Another in the series of early immigration to 1800’s Australia. Enjoy.
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Here is a photo of a scene in the picturesque Bay of Islands in New Zealand. Its relevance to this story will become apparent later.
This article continues the story of the convict ancestors of the Lenton family, my wife Diane being a “Lenton”.
Readers who think that being a convict in Sydney in the late 1700s and early 1800s was a mere stroll in the park will be sadly disillusioned.
In the previous article we left our hero James Moore in Sydney Town in 1804 having returned from a sailing voyage which he had embarked upon in the good ship “Venus” but which had been hijacked by mutineers. In turn some of the mutineers had been killed by Maoris.
It is now 1809. James has probably been working for, or assigned to, John Palmer, a senior administrator, major landholder and businessman. James’s wife Mary has died and he is now embarking on a voyage back to England in the sailing ship “Boyd”. But will he succeed? Please read on to find out!
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Here is an illustration of the sailing ship “Boyd”.
In late 1809 (the year after Mary Wild had died, leaving his wife’s sister Elizabeth to look after the two children) James enlisted for a voyage on the sailing ship “Boyd” which was bound for Cape Town and London via New Zealand with a load of coal and timber. It was intended that a load of spars would be obtained in New Zealand. Presumably James, who described himself as a sawyer, would be employed to help obtain the spars.
It seems to me that possibly James’s objective was to return to England. It is otherwise difficult to explain why he would undertake a five month journey (each way) on very poor wages merely to cut timber in New Zealand.
This was definitely not a wise decision, as you will see!
The ship was a brigantine built in England in 1783 and weighed in at about 395 tonnes. The full complement on the ship was seventy.
The ship called in at Whangaroa near the Bay of Islands in the far north of the North Island of New Zealand, and it was in this picturesque area (shown in the photo at the start of this article) that they unwittingly (and unwillingly) participated in what was the worst massacre of that time.
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n a cleverly planned plot the Chief Tippahee, who had spent time previously as a celebrity in Sydney, pretended that he and his men wished to trade with the ship, lulling the captain into a sense of false security. While most of the crew were away collecting spars the men who had stayed behind were attacked and killed, and soon afterwards the men collecting spars were also attacked and killed. There were only four survivors, two women and two children.
Accounts of the attacks set out in gory detail how the victims (including our hero James) were unceremoniously chopped up, roasted and eaten by the Maoris.
The ship was set on fire later, perhaps accidentally, and was burnt down to the waterline.
Historians have debated the relative merits of the reactions of the Maoris, referring to an earlier insult cast on a chief’s son when he was allegedly flogged on the ship for a transgression. Perhaps it could be argued that killing 66 people and eating them was a serious case of “overkill”.
Regardless of the debate as to the whys and wherefores of the massacre, the sad fact was that our hero was definitively dead
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Several months later the crews of three armed whaling ships (according to one account) attacked the Maori village in reprisal. No doubt being a tough bunch and well armed, after a pitched battle they put the Maoris to flight, killing many (but failing to catch their Chief), and rescued the four survivors. One of the men on the ships was Alexander Berry, who was later a prominent settler in NSW.
Retrospective
I wonder whether the late lamented James was marked for tragedy from the moment he attempted to pick the pocket of George Brown for a two shilling handkerchief in England. He survived the horrors of the “Hillsborough”, the pirating of the ship “Venus” at Port Dalrymple to lose his life at the hands of the unfriendly Maoris in New Zealand.
John Wild
We now come to John Wild, his relevance to the Lenton family history being that he was the father of Mary Wild, who married our previous hero James Moore.
John Wild married Elizabeth Whittaker in 1786.
Like James Moore, John ran foul of the law in England. He was convicted in 1794 for stealing clothes worth nine pence, being given a sentence of seven years and was transported to Australia in the sailing ship” Ganges” in1797. John was accompanied by his wife Elizabeth and daughters Elizabeth and Mary Ann.
They settled at Brickfield Hill in what is now the Town Hall area of Sydney Town.
Unfortunately John had not learned his lesson because within several years he was caught stealing clothes. The magistrate sentenced him to a flogging of 100 lashes and six months in the gaol gang, sleeping at the gaol at night.
The implication of being in the gaol gang was that he could have been placed in a chain gang.
Chain gangs
Prisoners in chain gangs were chained together by chains which connected iron rings placed around their ankles, wrists or necks. The length of the chain had a bearing on the degree of mobility of the prisoner. In some cases an iron ball was connected to the ankle chains so that in order to walk the prisoner had to bend over and carry the ball.
Chain gangs were used for repetitive tasks like road building and drain digging where work could be done by prisoners in a line moving in unison.
Modern day chain gangs are held together with locks which can be removed at night, however in the convict days the chains were fixed by a blacksmith so that prisoners had to sleep with the chains still attached.
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n those days floggings were a popular public spectacle. Here is a photo showing a flogging. Floggings were carried out by an experienced flogger using a “cat of nine tails”. As shown in the photo this was a whip with a number of cords, each cord having a knot at the end. The victim was tied by the wrists and ankles to a post, or most frequently to a “triangle” made from wooden poles and mounted in a public area where the populace would gather to be entertained by the victim’s howls of distress.
This drastic method of punishment cut into the backs of victims severely, causing quite serious lacerations which would take some time to heal. Reputedly vinegar would be poured on the victim’s back, causing more pain but probably having an antiseptic effect.
John’s sentence of 100 lashes was probably the maximum allowed, demonstrating the severity of the offence.
Perhaps John was fortunate not to be sentenced to an additional term in the penal colonies of Norfolk Island or Newcastle. The answer probably lies in the fact that about 40% of convicts received a flogging at some time in their career, so it was economically impossible to send many of them to those penal colonies. In fact John’s seven year sentence was not even extended.
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Stocks and pillories
Other less dire punishments included time in the “stocks” or “pillories”. For stocks the victim was seated and his arms and legs were inserted through holes in a timber barrier, for pillories the victim stood with his head and arms through holes. No doubt there were stocks in Sydney in public areas, but there is a particular record of stocks at Parramatta at the foot of the road leading up to Old Parliament House.
The pain endured by the victims was more mental than physical because they could be pelted with rubbish and abused.
John sees the error of his ways
Presumably John saw the error of his ways because there are no further adverse reports about him. However he had an interesting later career after his period of offence of seven years expired, having in summary spent time on Norfolk Island, been marooned on a wild uninhabited island, and then settling down to farming.
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Norfolk Island, shown in this photo, is a tiny island in the South Pacific Ocean and is defined by pine trees and jagged cliffs. It is about five km by eight km in area and has quite a lot of farm land.
The penal colony was established late in the year after the arrival of the First Fleet. It was hampered from the outset by the loss of the naval supply ship “Sirius”, which ran aground at the entrance to the Island’s only bay and foundered. Many of the stores were lost.
The worst convicts were landed there initially, and they were kept in very harsh conditions. At least the island was suitable for farming, cutting down the need in due course for food to be brought in from Sydney, which had none to spare for quite a while anyway.
By 1792 there were an estimated 1000 people on the Island.
John Wild’s sojourn on Norfolk Island
John’s sentence of seven years expired in January 1801. The following year his daughter Elizabeth accompanied him to Norfolk Island and later lived on the Island with Samuel Larkin.
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Several years later John got itchy feet, seeking fame and fortune by forsaking his predictable life on Norfolk Island, signing up in 1805 with a sealing ship owned by the prominent Sydney businessman Simeon Lord. Sealing was a major industry at the time, based in Sydney which gave access to a huge area of the South Pacific Ocean including the sub-Antarctic regions.
Possibly John wanted to make some money to settle down. Apparently after the required time collecting the seal skins, by agreement John and Hans Hoof were left behind on the remote and inhospitable Penantipodes Island (also known as Antipodes Island), 1000 kilometres south of New Zealand. They were left on the island much longer than anticipated, probably enduring at least one bleak sub-Antarctic winter and were eventually picked up by the ship “Commerce” in February 1807.
This was a quite common occurrence, particularly for ships owned by Robert Campbell and Simeon Lord. Speaking of himself and other sealers caught in this situation, in evidence Hoof said “I can scarcely describe the hardships endured by these unfortunate sealers, more especially on the Antipodes Island where I was left-an island where there was no wood to cook provisions (provided I had any to cook). The only substitute we had for fuel was the fat of seals; and the only sustenance many had was the insides of seals and birds.”
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Sealers were ruthless in killing seals for their skins, bludgeoning the defenceless animals to death with heavy clubs. 1804 saw the first sealing gang arrive at the Antipodes group of islands. To give an idea of the magnitude of the slaughter, this American gang killed about 60,000 seals over the course of the year they were stationed on the islands.
After 1807 sealing in the area was occasional and catches small. By the 1830s seals were all but wiped out and sealing in the area came to an end.
The captains of the sealing ships were quite adventurous in their search for seals, discovering such islands as Macquarie Island, in 1810, where over 100,000 seals were killed. This island, 130 sq. km (50 sq.) miles in area, later became a base for the Australasian Antarctic Expedition under Sir Douglas Mawson. Later it was home to an Australian scientific research station.
Returning to my story about John Wild, Simeon Lord took John and Hans Hoof to court for the seal skins they had collected while waiting for a ship to call. They won the case and John received the seriously large sum of 207 pounds.
Conclusion
In a later article I will continue the story of John Wild in his career as a farmer.
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