed to take the s.h.i.+p, which would certainly have been attempted, but for a discovery which was fortunately made by one of the convicts (Samuel Burt) who had too much principle left to enter into it. This necessarily, _on board that s.h.i.+p_, occasioned much future circ.u.mspection; but Captain Marshall's humanity considerably lessened the severity which the insurgents might naturally have expected. On board the other s.h.i.+ps, the masters, who had the entire direction of the prisoners, never suffered them to be at large on deck, and but few at a time were permitted there. This consequently gave birth to many diseases. It was said, that on board the _Neptune_ several had died in irons; and what added to the horror of such a circ.u.mstance was, that their deaths were concealed, for the purpose of sharing their allowance of provisions, until chance, and the offensiveness of a corpse, directed the surgeon, or some one who had authority in the s.h.i.+p, to the spot where it lay.

A contract had been entered into by government with Messrs. Calvert, Camden, and King, merchants of London, for the transporting of one thousand convicts, and government engaged to pay 17 7s 6d per head for every convict they embarked. This sum being as well for their provisions as for their transportation, no interest for their preservation was created in the owners, and the dead were more profitable (if profit alone was consulted by them, and the credit of their house was not at stake) than the living.

The following accounts of the numbers who died on board each s.h.i.+p were given in by the masters:

Men Women Children On board the _Lady Juliana_ 0 5 2 On board the _Surprise_ 42 0 0 On board the _Scarborough_ 68 0 0 On board the _Neptune_ 151 11 2 ----------------- Total 261 16 4 -----------------

All possible expedition was used to get the sick on sh.o.r.e; for even while they remained on board many died. The bodies were taken over to the north sh.o.r.e, and there interred.

Parties were immediately sent into the woods to collect the acid berry of the country, which for its extreme acetosity was deemed by the surgeons a most powerful antis...o...b..tic. Among other regulations, orders were given for baking a certain quant.i.ty of flour into pound loaves, to be distributed daily among the sick, as it was not in their power to prepare it themselves. Wine and other necessaries being given judiciously among those whose situations required such comforts, many of the wretches had recourse to stratagem to obtain more than their share by presenting themselves, under different names and appearances, to those who had the delivery of them, or by exciting the compa.s.sion of those who could order them.

Blankets were immediately sent to the hospital in sufficient numbers to make every patient comfortable; notwithstanding which, they watched the moment when any one died to strip him of his covering (although dying themselves) and could only be prevented by the utmost vigilance from exercising such inhumanity in every instance.

The detachment from the New South Wales corps, consisting of one captain, three subalterns, and a proportionate number of non-commissioned officers and privates, was immediately disembarked, and room being made in the marine barracks, they took possession of the quarters allotted for them.

Lieutenant Shapcote, the naval agent on board the _Neptune_, died between the Cape of Good Hope and this place. A son of this gentleman arrived in the _Justinian_, to which s.h.i.+p he belonged, and received the first account of his father's death, on going aboard the _Neptune_ to congratulate him on his arrival.

An instance of sagacity in a dog occurred on the arrival of the _Scarborough_, too remarkable to pa.s.s unnoticed; Mr. Marshall, the master of the s.h.i.+p, on quitting Port Jackson in May 1788, left a Newfoundland dog with Mr. Clark (the agent on the part of the contractor, who remained in the colony), which he had brought from England. On the return of his old master, Hector swam off to the s.h.i.+p, and getting on board, recognised him, and manifested, in every manner suitable to his nature, his Joy at seeing him; nor could the animal be persuaded to quit him again, accompanying him always when he went on sh.o.r.e, and returning with him on board.

At a muster of the convicts which was directed during this month, one man only was unaccounted for, James Haydon. Soon after the muster was over, word was brought to the commissary, that his body had been found drowned in Long Cove, at the back of the settlement. Upon inquiry into the cause of his death, it appeared that he had a few days before stolen some tobacco out of an officer's garden in which he had been employed, and, being threatened with punishment, had absconded. He was considered as a well-behaved man; and if he preferred death to shame and punishment, which he had been heard to declare he did, and which his death seemed to confirm, he was deserving a better fate.

The total number of sick on the last day of the month was three hundred and forty-nine.

July.] The melancholy scenes which closed the last month appeared unchanged at the beginning of this. The morning generally opened with the attendants of the sick pa.s.sing frequently backwards and forwards from the hospital to the burying-ground with the miserable victims of the night.

Every exertion was made to get up the portable hospital; but, although we were informed that it had been put up in London in a very few hours, we did not complete it until the 7th, when it was instantly filled with patients. On the 13th, there were four hundred and eighty-eight persons under medical treatment at and about the hospital--a dreadful sick list!

Such of the convicts from the s.h.i.+ps as were in a tolerable state of health, both male and female, were sent up to Rose Hill, to be employed in agriculture and other labours. A subaltern's detachment from the New South Wales corps was at the same time sent up for the military duty of that settlement in conjunction with the marine corps.

There also the governor in the course of the month laid down the lines of a regular town. The princ.i.p.al street was marked out to extend one mile, commencing near the landing-place, and running in a direction west, to the foot of the rising ground named Rose Hill, and in which his excellency purposed to erect a small house for his own residence whenever he should visit that settlement. On each side of this street, whose width was to be two hundred and five feet, huts were to be erected capable of containing ten persons each, and at the distance of sixty feet one from the other; and garden ground for each hut was allotted in the rear. As the huts were to be built of such combustible materials as wattles and plaster, and to be covered with thatch, the width of the street, and the distance they were placed from each other, operated as an useful precaution against fire; and by beginning on so wide a scale the inhabitants of the town at some future day would possess their own accommodations and comforts more readily, each upon his own allotment, than if crowded into a small s.p.a.ce.

While these works were going on at Rose Hill, the labouring convicts at Sydney were employed in constructing a new brick storehouse, discharging the transports, and forming a road from the town to the brick-kilns, for the greater ease and expedition in bringing in bricks to the different buildings.

Our stores now wore a more respectable appearance than they had done for some time. In addition to the provisions put on board the transports in England, Lieutenant Riou had forwarded by those s.h.i.+ps four hundred tierces of beef and two hundred tierces of pork, which he had saved from the wreck of the _Guardian_, and which we had the satisfaction to find were nothing the worse for the accident which befel her. These, with the seventy-five casks of flour which were brought on by the _Lady Juliana_, formed the amount of what we were now to receive of the large cargo of that unfortunate s.h.i.+p.

Lieutenant Riou also sent by these s.h.i.+ps the twenty male convicts which had been selected as artificers and put on board the _Guardian_ in England; and with them he sent the most pointed recommendations in their favour, describing their conduct, both before and after the accident which happened to the s.h.i.+p under his command, in the strongest terms of approbation.

The _Lady Juliana_ being found on inspection to require such extensive repairs as would too long delay the dispatching the necessary supplies to Norfolk Island, the governor directed the _Surprise_ transport and _Justinian_ stores.h.i.+p to proceed thither.

By the 19th, the _Justinian_ was cleared of her cargo, excepting about five hundred casks of provisions, which were not to be taken out until she arrived at Norfolk Island; and both that s.h.i.+p and the _Surprise_ were preparing with all expedition for sailing. The _Justinian_, however, from the circ.u.mstance of retaining some part of her large cargo on board, was ready first, and sailed on the 28th. The master, Mr. Benjamin Maitland, was directed to follow his former orders after landing his stores and provisions at Norfolk Island, and proceed to Canton to freight home with teas upon account of government. She was hired by the month at fifteen s.h.i.+llings and sixpence per ton, and was to be in government employ until her return to Deptford. By this s.h.i.+p the governor sent dispatches to the secretary of state.

The _Lady Juliana_, having received some repairs by the carpenters of the colony at the time when it was designed she should to Norfolk Island, and some others by the a.s.sistance of her own carpenters, sailed a day or two after the _Justinian_ for Canton. From the extravagant price set on his goods by the master, his shop had turned out badly; and it was said that he took many articles to sea, which he must of necessity throw overboard before he reached Canton.

The governor received by these s.h.i.+ps dispatches from the secretary of state, containing, among other articles of information, instructions respecting the granting of lands and the allotting of ground in towns.h.i.+ps. Soon after their arrival it was declared in public orders:

That, in consequence of the a.s.surances that were given to the non-commissioned officers and men belonging to the detachment of marines, on their embarking for the service of this country, that such of them as should behave well should be allowed to quit the service on their return to England, or be discharged abroad upon the relief, and permitted to settle in the country; his Majesty had been graciously pleased to direct the following terms to be held out as an encouragement to such non-commissioned officers and private men of the marines as might be desirous of becoming settlers in this country, or in any of the islands comprised within the government of the continent* of New South Wales, on the arrival of the corps raised and intended for the service of this country, and for their relief, viz.

[* Now so called officially for the first time.]

To every non-commissioned officer, an allotment of one hundred and thirty acres of land if single, and one hundred and fifty if married.

To every private man, eighty acres of land if single, one hundred if married; and ten acres of land for each child at the time of granting the allotment; free of all fees, taxes, quit-rents, and other acknowledgments, for the term of five years; at the expiration of which term to be liable to an annual quit-rent of one s.h.i.+lling for every fifty acres.

As a further encouragement, a bounty was offered of three pounds per man to every non-commissioned officer and private man who would enlist in the new corps (to form a company to be officered from the marines) and an allotment of double the above proportion of land if they behaved well for five years, to be granted them at the expiration of that time; the said allotments not to be subject to any fee or tax for ten years, and then to be liable to an annual quit-rent of one s.h.i.+lling for every fifty acres.

And upon their discharge at either of the above periods they were to be supplied with clothing and one year's provisions, with feed grain, tools, and implements of agriculture. The service of a certain number of convicts was to be a.s.signed to them for their labour when they could make it appear that they could maintain, feed, and clothe them. In these instructions no mention was made of granting lands to officers; and to other persons who might emigrate and be desirous of settling in this country, no greater proportion of land was to be allotted than what was to be granted to a non-commissioned officer of the marines.

Government, between every allotment, reserved to itself a s.p.a.ce on either side, which, as crown land, was equal to the largest grant, not to be granted, but leased only to individuals for the term of fourteen years.

Provision was made for the church, by allotting in each towns.h.i.+p which should be marked out four hundred acres for the maintenance of a minister; and half of that number was to be allotted for the maintenance of a school master.

If the allotments should happen to be made on the banks of any navigable river or creek, care was to be taken that the breadth of each track did not extend along the banks thereof more than one-third of the length of such track, in order that no settler should engross more than his proportion of the benefit which would accrue from such a situation. And it was also directed, that the good and the bad land should be as equally divided as circ.u.mstances would allow.

No new regulations were directed to take place in respect of granting lands to convicts emanc.i.p.ated or discharged; the original instructions, under which each male convict if single was to have thirty, if married fifty, and ten acres for every child he might have at the time of settling, remained in force.

The particular conditions required by the crown from a settler were, the residing upon the ground, proceeding to the improvement and cultivation of his allotment, and reserving such of the timber thereof as might be fit for naval purposes for the use of his Majesty.

The period fixed by government for victualling a settler from the public stores, twelve months, was in general looked upon as too short, and it was thought not practicable for any one at the end of that period to maintain himself, unless during that time he should have very great a.s.sistance given him, and be fortunate in his crops.