Your monthly Jerrems newsletter
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Dear Jerrems Journal Readers,
We have another series from Ray about the early migration of people, albeit convicts of sorts, from England to Australia in the 1800’s.
Enjoy.
Donald Jerrems
Ray Jerrems
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Introduction
Above is a painting which shows Sydney Cove in 1803. The reason for this photo will be apparent later.
I have kept the history of the Lenton family up my sleeve for a number of years because I have received a lot of information which I have put off analysing. However, at last I have buckled down to the task with results which I am sure you will find very interesting.
My wife Diane’s maiden name was Lenton, and three of her ancestors were convicts who were transported to Australia in the late 1700s and early 1800s. In this article I will tell you about the earliest of them, James Moore, and his adventures as a convict, involvement in a mutiny, and his final tragic demise described in a later article.
Convict ancestry has become very popular in recent years and has almost reached the level of a status symbol in Australia. Gone are the days when convict ancestry was frowned upon, to the extent that some original archive records were destroyed.
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James was a native of England of 20 years of age when he was charged with feloniously stealing a cotton handkerchief to the value of two shillings on 19th July 1797, the property of George Brown. It was alleged by Brown that James had picked his pocket but dropped the handkerchief when he pulled his hand out.
James’s defence was that he saw the handkerchief lying on the ground and merely picked it up.
I wonder whether the value of the handkerchief was artificially inflated so that James would face a more serious charge. Two shillings was a lot of money in those days.
The trial for this unspeakable crime was held at the well-known Old Bailey in London two months later, where the jury rather predictably found James guilty and the judge sentenced him to the usual sentence (apart from life sentence) of transportation to Australia for seven years.
Perhaps James should have been thankful that he did not get a life sentence, although in practical terms they were very similar.
I recollect the case of a female offender being transported for stealing a loaf of bread, held up in Australian literature as an example of extreme judicial cruelty, but this must be rivalled by James stealing a handkerchief.
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James was described as being five feet three inches tall (probably an average height in those days), with fair complexion and light hair, having a previous address in Essex and occupation of labourer.
He was imprisoned in London for about a month and was then transferred to a hulk on the River Thames.
The hulks were old wooden warships which had originally been brought into use in 1776 following the outbreak of the American War of Independence, the latter causing a looming crisis in prison overpopulation in England because up until that war the United States was a popular dumping ground for English convicts. The hulks included two ailing warships berthed at Woolwich Dock, on the River Thames near London, one of these being the “Prudentia”, to which James was consigned.
During the first 20 years about 8000 prisoners were sent to the hulks, dying on board at the rate of almost one in four.
In the case of the Woolwich hulks the prisoners were given the arduous task of dredging a channel through the shifting river bed just downstream of the Woolwich Docks. Iron leg shackles made their work more difficult.
The conditions were terrible, but worse was to come. James was assigned to the “Hillsborough” to sail to sunny Australia.
Food allowances on the hulks
The food was monotonous and low in nutrition by current day standards.
John Howard, a well-known prison reformer, gave an account of the food allowance for each mess of six men:.
(a) Breakfast-Everyday, a pint of barley or rice made into six pints of soup.
(b) Dinner-Sunday, 6 pounds of salt pork or 7 pounds of beef with 10 pints of beer. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 6 pounds of bullock heads.
(c) Supper-Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, a pint of peas and barley made into 6 pints of soup. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, a pint of oatmeal made into burgou (a thick porridge).
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As the saying goes, “out of the frying pan into the fire”.
Here is an illustration of the three decker “Hillsborough”, built in 1782. She made six voyages to India and China as an East Indiaman for the British East India Company. In 1798 she transported convicts from England to New South Wales. After delivering her convicts in 1799, she became a whaler in the South Seas fisheries for several years. She was broken up in 1804
If James expected to have a comfortable trip to Australia he was sadly mistaken. From the point of view of the number of deaths on passage, this voyage was to be the most disastrous voyage ever undertaken to Australia.
When the ship arrived at Woolwich Dock to pick up James’s complement of convicts in December 1798 it had already taken on board 152 convicts, some of whom were already suffering from typhoid.
Conditions on the ship were indescribable. Its captain had developed a complex that the prisoners would mutiny, based possibly on the fate of a ship the year before where the guards had mutinied. He had a number of men flogged, some were shackled and handcuffed and some had an iron collar placed around their necks. In January the deaths had begun and by the time the ship reached Cape Town in South Africa in early May some 30 convicts had died. A further 28 died, then when she weighed anchor at Cape Town in late May she left behind at least 50 convicts who had lost the battle against typhoid.
On 26th July 1799 , almost seven months after leaving London, the ship finally dropped anchor in Sydney Harbour. An outraged Governor Hunter watched as its half dead human cargo of 205 survivors, some almost naked, came ashore. Six more died the next day.
The final figures were that 300 convicts embarked from England, 95 died en route, and six died the day after arrival, giving a death toll of one third.
So that you can appreciate what awaited James I will now describe Sydney when James landed, starting with its inception eleven years earlier.
The First Fleet
The First Fleet under Captain Phillip landed in Sydney Cove on 26th January 1788, comprising 736 male and female convicts, 17 convict children, 211 marines with 27 wives and 14 children, nine horses, six cattle, 44 sheep, 3 goats, 28 pigs and diverse poultry.
Food was scarce, and the predominantly clay soils proved unsuitable for large scale cultivation. No doubt the Governor hoped that the Second Fleet would provide some respite by bringing supplies, but it turned out to be a liability.
The Second Fleet
The Second Fleet comprised six ships: one Royal Navy escort (which sank en route), four convict ships which arrived in June 1779, and a supply ship which was so essential arrived almost a year later in April 1790.
Unlike the preceding First Fleet, where great efforts were taken to ensure the health of the convicts, the Second Fleet was contracted to private businesses who kept the convicts in horrific conditions, their rations kept to a minimum to save money.
The passage was relatively fast, but the mortality rate was high. Of the 1,038 convicts embarked, 273 died during the voyage (26%) and 486 landed sick. This sits in stark contrast to the mortality rates reported on the First Fleet where with nearly an equal number of persons, only 24 had died and only thirty landed sick.
The Third Fleet
The Third Fleet comprised 11 ships that set sail from the United Kingdom in February, March and April 1791, bound for the Sydney penal settlement, with more than 2,000 convicts aboard. More important for the fledgling colony was that the ships also carried provisions.
The first ship to arrive in Sydney was the Mary Ann with its cargo of female convicts and provisions on 9 July 1791.
173 male convicts and 9 female convicts died during this voyage. Though this death rate was high, it was nowhere near as bad as occurred on the Second Fleet.
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Here is a painting showing Parramatta in its infancy.
Fortunately, extensive arable land was located at Parramatta, about 25 km west from Sydney Town. Settlement of the land began in November, 1788. First named Rose Hill, this later changed to the Aboriginal name of Parramatta, meaning “the place where the eels lie down.” Its population soon overtook the population of Sydney, and within several years, commencing with the harvesting of the first wheat crop in November 1789, the problem of food shortage was averted by the crops grown there.
Until 1793, when the first road was built, the main access to Parramatta from Sydney was by boat. In 1799 the first part of Old Government House was built there.
Distribution of convicts
Clearly it was impractical for all convicts to be continuously kept under guard, nor was it necessary because 80% of the convicts had only been transported for larceny, not for crimes of violence.
The system therefore evolved of some convicts being pardoned and appointed to administrative positions and others being assigned to “masters”. Assigning a large number of convicts to masters meant that the masters were responsible for their welfare, however the conditions of the convicts depended upon the financial position of their masters, some of which were very poor.
Intransigent convicts were kept in chains on roadworks and construction of public buildings etc, being kept locked up at night in stockades. The worst were settled on Norfolk Island under harsh conditions. Common occupations for convicts were as sawyers, where lumber camps were set up on tributaries of the Harbour to harvest the extensive hardwood forests by felling and pit sawing them.
As described in a previous Journal, pit sawing required one man to stand on top of the log pulling the saw up, and the other to stand underneath in the pit pulling the saw down.
James settles down and enjoys domestic bliss
James presumably recovered from his ordeal on the “Hillsborough” and carried out his occupation of sawyer.
During this period he was assigned to (or worked for) John Palmer, a First Fleeter who held the very senior position of Commissaire in the Governor’s administration and received extensive land grants.
The 1803 painting at the top of this article shows how much Sydney Cove had developed since it was first settled in 1788. It shows a number of substantial buildings.
During this period James met Mary Wild, who in 1797 had accompanied her parents to Sydney on the “Ganges” when her father was transported. Mary probably worked as a domestic servant at Brickfield Hill.
They apparently chose not to marry but had two daughters, Elizabeth in 1803 and Mary Ann in 1805. However Mary died in 1808.
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The Castle Hill Rebellion
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Here is a contemporary painting of the Battle of Vinegar Hill which heralded the end of the so-called Castle Hill Rebellion.
While James was by all accounts forging a respectable existence in Sydney Town he would have heard about this “battle”, which reverberated throughout the colony.
The Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804 was the only true rebellion by convicts against colonial authority in New South Wales. It culminated in a one-sided battle fought between convicts and soldiers on 5 March 1804 at Rouse Hill, the term “Battle of Vinegar Hill” being derived from the Battle of Vinegar Hill which had taken place in 1798 in Ireland.
The abortive 1798 Irish Rebellion had resulted in a large number of transportations of political prisoners.
Unfortunately for the rebels the authorities had learnt of a plan for rebellion some months earlier and were on the lookout. About one quarter of the convicts in the Colony were Irish, so the authorities were justifiably concerned.
On 4 March 1804, according to the official accounts a large number of convicts led by Philip Cunningham (a veteran of the Irish Rebellion of 1798) assembled at Castle Hill intent on “capturing ships to sail to Ireland”. In response, martial law was quickly declared. The mostly Irish rebels, finally totalling 233 in number after gathered reinforcements, were pursued by the trained Army Red Coats and volunteers until they were cornered on the next day. The rebellion was crushed and Cunningham was arrested. Nine of the rebel leaders were executed and hundreds were punished.
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Initially I took my heading “The Good Ship Venus” from a song of the same name, which rivals the First World War “Madamoiselle from Armienteres” for its number of verses and ribald theme.
However James’s case pre-dated the song “The Good Ship Venus” by over a hundred years. But, in an amazing coincidence, the origin of the song is attributed to the events which I am now going to recount to you.
James signed up in 1806 for a voyage from Sydney on the small 45 tonne brigantine “Venus” to Dalrymple Bay (now Launceston) in Tasmania via the whaling station at Twofold Bay, on the southern coast of New South Wales. The boat, which would have been built in the recently developed shipbuilding yards in Sydney, carried vital food provisions for this fledgling colony in Tasmania (5,674 pounds of meal and flour and 11,184 pounds of salt pork) and a crew of about twelve.
Perhaps significantly, this vessel was owned by Robert Campbell, a prominent ship owner whose sister Sophie had married James’s boss John Palmer. Campbell built his own wharf at Sydney Cove.
At Dalrymple Bay some of the crew mutinied while the captain was unwisely visiting the local governor overnight, leaving behind James and the rest of the crew who did not wish to participate in the mutiny. The mutineers were a motley collection of the first and second mates, a Mulatto seaman, a Malay cook, a convict pilot, two convict women and a baby.
The mutineers made good use of the food, sailing eventually to New Zealand, via Fiji. However there are various conflicting accounts of what happened then, including a report by Governor King.
It was in New Zealand that their frolic ended ignominiously when (according to most accounts) some of them were killed by Maoris.
As you will see in a later article, being killed by Maoris was a fairly common fate (not to be recommended).
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This is a good time to sign off on this story. in a later edition I will tell you about the untimely fate of James and delve into the lives of more Lenton convict ancestors.
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