Bushrangers and Pirates; Capture of H.M. Brig _Cyprus_ by
Bushrangers; A Piratical Voyage; Stealing the Schooners _Edward_ and
_Waterwitch_; Mutiny of Prisoners on H.M. Brig _Governor Phillip_ at
Norfolk Island; The Trial of the Mutineers at Sydney; How Captain
Boyle Recaptured the Vessel.
The connection between bushranging and piracy may not at first seem
very apparent, but the bushrangers stole more than one vessel, and
started a career of crime on the high seas instead of on the high
roads, and our story of the bushrangers would be incomplete were
no reference made to thefts of vessels and boats, and their use as
vehicles for robbery. It is not very surprising that so many convicts
made their escapes from Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk
Island, in whale boats which they stole, long as the voyages made
were. The whale boat has played a conspicuous part in Australian
exploration. Lieutenant Bass made his memorable voyage from Sydney,
when he discovered the straits which bear his name, in a whale boat in
which he started to explore the coast. Flinders and many others also
made long voyages and many discoveries in whale boats; for the Pacific,
the largest of the oceans of the world, however stormy it may be at
times, fully deserves the name bestowed upon it by early navigators,
for several months in the year. Hence a voyage in a whale boat from
Norfolk Island or from Van Diemen's Land is not so dangerous as the
distance to be travelled might suggest. We know that even now it is
no very uncommon occurrence for convicts to steal boats and sail or
row from New Caledonia to some part of the coast of Australia, and
we know also that the Australians have at times entertained no very
friendly feelings towards France for persisting in maintaining a
penal settlement so near their shores. It is not with the capture of
whale or ships' boats that we now have to deal, but with the seizure
of larger vessels. In August, 1829, the Government brig _Cyprus_,
commanded by Captain Harris, left Hobart Town for Macquarie Harbour
with thirty-three convicts on board, the crew consisting of twelve,
including the Commander, and there were also some soldiers under the
command of Lieutenant Carew, and some women and children, numbering
eleven altogether. The brig put into Research Bay on the south coast of
the island, and anchored, but a gale arose and the brig was driven from
her moorings, and lost her anchor and cable. She put back to Hobart
Town, obtained a fresh anchor, and started again. On reaching Research
Bay she was again anchored, and the anchor and cable lost a few days
before were recovered. At about six in the evening, while the men on
board were having supper, Lieutenant Carew, Dr. Williams, a soldier,
and Popjoy (the coxswain), with two or three convicts, started in the
long boat to catch some fish. They had not rowed very far when they
heard shouting and some shots on board the brig, and Lieutenant Carew
exclaimed: "Oh, my God! The convicts have taken the ship." They pulled
back as rapidly as possible, and Carew tried to climb on board, but
was threatened with a musket by one of the prisoners. When the trigger
was pulled the gun flashed in the pan and Carew again tried to get on
board, but was pushed back into the boat. He then asked the convicts
who were clustered round to give him his wife and children, and these
were passed into the boat. Mrs. Williams, her servant, and the wives
of a couple of the soldiers were also put into the boat. It appears
that when the long boat left there were only Captain Harris and two
soldiers on deck, the rest of the crew and passengers being below at
supper. Suddenly five heavily ironed prisoners made a rush, and knocked
down the captain and two sentinels. Others rushed to the hatchway,
and began to put the hatches on, when the soldiers and crew, fearing
that they would be suffocated, agreed to surrender. They gave up their
arms, and as they came on deck they were conducted to one of the boats,
in which several prisoners who had had their irons taken off seated
themselves at the oars. Popjoy was compelled to go on board, as it was
said his services would be required for navigating the vessel. Then the
captain, the lieutenant, and doctor, with the women, the soldiers, and
the crew, were rowed to an island in the bay and landed. Seventeen of
the prisoners were also landed, the mutineers only numbering sixteen
of those on board. The boats were hoisted in, the sails lowered, and
the ship got under way. But as she started Popjoy jumped overboard and
swam ashore. As the brig went down the bay the men on board shouted
"Hooray! the ship's our own, hooray!" The captain and others landed on
the little island in the bay, with no means of reaching the mainland,
suffered great hardships. For several days they had nothing but a few
mussels and other shellfish which they picked up on the beach to eat.
Popjoy, however, came to the rescue. He made a sort of canoe of bark
and sticks, and sailed out into the open sea. Here he saw the barque
_Zebra_, and made signals. He was taken on board, and a couple of boats
with provisions were sent in to feed and bring off the fugitives.
For these services Popjoy, who was a convict with a ticket-of-leave,
received a free pardon. What became of the brig and its crew of
mutineers was for some time a matter of conjecture. It was reported
in Australia that she had been seen at Valparaiso. Then it was said
that she had foundered at sea owing to the ignorance of navigation
of the men on board. However, in the beginning of March, 1830, the
Committee of Supercargoes at Canton were informed that four persons
with a ship's boat had landed. They represented themselves as part of
the crew of an English merchant vessel which had been wrecked on the
China coast. The story was not believed, as no such wreck had been
reported, but enquiries were made and a man calling himself William
Waldon, of Sunderland, was examined. He represented himself as having
been the commander of the brig _Edward_, which left the London Docks in
December, 1828, bound for Rio de Janeiro. On his return voyage he had
called at Valparaiso and the Sandwich Islands. At Japan his ship had
been fired at from a battery and much damaged. He sailed for Manilla,
but had to abandon the brig near Formosa, as she leaked heavily. He
and the fifteen men of the crew had taken to the boats and all had
been lost except himself and the three men with him. The boat bore
the name:--"_The Edward_, of London--William Waldon." Although some
doubt was still entertained the Committee arranged for the four men
to be taken to England in the _Charles Grant_. A few days after their
departure another boat with three men on board arrived at Whampoa. The
leader, Huntley, represented himself as having been wrecked in the
brig _Edward_, but said the captain's name was James Wilson and that
she had left London in June, 1828, and gone straight to the Cape. When
near the Ladrones he had quarrelled with Wilson and run away. As the
two accounts differed so materially the former suspicions were revived
and Huntley was sent home under arrest in the _Killie Castle_, and on
the arrival of the _Charles Grant_ in London the three men on board,
John Anderson, Alexander Telford, and Charles Williams, were arrested.
Waldon had landed at Margate, and thus escaped for the time, but was
arrested in London a week or two later. The four men were brought up
at the Thames Police Court on September 22nd, 1830, for examination,
and were charged with piracy. The principal witness was Popjoy, who
had returned to England on receiving his pardon. He identified Huntley
as George James Davis, a convict who had been sentenced to death at
Hobart Town for highway robbery, but whose sentence had been commuted
to penal servitude at Macquarie Harbour. Davis was one of the leaders
of the mutiny when the brig _Cyprus_ had been seized. Alexander
Stevenson, sometimes called Stevie, who now appeared as Telford,
had been convicted in Glasgow in 1824, and had been reconvicted for
bushranging in Australia. John Beveridge, alias Anderson, was sentenced
in Perth in 1821, and was further sentenced in Hobart Town to seven
years' penal servitude for having robbed Mr. Peachey. William Watts,
alias George Williams, was known in Van Diemen's Land as Wattle. He ran
away from a chain gang and took to the bush. He had stabbed one man
and had attempted to shoot another. Of Swallow, Popjoy knew nothing,
but had seen him on board the _Cyprus_ before the mutiny. The boat
which had been sent from China to England was identified by Popjoy as
one belonging to the _Cyprus_, the names _Edward_ and _Waldon_, having
been painted on it since the mutiny. The prisoners were tried at the
Admiralty Court, on November 4th. Popjoy, under cross-examination,
admitted that he had been transported to New South Wales for
horse-stealing. He had been assigned to a master, and had run away.
He had received two hundred lashes at Botany Bay, but this was "only
a few." He had been sent to Van Diemen's Land, and had been charged
with highway robbery near Hobart Town, but had "proved his innocence."
He had "buried in oblivion all the charges" made against him in the
colony. He went to Macquarie Harbour in the _Cyprus_ as a volunteer.
Dr. Williams, surgeon, said that he was on board the _Cyprus_ when she
was seized by convicts in Research Bay, in August, 1829. He had gone
in the long boat with Lieutenant Carew to fish, and when the boat was
some distance from the brig they had heard a clashing of arms. They put
back, and Lieutenant Carew tried to get on board but was repulsed, and
a pistol was snapped at him. He then asked for his sword, but a convict
named Ferguson, who had it, refused to give it up. When Mrs. Carew and
Mrs. Williams were put into the boat, Swallow came to the side of the
vessel and said, "Gentlemen, you see I'm a pressed man. I am unarmed,
and surrounded by armed men." In consequence of this testimony,
Swallow, alias Waldon, was acquitted, but was subsequently sent to
the colony to serve his original sentence. Davis, alias Huntley,
Watts, alias Williams, Stevenson, alias Telford, and Beveridge, alias
Anderson, were sentenced to death.
On January 13, 1840, six bushrangers were captured at Woolnorth, near
Circular Head, and were charged with having attempted to seize the
schooner _Edward_, the property of the Circular Head Shipping Company
of Launceston, Van Diemen's Land. The object with which this vessel was
seized was to enable the bushrangers to escape to one of the South Sea
Islands, where they intended to settle.
The schooner _Waterwitch_ was seized at the Forth River by three
bushrangers on January 27th. The robbers told the captain that they
did not wish to do him or his vessel any harm, but that they were
determined to go to Sealers' Cove. If he liked to take them, well and
good; if not, they would take the vessel there themselves and turn
her adrift. The captain agreed. He took the bushrangers to where they
wished to go, and parted with them very amicably.
From time to time several small vessels disappeared, and it was
supposed that their captors had succeeded in navigating them to some
of the Islands, but as nothing further was ever heard of them, it is
supposed that they either foundered at sea, or that if the bushrangers
reached the islands, their predatory habits or brutal violence
embroiled them with the natives, and they were killed in the fights
which took place, but it is impossible to do more than conjecture their
fate, and to speculate as to whether their acts of aggression were the
cause of some of the apparently unprovoked attacks of the savages on
the crews or passengers of other vessels. This subject has never been
adequately investigated, and there is too little evidence available to
enable us at present to do more than refer to the subject as one worthy
of enquiry.
The case which attracted the most notice in Australia, perhaps, was
the capture of H.M. Brig, the _Governor Phillip_. On October 15th,
1842, John Jones, Thomas Whelan, George Beavors, Henry Sears, Nicholas
Lewis, and James Woolf, alias Mordecai, were charged in the Criminal
Court, Sydney, with that they did on the 21st June, 1842, on board
the brig _Governor Phillip_, the property of Our Sovereign Lady the
Queen, assault one Charles Whitehead, with intent to murder. There was
a second count charging the prisoners with piracy. The brig was lying
out in the roads, at Norfolk Island, discharging cargo and taking in
ballast. The prisoners were sent from the shore with a boat load of
ballast and slept on board the vessel. Two of them were called up at
about four a.m. to bale the boat out, and Jones asked William Harper,
one of the sailors, if he could navigate? Harper replied "Yes, if I
had a slate and pencil." No notice was taken of this incident at the
time, but afterwards it was deemed to have been an indication that a
conspiracy to seize the vessel had been formed among the prisoners. At
seven o'clock the remainder of the boat's crew was called up to begin
work, when Bartley Kelly rushed at one of the sentries and knocked him
down with a belaying pin, while Lewis knocked down another. Then there
were cries of "Jump overboard, you----" and "Throw the---- overboard
and they'll tell no tales." Charles Whitehead was sergeant of the guard
in charge at the time. Henry Sears struck him. It was not known whether
the soldiers jumped or were thrown overboard, but one sentry who was
missing had been thrown over by two of the mutineers. The noise roused
the soldiers who were below and they attempted to gain the deck, but
were driven back by the prisoners, who shouted "Keep down, you----,
or we'll kill you." They also called for "Hot water to scald the----
soldiers." Captain Boyle, who was in command of the vessel, was in
his cabin at the time when the mutiny occurred; Christopher Lucas,
the second mate, being in charge of the deck. Lucas had been knocked
down in the first charge, but he contrived to slip away and went to
the captain's cabin and reported the mutiny. He also went to the
soldiers' quarters and roused them up, but by that time the prisoners
had control of the deck and prevented the soldiers from ascending the
hatch gangway. Lucas had received several very severe blows on the head
with belaying pins and had been left for dead. The captain also tried
to mount the gangway but did not succeed. He then went to the men's
quarters and ordered the carpenter to cut away the fore and aft piece
of the hatchway which the mutineers had closed. By this means he was
enabled to raise the hatch slightly and shot a prisoner named Moore.
Bartley Kelly had also been severely wounded by one of the sentries and
was unable to rise. Another prisoner named McLean came to the hatchway
and told Captain Boyle that if he would consent to leave the brig with
the soldiers they would all be put on shore. The captain refused.
McLean then told him to give up his arms. The captain fired at him by
way of reply and McLean fell dead. The death of the leaders seemed to
have a depressing effect on the other mutineers. Beavors asked the
captain "for God's sake" not to fire any more. Encouraged by this
appeal for mercy, Captain Boyle forced the hatchway open and went on
deck, followed by the soldiers, and the mutineers, having lost their
leaders, surrendered. The vessel was under the control of the mutineers
for about a quarter of an hour. Beavors, alias Berry, and Jones, alias
Jack the Lagger, were the least active of the mutineers. It was Sears
who had struck Whitehead, the sergeant of the guard, immediately after
Whitehead had shot Kelly. Kelly died from his wound the following day,
but Whitehead recovered, although, at one time, his life was despaired
of. The brig was 180 tons burden, and there were on board eighteen men,
including an officer and eleven men of the 96th regiment. The Chief
Justice, Sir James Dowling, before whom the case was tried, said that
had Sergeant Whitehead died he could have held out no hopes for the
prisoners. The jury which had found them guilty had recommended them to
mercy, and he agreed in that recommendation for all except Henry Sears.
It was his duty to pronounce the death sentence, but with the exception
named he would not deprive them of hope. As a result Sears was hung,
while the sentences on the other prisoners were commuted to penal
servitude for life.