New Year's Day
Convicts, how employed
Their disposition to idleness and vice
Her Majesty's birthday kept
Natives
Captain Shea dies
Regulations respecting the convicts
Instances of their misconduct
Transactions
The _Supply_ sails for Norfolk Island
Public Works
Natives
Convicts killed
Stores robbed
The _Supply_ returns
Insurrection projected at Norfolk Island
Hurricane there
Transactions at Rose Hill
1789.]
January.] The first day of the new year was marked as a holiday by a
suspension of all kinds of labour, and by hoisting the colours at the
fort. The ration of provisions, though still less by a pound of flour
than the proper allowance, was yet so sufficient as not to be complained
of, nor was labour diminished by it. Upon a calculation of the different
people employed for the public in cultivation, it appeared, that of all
the numbers in the colony there were only two hundred and fifty so
employed--a very small number indeed to procure the means of rendering
the colony independent of the mother-country for the necessaries of life.
The rest were occupied in carrying on various public works, such as
stores, houses, wharfs, etc. A large number were incapable, through age
or infirmities, of being called out to labour in the public grounds; and
the civil establishment, the military, females, and children, filled up
the catalogue of those unassisting in cultivation.
The soil immediately about the settlement was found to be of too sandy a
nature to give much promise of yielding a sufficient produce even for the
small quantity of stock it possessed. At Rose Hill the prospect was
better; indeed whatever expectations could be formed of successful
cultivation in this country rested as yet in that quarter. But the
convicts by no means exerted themselves to the utmost; they foolishly
conceived, that they had no interest in the success of their labour; and,
if left to themselves, would at any time rather have lived in idleness,
and depended upon the public stores for their daily support so long as
they had any thing in them, than have contributed, by the labour of their
hands, to secure themselves whereon to exist when those stores should be
exhausted.
Idleness, however, was not the only vice to be complained of in these
people. Thefts were frequent among them; and one fellow, who, after
committing a robbery ran into the woods, and from thence coming at night
into the settlement committed several depredations upon individuals, and
one upon the public stores, was at length taken and executed, in the hope
of holding out an example to others. His thefts had been so frequent and
daring, that it became necessary to offer a reward of one pound of flour
to be given weekly, in addition to the ration then issued, for his
apprehension. Another convict, named Ruglass, was tried for stabbing Ann
Fowles, a woman with whom he cohabited, and sentenced to receive seven
hundred lashes, half of which were inflicted on him while the other
unhappy wretch was suffering the execution of his sentence.
The 19th was observed as the birthday of her Majesty; the colours were
displayed at sunrise; at noon the detachment of marines fired three
rounds; after which the governor received the compliments of the day; and
at one o'clock the _Supply_, the only vessel in the country, fired
twenty-one guns. The governor entertained the officers at dinner, and the
day concluded with a bonfire, for which the country afforded abundant
materials.
A day or two after this the place was agitated by a report that a great
gun had been fired at sea; but on sending a boat down without the
harbour's mouth, nothing was seen there that could confirm a report which
every one anxiously wished might be true.
A boat having been sent down the harbour with some people to cut rushes,
a party of natives came to the beach while they were so employed, and
took three of their jackets out of the boat. On discovering this theft,
the cockswain pursued a canoe with two men in it as far as a small island
that lay just by, where the natives landed, leaving the canoe at the
rocks. This the cockswain took away, contrary to an order, which had been
made very public, on no account to touch a canoe, or any thing belonging
to a native, and towed it to the bay where they had been cutting rushes.
The natives returned to the same place unobserved, and, while the
cockswain and his people were collecting what rushes they had cut, threw
a spear at the cockswain, which wounded him in the arm, notwithstanding
they must have known that at that time we had one of their people in our
possession, on whom the injury might be retaliated. He, poor fellow, did
not seem to expect any such treatment from us, and began to seem
reconciled to his situation. He was taken down the harbour once or twice,
to let his friends see that he was alive, and had some intercourse with
them which appeared to give him much satisfaction.
For fifteen days of this month the thermometer rose in the shade above
eighty degrees. Once on the 8th, at one in the afternoon, it stood at 105
degrees in the shade.
February 2nd.] Captain John Shea, of the marines, who had been for a
considerable time in a declining state of health, died, and was interred
with military honours the day following; the governor and every officer
of the settlement attending his funeral. The major commandant of the
detachment shortly after filled up the vacancy which this officer's death
had occasioned by appointing Captain Lieutenant Meredith to the company;
and First Lieutenant George Johnston succeeded to the
captain-lieutenancy. Second Lieutenant Ralph Clarke was appointed a
First, and volunteer John Ross a Second Lieutenant; but their commissions
were still to receive the confirmation of the lords commissioners of the
Admiralty.
The convicts being found to continue the practice of selling their
clothing, an order was issued, directing, that if in future a convict
should give information to the provost-marshal against any person to whom
he had sold his clothes, the seller should receive them again, be
permitted to keep whatever was paid him for them, and receive no
punishment himself for the sale. It was also found necessary to direct,
that all stragglers at night who, on being challenged by the patrole,
should run from them, should be fired at; but orders, in general, were
observed to have very little effect, and to be attended to only while the
impression made by hearing them published remained upon the mind; for the
convicts had not been accustomed to live in situations where their
conduct was to be regulated by written orders. There was here no other
mode of communicating to them such directions as it was found necessary
to issue for their observance; and it was very common to have them plead
in excuse for a breach of any regulation of the settlement, that they had
never before heard of it; nor had they any idea of the permanency of an
order, many of them seeming to think it issued merely for the purpose of
the moment.
It was much to be regretted, that there existed a necessity for placing a
confidence in these people, as in too many instances the trust was found
to be abused: but unfortunately, to fill many of those offices to which
free people alone should have been appointed in this colony, there were
none but convicts. From these it will be readily supposed the best
characters were selected, those who had merited by the propriety of their
conduct the good report of the officers on board the ships in which they
were embarked, and who had brought with them into those ships a better
name than their fellows from the prisons in which they had been confined.
Those also who were qualified to instruct and direct others in the
exercise of professions in which they had superior knowledge and
experience, were appointed to act as overseers, with gangs under their
direction; and many had given evident proofs or strong indications of
returning dispositions to honest industry.
There were others, however, who had no claim to this praise. Among these
must be particularised William Bryant, to whom, from his having been bred
from his youth to the business of a fisherman in the western part of
England, was given the direction and management of such boats as were
employed in fishing, every encouragement was held out to this man to keep
him above temptation; an hut was built for him and his family; he was
always presented with a certain part of the fish which he caught; and he
wanted for nothing that was necessary, or that was suitable to a person
of his description and situation. But he was detected in secreting and
selling large quantities of fish; and when the necessary enquiry was
made, this practice appeared to have been of some standing with him. For
this offence he was severely punished, and removed from the hut in which
he had been placed; yet as, notwithstanding his villainy, he was too
useful a person to part with and send to a brick cart, he was still
retained to fish for the settlement; but a very vigilant eye was kept
over him, and such steps taken as appeared likely to prevent him from
repeating his offence, if the sense of shame and fear of punishment were
not of themselves sufficient to deter him.
A person of the name of Smith having procured a passage from England in
the _Lady Penrhyn_, with a design to proceed to India in the event of his
not finding any employment in this country, on his offering his services,
and professing to have some agricultural knowledge was received into the
colony, and, being judged a discreet prudent man, was placed about the
provision store under the assistant to the commissary at Rose Hill, and
was moreover sworn in as a peace-officer, to act as such immediately
under the provost-marshal; a line wherein, from the circumstance of his
being a free man, it was supposed he might render essential aid to the
civil department of the colony. It was farther intended, at a future
period, to place some people under his direction, to give him an
opportunity of exercising the abilities he was said to possess as a
practical farmer.
14th.] The magazine at the Point being now completed, the powder
belonging to the settlement was lodged safely within its walls.
It being of importance to the colony to ascertain the precise situation
and extent of the reefs seen by Mr. Blackburn, in the _Golden Grove_
storeship, in November last, Leiutenant Ball (who was proceeding to
Norfolk Island with provisions and convicts) was directed to perform that
duty on his return. He sailed with the vessel under his command on the
17th, having on board twenty-one male and six female convicts, and three
children; of the latter two were to be placed under Mr. King's care as
children of the public. They were of different sexes; the boy, Edward
Parkinson, who was about three years of age, had lost his mother on the
passage to this country, the girl, who was a year older, had a mother in
the colony; but as she was a woman of abandoned character*, the child was
taken from her to save it from the ruin which would otherwise have been
its inevitable lot. These children were to be instructed in reading and
writing, and in husbandry. The commandant of the island was directed to
cause five acres of ground to be allotted and cultivated for their
benefit, by such person as he should think fit to entrust with the charge
of bringing them up according to the spirit of this intention, in
promoting the success of which every friend of humanity seemed to feel an
interest.
[* The same who was wounded by Ruglass, earlier this chapter]
The cove was now, for the first time, left without a ship; a circumstance
not only striking by its novelty, but which forcibly drew our attention
to the peculiarity of our situation. The _Sirius_ was gone upon a long
voyage to a distant country for supplies, the arrival of which were
assuredly precarious. The _Supply_ had left us, to look after a dangerous
reef; which service, in an unknown sea, might draw upon herself the
calamity which she was seeking to instruct others to avoid. Should it
have been decreed, that the arm of misfortune was to fall with such
weight upon us, as to render at any time the salvation of this little
vessel necessary to the salvation of the colony, how deeply was every one
concerned in her welfare! Reflection on the bare possibility of its
miscarriage made every mind anxious during her absence from the
settlement.
From the evident necessity that existed of maintaining a strict
discipline among the military employed in this country, it became a
requisite to punish with some severity any flagrant breach of military
subordination that might occur. Joseph Hunt, a soldier in the detachment,
having been found absent from his post when stationed as a sentinel, was
tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to receive seven hundred lashes;
which sentence was put in execution upon him at two periods, with an
interval of three weeks.
Toward the end of this month the detachment took possession of their
barracks; two of which, having been nearly twelve months in hand, were
now completed, and ready for their reception. A brick house, forty feet
by thirteen, was begun on the east side for the commissary; and materials
were preparing for a guard-house.
At Rose Hill the people were principally employed in clearing and
cultivating land; but the labour of removing the timber off the ground
when cut down very much retarded the best efforts of the people so
employed. The military and convicts still lived under tents; and, as a
proof of the small space which they occupied, two Emus or Cassowaries,
who must have been feeding in the neighbourhood, ran through the little
camp, and were so intermingled with the people, who ran out of their
tents at so strange an appearance, that it became dangerous to fire at
them; and they got clear off, though literally surrounded by a multitude
of people, and under the very muzzles of some of their muskets.
Very little molestation was at this time given by the natives; and had
they never been ill treated by our people, instead of hostility, it is
more than probable that an intercourse of friendship would have
subsisted.
March.] The impracticability of keeping the convicts within the limits
prescribed for them became every day more evident. Almost every month
since our arrival had produced one or more accidents, occasioned
principally by a non-compliance with the orders which had been given
solely with a view to their security; and which, with thinking beings,
would have been of sufficient force as examples to deter others from
running into the same danger. But neither orders nor dangers seemed to be
at all regarded where their own temporary convenience prompted them to
disobey the one, or run the risk of incurring the other. A convict
belonging to the brick-maker's gang had strayed into the woods for the
purpose of collecting sweet tea; an herb so called by the convicts, and
which was in great estimation among them. The leaves of it being boiled,
they obtained a beverage not unlike liquorice in taste, and which was
recommended by some of the medical gentlemen here, as a powerful tonic.
It was discovered soon after our arrival, and was then found close to the
settlement; but the great consumption had not rendered it scarce. It was
supposed, that the convict in his search after this article had fallen in
with a party of natives, who had killed him. A few days after this
accident, a party of the convicts, sixteen in number, chiefly belonging
to the brick-maker's gang, quitted the place of their employment, and,
providing themselves with stakes, set off toward Botany Bay, with a
determination to revenge, upon whatever natives they should meet, the
treatment which one of their brethren had received at the close of the
last month. Near Botany Bay they fell in with the natives, but in a
larger body than they expected or desired. According to their report,
they were fifty in number; but much dependance was not placed on what
they said in this respect, nor in their narrative of the affair; it was
certain, however, that they were driven in by the natives, who killed one
man and wounded six others. Immediately on this being known in the
settlement, an armed party was sent out with an officer, who found the
body of the man that had been killed, stripped, and lying in the path to
Botany Bay. They also found a boy, who had likewise been stripped and
left for dead by the natives. He was very much wounded, and his left ear
nearly cut off. The party, after burying the body of the man, returned
with the wounded boy, but without seeing any of the perpetrators of this
mischief; the other wounded people had reached the settlement, and were
taken to the hospital. The day following, the governor, judging it highly
necessary to make examples of these misguided people, who had so daringly
and flagrantly broken through every order which had been given to prevent
their interfering with the natives as to form a party expressly to meet
with and attack them, directed that those who were not wounded should
receive each one hundred and fifty lashes, and wear a fetter for a
twelvemonth; the like punishment was directed to be inflicted upon those
who were in the hospital, as soon as they should recover from their
wounds; in pursuance of which order, seven of them were tied up in front
of the provision store, and punished (for example's sake) in the presence
of all the convicts.
The same day two armed parties were sent, one toward Botany Bay, and the
other in a different direction, that the natives might see that their
late act of violence would neither intimidate nor prevent us from moving
beyond the settlement whenever occasion required.
Such were our enemies abroad: at home, within ourselves, we had enemies
to encounter of a different nature, but in their effects more difficult
to guard against. The gardens and houses of individuals, and the
provision store, were overrun with rats. The safety of the provisions was
an object of general consequence, and the commissary was for some time
employed in examining into the state of the store. One morning, on going
early to the store, he found the wards of a key which had been broken in
the padlock that secured the principal door, and which it was the duty of
the patrols to visit and inspect every night. Entering the storehouse, he
perceived that an harness-cask had been opened and some provisions taken
out. It being supposed that the wards of the key might lead to a
discovery of the perpetrator of this atrocious act, they were sent to a
convict blacksmith, an ingenious workman through whose hands most of the
work passed that was done in his line, who immediately knew them to
belong to a soldier of the name of Hunt, the same who in the course of
the preceding month received seven hundred lashes, and who had some time
back brought the key to this blacksmith to be altered. On this
information, Hunt was taken up; but offering to give some material
information, he was admitted an evidence on the part of the crown, and
made an ample confession before the lieutenant-governor and the
judge-advocate, in which he accused six other soldiers of having been
concerned with him in the diabolical practice of robbing the store for a
considerable time past of liquor and provisions in large quantities. This
crime, great enough of itself, was still aggravated by the manner in
which it was committed. Having formed their party, seven in number, and
sworn each other to secrecy and fidelity, they procured and altered keys
to fit the different locks on the three doors of the provision store; and
it was agreed, that whenever any one of the seven should be posted there
as sentinel during the night, two or more of the gang, as they found it
convenient, were to come during the hours in which they knew their
associate would have the store under his charge, when, by means of their
keys, and sheltered in the security which he afforded them (by betraying
in so flagrant a manner the trust and confidence reposed in him as a
sentinel), they should open a passage into the store, where they should
remain shut up until they had procured as much liquor or provisions as
they could take off. If the patrols visited the store while they chanced
to be within its walls, the door was found locked and secure, the
sentinel alert and vigilant on his post, and the store apparently safe.
Fortunately for the settlement, on the night preceding the discovery one
of the party intended to have availed himself of his situation as
sentinel, and to enter the store alone, purposing to plunder without the
participation of his associates. But while he was standing with the key
in the lock, he heard the patrol advancing. The key had done its office,
but as he knew that the lock would be examined by the corporal, in his
fright and haste to turn it back again, he mistook the way, and, finding
that he could not get the key out of the lock, he broke it, and was
compelled to leave the wards in it; the other part of the key he threw
away.
On this information, the six soldiers whom he accused were taken up and
tried; when, the evidence of the accomplice being confirmed by several
strong corroborating circumstances, among which it appeared that the
store had been broken into and robbed by them at various times for
upwards of eight months, they were unanimously found guilty, and
sentenced to suffer that death which they owned they justly merited.
Their defence wholly consisted in accusing the accomplice of having been
the first to propose and carry the plan into execution, and afterwards
the first to accuse and ruin the people he had influenced to associate
with him. A crime of such magnitude called for a severe example; and the
sentence was carried into execution a few days after their trial.
Some of these unhappy men were held in high estimation by their officers,
but the others, together with the accomplice Hunt, had been long verging
toward this melancholy end. Four of them had been tried for the death of
their comrade Bulmore, which happened in a contest with one of them in
November last; and their manner of conducting themselves at various times
appeared to have been very reprehensible. The liquor which they procured
from the store was the cause of drunkenness, which brought on affrays and
disorders, for which, as soldiers, they were more than once punished. To
these circumstances must be added (what perhaps must be considered as the
root of these evils) a connexion which subsisted between them and some of
the worst of the female convicts, at whose huts, notwithstanding the
internal regulations of their quarters, they found means to enjoy their
ill-acquired plunder.
On the morning of their execution, one of them declared to the clergyman
who attended him, that the like practices had been carried on at the
store at Rose Hill by similar means and with similar success. He named
two soldiers and a convict as the persons concerned; these were
afterwards apprehended, and underwent an examination of several hours by
the lieutenant-governor and the judge-advocate, during which nothing
being drawn from either that could affect the others, they were all
discharged. It was, however, generally believed, that the soldier would
not in his dying moments have falsely accused three men of a crime which
they had never committed; and that nothing but their constancy to each
other had prevented a discovery of their guilt.
While these transactions were passing at Sydney, the little colony at
Norfolk Island had been threatened with an insurrection. The _Supply_
returned from thence the 24th, after an absence of five weeks, and
brought from Lieutenant King, the commandant, information of the
following chimerical scheme. The capture of the island, and the
subsequent escape of the captors, was to commence by the seizure of Mr.
King's person, which was intended to be effected on the first Saturday
after the arrival of any ship in the bay, except the _Sirius_. They had
chosen that particular day in the week, as it had been for some time Mr.
King's custom on Saturdays to go to a farm which he had established at
some little distance from the settlement, and the military generally
chose that day to bring in the cabbage palm from the woods. Mr. King was
to be secured in his way to his farm. A message, in the commandant's
name, was then to be sent to Mr. Jamison, the surgeon, who was to be
seized as soon as he got into the woods; and the sergeant and the party
were to be treated in the same manner. These being all properly taken
care of, a signal was to be made to the ship in the bay to send her boat
on shore, the crew of which were to be made prisoners on their landing;
and two or three of the insurgents were to go off in a boat belonging to
the island, and inform the commanding officer that the ship's boat had
been stove on the beach, and that the commandant requested another might
be sent ashore; this also was to be captured: and then, as the last act
of this absurd scheme, the ship was to be taken, with which they were to
proceed to Otaheite, and there establish a settlement. They charitably
intended to leave some provisions for the commandant and his officers,
and for such of the people as did not accompany them in their
escape--this was their scheme. Not one difficulty in the execution of it
ever occurred to their imagination: all was to happen with as much
facility as it was planned; and, had it not been fortunately revealed to
a seaman belonging to the _Sirius_, who lived with Mr. King as a
gardener, by a female convict who cohabited with him, there was no doubt
but that all these improbabilities would have been attempted.
On being made acquainted with these circumstances, the commandant took
such measures as appeared to him necessary to defeat them; and several
who were concerned in the scheme confessed the share which they were to
have had in the execution of it. Mr. King had hitherto, from the
peculiarity of his situation--secluded from society, and confined to a
small speck in the vast ocean, with but a handful of people--drawn them
round him, and treated them with the kind attentions which a good family
meets with at the hands of a humane master; but he now saw them in their
true colours, and one of his first steps, when peace was restored, was to
clear the ground as far as possible round the settlement, that future
villainy might not find a shelter in the woods for its transactions. To
this truly providential circumstance, perhaps, many of the colonists
afterwards were indebted for their lives.
On Thursday the 26th of February the island was visited by a hurricane
which came on early in the morning in very heavy gales of wind and rain.
By four o'clock several pines of 180 and 200 feet in length, and from 20
to 30 feet in circumference, were blown down. From that hour until noon
the gale increased to a dreadful hurricane, with torrents of heavy rain.
Every instant pines and live oaks, of the largest dimensions, were borne
down by the fury of the blast, which, tearing up roots and rocks with
them, left chasms of eight or ten feet depth in the earth. Those pines
that were able to resist the wind bent their tops nearly to the ground;
and nothing but horror and desolation everywhere presented itself. A very
large live oak tree was blown on the granary, which it dashed to pieces,
and stove a number of casks of flour; but happily, by the activity of the
officers and free people, the flour, Indian corn, and stores, were in a
short time collected, and removed to the commandant's house, with the
loss only of about half a cask of flour, and some small stores. At noon
the gale blew with the utmost violence, tearing up whole forests by the
roots. At one o'clock there were as many trees torn up by the roots as
would have required the labour of fifty men for a fortnight to have
felled. Early in the forenoon the swamp and vale were overflowed, and had
every appearance of a large navigable river. The gardens, public and
private, were wholly destroyed; cabbages, turnips, and other plants, were
blown out of the ground; and those which withstood the hurricane seemed
as if they had been scorched. An acre of Indian corn which grew in the
vale, and which would have been ripe in about three weeks, was totally
destroyed*.
[* The direction of the hurricane was across the island from the
South-east; and as its fury had blown down more trees than were found
lying on the ground when Mr. King landed on it, he conjectured that it
was not an annual visitant of the island. This conjecture seems now to be
justified, as nothing of the kind has since occurred there.]
His people continued to be healthy, and the climate had not forfeited the
good opinion he had formed of it. He acquainted the governor, that for
his internal defence he had formed all the free people on the island into
a militia, and that a military guard was mounted every night as a picket.
There were at this time victualled on the island sixteen free people,
fifty-one male convicts, twenty-three female convicts, and four children.
The arrival of the _Supply_ with an account of these occurrences created
a temporary variety in the conversation of the day; and a general
satisfaction appeared when the little vessel that brought them dropped
her anchor again in the cove. Lieutenant Ball, having lost an anchor at
Norfolk Island, did not think it prudent to attempt to fall in with the
shoal seen by the _Golden Grove_ storeship; his orders on that head being
discretionary.
We now return to the transactions of the principal settlement. The person
who was noticed in the occurrences of the last month as being employed at
Rose Hill under the commissary, had been also entrusted with the
direction of the convicts who were employed in clearing and cultivating
ground at that place; but, being advanced in years, he was found
inadequate to the task of managing and controlling the people who were
under his care, the most of whom were always inventing plausible excuses
for absence from labour, or for their neglect of it while under his eye.
He was therefore removed, and succeeded by a person who came out from
England as a servant to the governor. This man joined to much
agricultural knowledge a perfect idea of the labour to be required from,
and that might he performed by the convicts; and his figure was
calculated to make the idle and the worthless shrink if he came near
them. He had hitherto been employed at the spot of ground which was
cleared soon after our arrival at the adjoining cove, since distinguished
by the name of Farm Cove, and which, from the natural poverty of the
soil, was not capable of making an adequate return for the labour which
had been expended on it. It was, however, still attended to, and the
fences kept in repair; but there was not any intention of clearing more
ground in that spot.
Toward the latter end of the month two of the birds distinguished in the
colony by the name of Emus were brought in by some of the people employed
to shoot for the officers. The weight of each was seventy pounds.