History of Australia/Chapter 1
AUSTRALIA.
CHAPTER I.
The history of a country, and of the growth of its people amongst the family of nations, has seldom a clearly defined starting-point. There is usually a long period of gloom in the far distant past, which challenges antiquarian researches, and leaves an inquirer doubtful whether to accept the traditions of a Livy, or to join in the iconoclasm of a Niebuhr. If the inhabitants, when first emerging from that gloom, could foresee the interest which future ages would take in their early fortunes, how sedulously would they guard each relic of the past, how scrupulously would they record each fact about which, though in their own time there might be no room for doubt, disputes in after time cluster like bees about a hive! Even in our own day, when books and pamphlets are like autumn leaves in abundance—and in fate—how much need is there for judgment in prosecuting an inquiry! How strong and yet how contradictory are the assertions made; how studiously analytic must he be who would weave the conflicting elements into a trustworthy narration! How frequently is it found that the audacity of a contemporary writer has so coloured events that the plain tint of truth runs risk of being lost for ever.
The historian of Australia has no period of mythical gloom to explore with regard to the British who subdued and replenished the land; but, in selecting facts and valuing statements, needs as much care and patience as he who would narrate the rise and progress of modern Germany. The scene is different, but the actors are the same; human beings struggling mainly for personal gain, but even then subserving some higher purpose beyond their ken; and amid the turmoil, like salt to preserve the mass from corruption, those finer spirits, "touched to fine issues," which redeem the general character, and amidst whose judgments may be found a clue to the tangled labyrinth into which investigation must often lead the historian.
There is danger lest one who has lived within a portion of the time he chronicles should himself fail to preserve a just discrimination; but, if he has not been himself immersed in party quarrels, if his desire be to probe the facts and declare the truth, his personal experiences are so far advantageous that they may restrain him from accepting ignorant or wilful mis-statements made by those who have only a party purpose to serve.
How long the aborigines of Australia had roamed over its soil when Europeans first explored the coast, it is for ethnologists to discuss—perhaps without result. That they occupied sparsely the whole area, many centuries ago, is indisputable, and that their rate of migration must have been slow is equally clear. Diverse as were their dialects, when heard by Europeans, they are of common origin; although the marked difference between the language of contiguous tribes might lead careless observers to a different conclusion. When such persons find tribes scattered on hundreds of miles of the coast using similar words, and note that at a short distance inland a distinct dialect is spoken, they omit to observe that families dispersed along the coast would still cling to it, and would have occasional intercourse with their kindred of late date, but not with tribes in the interior; while the inland inhabitants, beyond the watershed of the coast range, who in many cases reached their domains by ascending the rivers which traverse the continent from east to west, would keep up their tribal intercourse in like manner through accustomed channels.
Rumours of a Great South Land were rife long before Europeans trod upon its shores. In the "Astronomicon" of Manilius, attributed to the first century, the form of the earth is thus described:
"Pars ejus ad arctos
Eminet, Austrinis pars est habitabilis oris,
Sub pedibusque jacet nostris."
Many rumours may have been due to idle guesses, but some may have sprung from authentic information derived from voyagers in the Indian Seas, who doubtless visited the north coast of Australia, as the Malays visited it in later times.
Had any navigator in the sixteenth century by chance discovered the west coast it is improbable that direct results would have ensued. The Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English contended for posts of commerce, not for soil on which they might create new homes. For more than a century Malacca was prized by the Portuguese, and for a longer period by the Dutch, not as a sphere for colonization, but on account of the trade which it attracted and controlled.
A post of observation on the coast of Australia would have attracted no one, and would have commanded no trade. Yet the student of history will cast a thought upon the mysterious slumber which reigned over so vast and neglected a portion of the globe, while small but luxuriant spots were keenly contended for by Europeans, who were debarred from making in such uncongenial climates their permanent homes. Their ships and buildings were converted into hospitals, and the soil of their possessions into graves; while within easy reach, and even then visited by the seafaring Malay, was a land possessing an unsurpassed climate, with resources only now being unlocked, while four millions of Britons are gathered upon it.[1] So little power have men's pretensions to determine the conditions of future wealth or greatness! The Pope and the Emperor allotted and claimed continents by what they called Divine right; while silently, but openly under their eyes, the race for whom Divine Providence had reserved the mastery was pitching its humble tents in the New World of America. Again in the South the same drama has been enacted. To Spain, to Portugal, to Holland there remain possessions of questionable value (excepting Java, once taken and restored by the English), and none of them are adapted for European constitutions. To the descendants of the seafaring Northmen has fallen a continent, poor when found, but capable of making rich; holding out no luxuries for barter, but having a climate and soil which invite the re-enactment in Australia of the marvel in America, where the colony largely outnumbers the parent state.
It is perhaps impossible to determine who first ascertained the existence and form of the Great South Land. Those who are curious upon the subject will find it exhaustively dealt with in various publications by E. H. Major, F.S.A.,[2], and others. There are not wanting statements which would imply that something was known about the north coast of Australia in the beginning of the sixteenth century. But in most cases the descriptions and the maps indicated no separation between New Guinea and the South Land, generally called "La Grande Jave." Moreover, with regard to a time when the Spanish and the Portuguese contended about their discoveries, the best of their maps are so wide of the truth that it may safely be afl&rmed that some of their contents are guesses. That the Portuguese were established at the Moluccas in 1512 seems to be admitted. That there were maps which were made before the year 1542, and which represent a great land called "Jave La Grande," is also true. One of these maps in the British Museum was presented by Sir Joseph Banks in 1790. Two others, also in the Museum, are in a volume, dated 1542, presented by one Jean Eotz to Henry VIII. The dedication declares that the maps are made "au plus certain et vray qu'il ma est, possible de faire, tant par mon experience propre, que par la certaine experience de mes amys et compagnons navigateurs." In all these maps, however, the sea or strait between "The Lytil Java" and "Java La Grande," or "the Londe of Java," is so inaccurately represented that one sees at a glance that guess-work, or assumption, or hearsay, was resorted to. In the Jean Rotz map of 1542, the east shore of Jave la Grande (the Great South Land) is carried far to the eastward of the true position of Australia. In another map, the east coast of Australia is similarly misrepresented; and, strangely enough, because on the fancied eastward extension the mapmaker wrote "Coste des Herbaiges," it has been suggested that some voyager in the sixteenth century had been to Botany Bay—a place quite innocent of pasture in its natural state. In a map to illustrate the voyages of Drake and Cavendish, New Guinea is represented as an island anterior to the voyage of the Spaniard Torres, who (having been separated from his commander, Quiros) sailed between Australia and New Guinea in 1606, but supposed the coast of Australia to be a series of islands; a supposition which proves that the maps of 1542 were not generally known, or were not trusted by the navigators of 1606. In the same manner islands were seen in the Pacific and were supposed by Quiros to be portions of a continent. In 1606, it seems that a Dutchman commanding the Duyfhen, sent out to explore New Guinea, sighted a part of Australia and assumed that it was a part of New Guinea. From all such casual and uncertain glimpses but little real knowledge could be gained. If the lands thus seen had been occupied by inhabitants with whom trade could have been established results would have ensued even from these glimpses; but, as it was, they must be looked upon merely as a kind of hearsay unworthy of the title of discoveries.
It is certain that the Dutch had no knowledge of a strait between New Guinea and the South Land, for when they sent Tasman, in 1644, to explore, they told him that they thought there was no such strait.
There is no doubt, however, that in 1616 the Dutchman Dirk Hartog, on a voyage from Holland to India, saw and landed on Australian soil at Shark Bay, and left a record of the fact which was found afterwards by his countryman, Van Vlaming, in 1697, and by the French navigator, Hamelin, in 1801. Other Dutch mariners saw other parts of the coast, and Nuyts Land and Cape Leeuwin are memorials of the fact. The name of another Dutchman (Carpenter) was given to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Captain Pelsaert, of the ship Batavia, escaping in a boat, was said to have left shipwrecked comrades at Houtman's Abrolhos on the west coast, in 1629, and on returning in a ship from Java to have found that mutiny and massacre had been rampant, and to have restored discipline by wholesale executions before sailing to Java. All performances of other navigators were eclipsed, however, by Tasman, who, in 1642, was commissioned to explore in the South Seas, and discovered Tasmania[3] and New Zealand, but who, in his chart, represented New Guinea as joined to the South Land (Australia). From this time may be dated a more accurate knowledge of Australia,. It may be true that Portuguese sailors had seen parts of the coast in 1542. It is no doubt true that the Dutch (who founded their East India Company in 1602) received confidential reports from their sailors of discoveries made at various dates early in the seventeenth century; and it may be true that, for reasons of policy, they concealed the discoveries from the world. They paid a natural penalty. Paullum sepultæ distat inertiæ celata virtus. They might as well have made no discoveries.
After Tasman's great voyage other discoverers cruised among the islands of the Pacific, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries played their part, the celebrated William Dampier[4] being one of them. First a common sailor, then overseer on an estate in Jamaica, a labourer among the logwood-cutters in Mexico, and a buccaneer amongst the wildest spirits of a wild time, he possessed intelligence and sense which have kept his narratives from oblivion. His first visit to Australia was in a buccaneering vessel which had been seized by the crew, who abandoned their captain at Mindanao, taking Dampier with them. In their wanderings they touched on the northern coast of New Holland in 1688. After accidents by flood and field, Dampier found his way to England, where he was well received, and the government gave him the command of an exploring vessel—the Roebuck. Reaching the west coast of Australia at the bay which he called Shark Bay, he examined the shore and the islands. He explained that on no part of the coast he saw was there any possibility of barter with the natives, who had nothing to give in exchange. No man then thought it desirable to occupy the land for its own sake. Dampier earned from foreigners the highest reputation for skill and exactitude. De Brosses exclaimed: "Ou trouve t'on de navigateurs comparables à Dampier?"
The greater part of a century elapsed before anything more than casual visits and desultory notes were to be made by a voyager to Australia, and that voyager was an Englishman—James Cook. Chosen to command the Endeavour, 370 tons, sent to the South Sea to observe the transit of Venus, Cook sailed from Plymouth (26th Aug., 1768). The observations on the transit were made at Tahiti in 1769. Cook's instructions[5] were to proceed southwards after the astronomical observations were concluded. If he found no land before reaching the fortieth south parallel he was to go westward and explore New Zealand; thence he was to return to England by such route as he might think proper. These orders he obeyed, reaching New Zealand on the 6th Oct., 1769; and surveying New Zealand until the 31st March, 1770.
Bearing in mind that all that was known of Australia was that Tasmania was supposed to be part of the mainland, that only portions of the south and west coast were known, and that the northern shores had merely been seen near Arnhem Land, the Gulf of Carpentaria, and Cape York, the reader will appreciate the magnitude of Cook's discoveries. Encountering rough weather, and carefully sounding at night, Cook sighted the mainland of Australia on the 19th April, 1770, in latitude 38° south, longitude 211° 7", and called it Point Hicks, after the first lieutenant, who first saw it, "To the southward we could see no land, and yet it was clear in that quarter;" "but as we did not see it, and finding the coast to trend N.E. and S.W., or rather more to the westward, I cannot determine whether Van Diemen's Land and Australia are one land or no."
Cook then proceeded along the east coast, examining and naming Cape Howe, headlands and bays, so far as time permitted. At Botany Bay, so named in consequence of the "great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found" there, Cook remained some days, and unfortunately fired upon the natives, who opposed his landing, and in spite of shots, which wounded one of them, kept up the encounter with their spears.
In no perfunctory spirit did Cook conduct his survey of the coast. Time did not permit him to explore each opening, but his charts show how accurate was his work.
It may not be unworthy the dignity of history to point out that his designation of Port Jackson was early misunderstood, and repeatedly ascribed to a cause for which Cook gave no warrant. The words in his Journal are:—"We were by observation in the latitude of 38° 50° south, two or three miles from the land and abreast of a bay, wherein there appeared to be safe anchorage, which I called Port Jackson.' How little do Cook's words justify the following statement in a "History of New South Wales" by Dr. J. D. Lang:—"In Captain Cook's chart another opening had been laid down on the authority of a seaman of the name of Jackson, who had seen it from the foretop masthead, and from whom Captain Cook, who conceived it might possibly be a boat harbour, which it was not worth his while to examine, called it Port Jackson." This assertion was copied for many years, having been originally idle surmise. Cook's own narrative, however, contained internal evidence bearing strongly against it. He frequently named places after the person who first saw them, or after some peculiarity noticed at the time, and it was his habit to record his reasons when affixing such names.
Point Sutherland, Point Hicks, Point Upright (on account of its perpendicular cliffs). Mount Dromedary, Pigeon House, Indian Head, Cape Manifold, Point Hillock, Mount Warning, Broken Bay, the Glass Houses, and a score of other places are named for special reasons assigned, and it was morally certain that if Port Jackson had been named after one of the ship's company the fact would have been noted.
There was, moreover, internal evidence in Cook's narrative, which, though not conclusive, pointed strongly to another origin of the naming of Port Jackson. In "Cook's Journal" we find that shortly before he left New Zealand, in 1770, he wrote:—"This bay I have named Admiralty Bay, the N.W. point Cape Stephens, and the E. Point Jackson, after the two secretaries." Even if no other evidence were available it would not have been a daring assumption to suppose that Cook attached the name of the Admiralty Secretary to Port Jackson, especially when it is seen that, omitting Broken Bay and Cape Three Points (named after their configuration), the very next name given by Cook on the Australian coast, but without special reason assigned, was that of the other Admiralty Secretary to Port Stephens. Moreover, it has been ascertained that no sailor named Jackson was rated in the books of the Endeavour.[6] The error which carelessness created was fostered perhaps by the fact that Sir George Jackson changed his name to Duckett to meet the provisions of a will. The noble harbour of Sydney still rejoices in the surname given by Cook. The Duckett family endeavoured to keep alive the connection of their ancestor with the navigator by inscribing on a tombstone[7] the fact that "Captain Cook, of whom he was a zealous friend and early patron, named after him Point Jackson in New Zealand and Port Jackson in New South Wales," but carelessness and credulity almost annulled their doings. Quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulcris. Of Cook's exploits there could be no doubt. The names fixed by him still remain.
The chapter of his troubles when the Endeavour struck near Cape Tribulation, must be read in his own journal. The resolute constancy with which in that lonely spot he combated against disease—infused his own unconquerable spirit into his men-and repaired his vessel on the shore in a bay into which he had warped her, at the Endeavour River, have been shown perhaps by other sailors; but not always have like issues depended on success. The discoverer, the appropriator for his country, of a vast continent, must have had many high and ennobling thoughts to sanctify and promote his work. The loss of Cook and his ship would have been like the extinction of a dynasty. On the 7th Aug. the Barrier Reef called by Cook the "Labyrinth"-so hemmed in the Endeavour that Cook and his officers on the masthead "could see nothing but breakers all the way from the south round by the east as far as N.W., extending out to sea as far as we could see. We were surrounded on every side with dangers in so much that I was quite at a loss which way to steer when the weather will permit us to get under sail." A gale came on, the ship drove, in spite of two anchors, "until we had got down top gallant masts, struck yards and topmasts close down, and made all snug." Then the Endeavour "rid fast." Three days later she was under weigh among reefs. Cook landed on Lizard Island to obtain a view, and to his mortification discovered "another reef of rocks." He found at length a passage (still called Cook's Passage) and emerged (14th Aug.) to the eastward of the Barrier, "which gave us no small joy, after having been entangled among islands and shoals, more or less, ever since the 26th May, in which time we have sailed above 360 leagues by the lead, without ever having a leadsman out of the chains when the ship was under sail, a circumstance that perhaps never happened to any ship before, and yet it was here absolutely necessary.
Fresh dangers impended. Before daybreak (16th Aug.) "the roaring of the surf was plainly heard, and at daybreak the vast foaming breakers were too plainly to be seen not a mile from us, towards which we found the ship was carried by the waves surprisingly fast. We had at this time not an air of wind, and the depth of water was unfathomable, so that there was not a possibility of anchoring. In this distressed situation we had nothing but Providence and the small assistance that boats could give us to trust to." The yawl and long-boat towed ahead; sweeps were used abaft. "We were not above 80 or 100 yards from the breakers. The same sea that washed the side of the ship rose in a breaker prodigiously high the very next time it did rise, so that between us and destruction was only a dismal valley, the breadth of one wave, and even now no ground could be felt with 120 fathom.
"The pinnace was by this time patched up, and hoisted out, and sent to tow. Still, we had hardly any hopes of saving the ship, and full as little our lives, as we were full ten leagues from the nearest land, and the boats not sufficient to carry the whole of us. Yet, in this truly terrible situation, not one man ceased to do his utmost, and that with as much calmness as if no danger had been near. All the dangers we had escaped were little in comparison with being thrown upon this reef, where the ship must be dashed to pieces in a moment."
A light air aided the efforts of the crew; a little offing was gained, a small opening in the reef was seen a quarter of a mile away; Cook strove to gain it. "We were still in the very jaws of destruction, and it was a doubt whether or no we could reach this opening. . . . To our surprise, we found the tide of ebb rushing out like a mill-stream." Using the ebb. Cook obtained an offing of a mile and a-half. Lieut. Hicks went in the small boat to examine another small opening, and reported favourably. "It was immediately resolved to try to secure the ship in it. Narrow and dangerous as it was, it seemed to be the only means of saving her as well as ourselves. A light breeze soon after sprang up at E.N.E., with which, the help of our boats and a flood tide, we soon entered the opening, and were hurried through in a short time by a rapid tide like a mill-race, which kept us from driving against either side, though the channel was not more than a quarter of a-mile broad—having two boats ahead of us sounding. . . . The channel we came in by I have named Providential Channel. . . . It is but a few days ago that I rejoiced at having got without the reef, but that joy was nothing when compared to what I now felt at being safe at an anchor within it."
The name "Providential Channel" remains on charts to this day; but it was not until 1893 that Captain Wharton, by publishing Cook's Log, gave Cook's eloquent words to the world.
Still threading his way and naming places on the mainland until he reached Cape York, Cook entered the Endeavour Straits "in great hopes that we had at last found a passage in the Indian Seas," and "confident that the eastern coast of Australia (from lat. 38° S.) was never seen or visited by any European before us; and, notwithstanding I had in the name of His Majesty taken possession of several places upon this coast, I now once more hoisted English colours, and in the name of His Majesty King George the Third took possession of the whole eastern coast from the above latitude down to this place by the name of New South Wales,[8] together with all the bays, harbours, rivers, and islands situated upon the said coast, after which we fired three volleys of small arms, which were answered by the like number from the ship."
Having satisfied himself that he had "an open sea[9] to the westward" and that he had thus been "able to prove that New Holland and New Guinea are two separate lands or islands, which until this day hath been a doubtful point with geographers," Cook proceeded to New Guinea, having given a heritage to his countrymen beyond the power of a Kaiser to bestow. Modestly chronicling his doings at New Guinea, Savu, Batavia, and the Cape of Good Hope, Cook concluded his narrative by saying that on the 12th June, 1771, "we passed Beachy Head; at noon 'we were abreast of Dover;' on the 13th we anchored in the Downs; and soon after I landed in order to repair to London."
The formal act of taking possession of New South Wales produced no immediate results. America was yet English. The baleful stars of Grenville and North had infected the atmosphere of the government, but there might yet have been a lustration. In 1765 the accursed Stamp Act was passed; doomed to breed strife and hatred between England and her children. But the genius of Chatham, the wisdom of Camden, and the eloquence and vigour of Burke and Barre were arrayed against Grenville and his fatuous majority; and sanguine men might still have hoped that the triumph would be on the side of the wise; that America would remain a friendly gathering-ground for Englishmen seeking their fortunes in emigration ; that so great a crime as the violent severance of her colonies would not be perpetrated by English statesmen in the name of England. The Stamp Act was indeed repealed in 1766, but a declaratory Bill was passed which neutralized the effect of the repeal. Before Cook had returned from New South Wales, Lord North was minister, and maintenance of the tea-duties led to the severance of the American colonists from their kindred. Vainly did Chatham urge: "You must go through the work; you must declare you have no right to tax then they may trust you then they will have some confidence in you." By a bitter irony of fate, within a few miles of a place called "Concord," the first fratricidal blood was shed in America in 1775; and on the 4th July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was agreed to in a congress of representatives. Forced on by events, Washington and his friends, who at the commencement of the struggle desired only to restore the ancient state of things, were committed to that absolute severance of the colonies which England's enemies and the seditious among her subjects had desired from the first. French aid, French intrigues, Spanish and Dutch coalitions, an armed neutrality in Russia, without doubt hastened the end, but no earnest lover of England or America could have hoped for any good result after blood had been shed in such a cause. In 1783 the people of England paid the price for having yielded to ill-advice, and the disaffected colonies were recognized as sovereign states. With 1783 also came a change in the internal government of England. The younger Pitt, who had sympathized with his father's patriotic protests against ill-dealing with America, was called to the helm.
Little had been added to the knowledge obtained by Cook in 1770, as to Australia. Captain Furneaux, commanding the Adventure, being separated from Cook's ship, the Resolution (on Cook's second voyage), visited and explored the east coast of Van Diemen's Land, in 1778, but failed to discover that there was a strait between that island and the mainland. Cook himself (on his third voyage) visited Van Diemen's Land in 1777. He remained several days in Adventure Bay, and described the land, the vegetation, and the natives whom he saw, and whom he did not ill-treat.
These visits may have caused the statesmen in England to look with eyes of ownership on the lately-found lands. The attention of the French, however, had been invited also, and it is probable that the English government were partly actuated by a desire to forestall the French, who as early as 1772 sent two ships to explore in the South Seas. Had the French founded a colony it is not probable that under their management it would have prospered; and if it had, it would, in the ensuing wars, have fallen a prey to the English. A careful study of published and unpublished contemporary documents leaves no doubt as to the fact that the English were always on the alert to keep the French from their new South Land.
The disposal of convicts was, without doubt, one element in guiding the government to the colonization of Australia. Transportation to the States in America was rendered impossible by the war in 1775. Precise statistics as to the numbers transported thither between the years 1619 and 1784 cannot now be obtained; but an official estimate made in 1790 stated the "mercantile returns" as £40,000 per annum, "about 2000 convicts being sold for £20 each." An Act (4 Geo. IV, c. 2) explains this strange process. The court, when sentencing prisoners, was empowered to convey, transfer, and make over such offenders to the use of any persons contracting for their transportation to them. and their assigns for the term of seven years." Accordingly the "contractors" sold the prisoners in the colonies to settlers, who became the recognised "owners or proprietors" of their fellow-countrymen for a term of years. The Home government thus strove to wash its hands of responsibility, the contractors made more or less profit out of their brethren, and the colonists obtained labourers more or less valuable.
When the American Revolution ground these arrangements to powder so far as the United States were concerned, the English government sought relief from the accumulation of convicts by sending some of them to Africa.
It appears from a paper submitted to the English government in 1783 (when Fox and North were in power) that, in 1775 and 1776 746 convicts were sent to Africa; that "334 died, 271 deserted no one knows where, and of the remainder no account could be given."[10] These disastrous, if not shameful, results without doubt influenced a committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1777, in resolving—"That the plan of establishing a colony or colonies in some distant part of the globe, and in new discovered countries, where the climate is healthy, and where the means of support are attainable, is equally agreeable to the dictates of humanity and sound policy, and might prove in the result advantageous to navigation and commerce."
A second resolution was to the effect that it might be useful so to alter the laws relating to transportation to colonies and plantations in America, as to "authorize the same to any part of the globe that may be found expedient."
Sir Joseph Banks, moreover (Cook's fellow-voyager), testified before a committee of the House of Commons in 1779[11] that in his opinion "the place best adapted" for a settlement whither convicts might be transported was Botany Bay. He furnished particulars as to the needs of such a settlement with regard to food, implements, seeds, tools, &c.; and "being asked whether he conceived the mother country was likely to reap any benefit from a colony established in Botany Bay, he replied—'If the people formed among themselves a civil government, they would necessarily increase, and find occasion for many European commodities; and it was not to be doubted that a tract of land such as New Holland, which was larger than the whole of Europe, would furnish matter of advantageous return.'"
Lord North's administration was not to see his Western crimes redeemed by any successes in the East, and it may well be conceived that while war was raging in 1779, neither he nor his colleagues cared for colonization at Botany Bay. Neither did his short-lived coalition with Fox after the fall of the Shelburne ministry yield any results from the report of the committee before which Sir Joseph Banks had given evidence. It was reserved for Pitt and his friends who took office with him in Dec. 1783 to confront the problem.In 1784 an Act was passed which empowered the Crown to appoint by Order-in-Council any place deemed fitting for the transportation of convicts to it.
For a brief time it was thought that Southern Africa would be selected, and Orders-in-Council on the subject were passed in 1785.
A ship (the Nautilus) was sent to explore the African coast, but the report was to the effect that it was unfit for settlement. A discussion took place in the House of Commons on the subject (April, 1785). Burke assailed the project as cruel, and Pitt recommended him not to make statements "without any better authority than report." Let him wait for the returns called for.
(Such was the report made in the days when Parliamentary reporting made no pretensions to verbal accuracy.)
Ere long the occupation of New South Wales was resolved upon by Pitt's ministry. Orders in Council were passed, and within three years of his accession to office the plan of colonization was matured. The name of Thomas Townshend (Lord Sydney, connected by marriage with Pitt's family) was coupled with the scheme under which that plan was matured; Lord Sydney being the Secretary of State immediately charged with carrying it on. A scheme so vast in importance and so onerous in execution must nevertheless be credited to the head of the ministry of the day, without whose approval and co-operation Lord Sydney could have neither originated nor carried it out, whatever he might have suggested. It is pleasant to think that as be had joined the elder Pitt in denouncing the American war, he may, with the younger, have hoped to redress in the south the misfortunes of the west. That they had some other motive beyond the mere removal of convicts is apparent to those who reflect that there were many nearer places to which convicts could be sent at less expense, and that efforts were made as soon as possible to induce free settlers to make Australia their home. That their motives were not sufficiently apppreciated may be inferred from the fact that they were taunted with having created a settlement which would be a perpetual drain upon the mother-country for a supply of food. In 1789, a work published by subscription (by Stockdale), and dedicated to the Marquis of Salisbury (Lord Chamberlain of the Household), professed to make public all that was known of "the settlement at Sydney Cove," and to be "compiled from authentic papers obtained from the government departments." The subscription list included the names of Pitt the Prime Minister, Addington the Speaker, and many other members of Parliament, and it may fairly be assumed that the work reflected the opinions of the day as to the formation of the settlement. It stated that the expedition was "occasioned by motives of legislative policy, carried on by public authority, and concluded by a fixed establishment in a country very remote;" that the discovery of the east coast by Captain Cook gave the English the decided title of "prior discovery;" and that this, with the favourable accounts of the east coast as compared with other portions of Australia, decided "the choice of the British government in appointing a place for the banishment of a certain class of criminals;" that "the cause of the determination to send out in this manner the convicts under sentence of transportation was, as is well known, the necessary cessation of their removal to America, and the inconveniences experienced in the other modes of destination adopted after that period." Between transportation to America, and transportation to Australia, there was, however, a wide distinction. Convicts sent to America were conveyed by contractors who parted with them for a consideration to the colonists, and "were obliged to prove, by certificates, that they had disposed of the convicts according to the intention of the law." In Australia there were no colonists craving for labourers, and the government were compelled to establish a society in the first instance. Of this society in one aspect the governor might be looked upon as having been the head gaoler, but in another as the counsellor and patriarch. All laws and regulations, all care and providence for the well-being and sustenance of the infant community flowed from him.
Men in small states exhibit the same wants and require the same assistance and control as they do in large ones; and where everything had to be provided in the first instance by the government and every subsequent enterprise needed the fostering hand of the governor in promoting agriculture and the arts which sustain life, it must be confessed that man was brought face to face with an experiment of which there was no previous example, and the difficulties of which were enormously augmented by remoteness from the mother country. His was not the task of Cortes or Pizarro-to conquer and control a civilized community by force of arms. Nor had a colony been previously founded in the manner now to be attempted.
To found a colony after the manner of the Greeks, was for members of any state to migrate to a chosen site. They carried with them their slaves, numerous enough to prevent scarcity of labourers in the new land, and they were not far removed from the parent state.
To establish a military colony by dispossessing or enslaving the previous inhabitants, and by throwing over the newcomers the awful ægis of Roman protection, was merely to give to the latter with a high hand the accumulated products of previous generations of labourers and capitalists.
To neither of these methods was there anything analogous in the experiment undertaken by the ministry of Pitt. Labour was to be compulsory, but it was that of criminals under sentence. There were no fruits of other men's labour to appropriate. To preserve peace and secure order, a military force was to be maintained;[12] but it was to be maintained under governors, to whom was delegated the task of making the settlement a nucleus from which other settlements should swarm, so that the new South Continent might become the undisputed possession of the British Crown, and the future home of millions of the British people.
The problem before Pitt and his colleagues was a mixed one. He had to secure the new land for his country. He wished also to provide a place for the banishment of criminals. The restless energy with which fresh points were from time to time occupied under orders from England shows that the mere providing of a gaol was not the sole motive for the founding of New South Wales. Moreover, the commission of the first Governor gave him command of the whole east coast of Australia, a space far too wide to be required for the holding of a few convicts. That Pitt's measures have resulted in the securing of the whole continent is a fact which no one can deny. Whether other measures would have insured a similar result may be speculated upon, but cannot now be proved; neither can it be affirmed that for such other measures Pitt could have obtained the sanction of Parliament. For the politician in 1786 the question was—If this be the only practicable way of appropriating these new lands, is it, on the whole, wise so to secure them? Assuming that voluntary emigrants will go to the United States or to Canada, rather than to the antipodes, shall we, by means of transportation, insure the forced occupation of these new realms?
Weighing these considerations, it may be doubted whether the easy censure of critics, after the fact, who condemn the institution of transportation, is altogether justified, unless the objector will accept the condition that, unless it could be colonized without transportation, Australia ought not to have been colonized at all. Yet it must be owned that Bacon was right when he said that it was "a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of the people, and wicked and condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation; for they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy and do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country, to the discredit of the plantation."
Of all these evils, which Bacon foreboded, Australia has been the scene. After-generations reaped the crop sown in 1788. But the House of Commons in 1787 was not as wise as Bacon, and had he then been in it he might have yielded to the necessity of securing the land in the first instance by transporting convicts to a place so distant that no colonists would go thither at their own expense. The ancient mode of colonization could not be practised by those who could not carry with them slaves outnumbering ten times the citizens themselves.
The theory of Edward Gibbon Wakefield had not been propounded in the time of Pitt; and when it was made known, half a century later, it was scarcely understood, and only half-heartedly embraced by those who were unable to confute its propounder. To this day it is sometimes urged that its object was to do what Wakefield always denied to be even a necessary part of it. It is spoken of as if its main intention was to sell land at a high price, in order to create an immigration fund with which to import labourers and depress the cost of labour. Wakefield, on the contrary, declared that his object was to establish "a sufficient price" to prevent the unwholesome distraction of labourers from the employment most useful to the colony by the facilities afforded them in new countries to become prematurely land-owners and employers themselves.
"The putting of money," he says,[13]"into the colonial exchequer would not have been designed by the government. The getting of money by the government would be the result of selling land instead of giving it away; but as the only object of selling instead of giving is one totally distinct from that of producing revenue—namely, to prevent labourers from turning into landowners too soon—the pecuniary result would be unintended, one might almost say unexpected. So completely is production of revenue a mere incident of the price of land, that the price ought to be imposed, if it ought to be imposed under any circumstances, even though the purchase-money were thrown away. This last proposition is the sharpest test to which the theory of a sufficient price can be submitted; but if it will not stand this test, if the proposition is not true, the theory is false. Assuming it not to be false, the money arising from the sale of land is a fund raised without a purpose, unavoidably, incidentally, almost accidentally. It is a fund, therefore, without a destination. There would be no undertaking, no tacit obligation even, on the part of the government to dispose of the fund in any particular way. But if the object were the utmost possible increase of the population, wealth, and greatness of our Empire, then I can have no doubt that the revenue accruing from the sale of waste land would be called an emigration fund, and be expended in conveying poor people of the labouring class from the mother country to the colonies. . . . Altogether the effect of devoting the purchase-money of land to emigration would be to accelerate greatly the rate of colonization, and to augment more quickly than by any other disposition of the fund, the population, wealth, and greatness of the Empire."
But to commence colonizing under Wakefield's theory, there is needed a desire on the part of many persons to become owners of land in the new territory. We know that no such desire existed as regarded Australia when Pitt resolved to occupy the scene of Cook's discoveries. The intention being good, he deserves well of his country who avails himself of the only practical means of accomplishing his purpose, and there can he no doubt that Pitt's object was patriotic.[14]
A colony such as the world had never before seen had been rent from England in spite of warnings from his father. A jealous continent was banded together to aid the insurgent colonists; only the kindred race of the Germany abstaining from unfriendliness. The sun of England was said to be setting, her humiliation complete. Submitting herself not to the gusts of popular passion, nor to the exigencies of party, but to the genius of a man who rose above party and dared to keep his equal way despite the clamour of the crowd, England was able, before the federation of the United States was completed in 1789, to found a new state into which, within three generations, her children were to be absorbed by millions, and where they may yet flourish, as her children, till some ill-omened North or Grenville shall be permitted, while public attention is otherwise engaged, to commit his country to the old course of folly; or until some colonial Cleon may, to effect his own mean purposes, succeed in inducing the colonists to sever themselves from their ancestral heritage.
Fervent aspirations are felt in the colonies as well as in England for a happy continuance of union. It should be easy to maintain what so many millions desire. But man is more potent for evil than for good. Representative assemblies tolerate any conduct of their leader until they have, for their own purposes, determined to be rid of him; and mischief is often done, of which few at the time approve, and which not many have thought about at all. We ought to be wiser than our forefathers by reason of their experience, but it is to be questioned whether we are. Nay, to the extent to which material science makes men proud, some of them are so much less wise than their fore-fathers, that they would plunge back into the moral chaos which preceded Christianity. A people which builds its hopes only on material progress may prosper for a time, but the severest punishment which can be dealt to it is to allow it to obtain its end. Without patriotism, without honour, and without real friends, it will sink into a state which will enable the strong man to take away the goods to obtain which it devoted its energies. Evertere domos totas, optantibus ipsis, Di faciles. Englishmen, at home or abroad, who love their country, cannot but tremble for her future, if they see patriotism discarded in favour of sordid calculations of gain. If to be cosmopolitan be to have no ties of natural affection, and if nationality is to be cast off as a worn-out garment unfitted for the nineteenth century, the creature which will be left will be but the dregs of an Englishman, and the citizen of the world will be of a lower order than one whose joys "imprint the patriot passion on the heart."
While the German race, our kindred of the past, have yearned so intensely for a United Germany, and have wreaked their yearning into deeds; while our immediate kindred at Washington have freely cast upon the national altar the wealth which their decriers taunted them for worshipping; while other nations give signs of similar fervour,—England has been openly counselled to throw off her children, and her children are urged by the same advisers to abandon their allegiance. As yet the tempter has been rebuked and the shame avoided; but it was currently believed that had it not been for the efforts of a few, Mr. Gladstone's ministry were prepared to recommend disruption[15] of the Empire, as a portion of the policy to which England was committed in 1869.
When the colonization of New South Wales[16] was resolved upon, Lord Sydney was influential in selecting the first Governor. Trained to the sea, Arthur Phillip was successful in obtaining promotion, and after the peace of 1763 devoted himself to country pursuits. He was adventurous enough to offer his services to Portugal in her war with Spain, until the outbreak of war between England and France brought him back to active service in the English navy. After the peace of 1783 short time elapsed before, in 1786, he was appointed to the command of H.M.S. Sirius, and to lead the new band of adventurers. The powers to be conferred upon him were vast. The nature of the settlement was new; it consisted only of criminals and their custodians. A successful riot might overwhelm the government in a day, while months would elapse before the Governor could communicate with England.
Legislation was resorted to in order to convey new powers. Former statutes on the subject of transportation had legalized transportation, had empowered the Crown (24 Geo. III, cap. 56) "to appoint places within or out of His Majesty's dominions to which felons could be conveyed or transported," and had authorized a specified court "to order such offenders to be transferred to the use of any person or persons and his or their assigns, who shall contract for the due performance of such transportation." Conditional pardons were authorized. On condition of transportation offenders were to be transferred to contractors for the due performance of transportation; penalties were prescribed for attempts to rescue felons under care of contractors, and the penalty for a convict's return was death. One of the earliest statutes in 1787 (27 Geo. III, cap. 2) contains in three clauses the scheme for the new order of transportation and the constitution provided for the new colony. After reciting the provisions of 24 Geo. III, cap. 56, it declares that—
"Whereas His Majesty by two several orders bearing date respectively on the 6th day of Dec., 1786, hath judged fit by and with the advice of his Privy Council to declare and appoint the place to which certain offenders named in two lists to the said several Orders-in-Council annexed should be transported for the time or terms in their said several sentences, mentioned to be the eastern coast of New South Wales, or some one or other of the islands adjacent, and whereas Sir James Eyre knight and Sir Beaumont Hotham knight, two of the barons of His Majesty's Court of Exchequer of the Degree of the Coiffe, did (30th Dec. 1786) order that the said several offenders in the said two lists of the said several Orders-in-Council annexed should be transported to the place and for the time and terms aforesaid, and whereas it may be found necessary that a colony and a civil government should be established in the place to which such convicts shall be transported, and that a Court of Criminal Jurisdiction should also be established within such place as aforesaid with authority to proceed in a more summary way than is used within this realm according to the known and established laws thereof—
"Be it therefore enacted that His Majesty may by his Commission under the Great Seal authorize the person to be appointed Governor or the Lieutenant-Governor in the absence of the Governor of such place as aforesaid to convene from time to time as occasion may require a Court of Judicature for the trial and punishment of all such outrages and misbehaviours as if committed within this realm would be deemed and taken according to the laws of this country to be treason or misprision thereof, felony or misdemeanour, which Court shall consist of the Judge Advocate to be appointed in and for such place, together with six officers of His Majesty's forces by sea or land, which Court shall proceed to try such offenders by calling such offenders respectively before that Court and causing the charge against him, her, or them respectively to be read over; which charge shall always be reduced into writing and shall be exhibited to the said Court by the Judge Advocate, and by examining witnesses upon oath to be administered by such Court, as well for as against such offenders respectively, and afterwards adjudging by the opinion of the major part of the persons composing such Court that the party accused is or is not, as the case shall appear to them, guilty of the charge, and by pronouncing judgment therein (as upon a conviction by verdict) of death if the offence be capital, or of such corporal punishment not extending to capital punishment as to the said Court shall seem meet; and in cases not capital by pronouncing judgment of such corporal punishment not extending to life or limb as to the said Court shall seem meet."
Clause 2 provides that the provost-marshal or other officer to be appointed for that purpose by such Governor shall cause the execution of such judgment, according to the warrant under hand and seal, and not otherwise. "Provided always that execution shall not be had or done upon any capital convict or convicts unless five persons present in such court shall concur until the proceedings shall have been transmitted to His Majesty and by him approved."
Clause 3 enacts that the said court shall be a Court of Record, and have all powers incident thereto.[17]
Phillips' commission (of 2nd April) gave him power to pardon and reprieve, to "execute martial law in time of invasion or other times when by law it may be executed," to raise monies by warrant, to grant lands, &c.
Surely more vast powers were never conferred upon any individual by an Act of a legislature and the fiat of a king; and yet there is to be traced some tenderness of the life and limb of the British subject. Among a herd of criminals divisos toto orbe it was not safe to leave the Governor hampered by quirks and quibbles and forensic delays. He was therefore authorized to proceed in a more summary way than is used within this realm according to the known and established laws thereof." The Governor was also the sole chooser of his new Court of Judicature, and had power to vary its constitution so long as its members were officers of the sea or land forces; and the court had full jurisdiction over life, but no sentence short of capital punishment was to endanger life or limb. In case of emergency, capital sentences could be carried out without limitation; but the emergency was to be such as to produce almost entire unanimity in the court, or else the sentence was to be held in abeyance until approved by the king.
There were means of examining the manner in which the trust of the Governor was fulfilled, but it was "broad and general as the casing air." In action he was a despot, in accountability he was the officer of an exacting state-a state which had taken the life of a high officer for a presumed delinquency which had spared the ships of an enemy. He was not only vicegerent, charged with the awful power over life and death; on him fell also the care of the infant settlement in its most trivial affairs. For him it would be to negotiate bills on England, to influence shipments of food and necessaries, to distribute land, to foster agriculture, to settle disputes. He was himself the local Court of Appeal. From no petty trifle could he escape, from no high duty could he shrink. The wolf of necessity, or the genius of duty, was ever with him.
For such a task Arthur Phillip was selected by the ministry. The MSS. in the Record Office in London prove that his labours began before his departure from England, convey information as to the manner in which the expedition was officially planned and matured, and indicate some reluctance at the Admiralty as to the appointment of Phillip. Letters from Whitehall informed the Treasury (Aug., 1786) that crowded gaols, dangers from escapes and "from infectious distempers which may hourly be expected to break out amongst convicts," induced His Majesty to command (18th Aug.) that "measures should immediately be pursued for sending out of this kingdom such of the convicts as are under sentence of transportation." The Nautilus sloop, having explored the southern coast of Africa, between 15° 50 south and 33° south, and found it barren and unfit, His Majesty "has thought it advisable to fix upon Botany Bay as a place likely to answer" the required purposes. Seven hundred and fifty convicts, and three companies of marines, were to be sent with provisions for two years, and it was thought that "perhaps two hundred females" might be "procured from places in the neighbourhood as companions for the men." Cattle, pigs, and seed grain were to be obtained at the Cape of Good Hope, and "every possible expedition" was to be used.
On the 31st Aug. further instructions reached the Treasury from Lord Sydney, to whom Lord Howe wrote (3rd Sept., 1786), "I cannot say the little knowledge I have of Captain Phillip would have led me to select him for a service of this complicated nature, but as you are satisfied of his ability, and I conclude he will be taken under your direction, I presume it will not be unreasonable to move the King for having His Majesty's pleasure signified to the Admiralty." The marines were told that three years would probably elapse before they would be relieved. Phillip asked that ten wives in each company of marines might be allowed to go with their husbands, and (2nd Dec.) "feared much discontent in the garrison if there is no allowance of wine or spirits (to which they have been accustomed) until spruce beer can be procured for them."
The Prime Minister's hand is seen even in the management of details. The paramount control of his advice can only be inferred. A memorandum still preserved in the Record Office in London conveys a promise (13th Dec.) from Sir Charles Middleton to "furnish Mr. Pitt with the information required as far as the state of the business will admit as soon as possible, probably this evening or early to-morrow." On the 28th Dec. a secretary at the Admiralty sent, for "the information of Mr. Pitt," an estimate of the cost of the marines for three years—£45,752.[18]Phillip showed in London his care for the natives of Australia. He hoped to "furnish them with everything that can tend to civilize them, and to give them a high opinion of their new guests." Convicts should have no intercourse with them, for if they had, "the arms of the natives will be very formidable in their hands, the women abused, and the natives disgusted." Convicts should "ever remain separated from the garrison and other settlers that may come from Europe, and not be allowed to mix with them even after the seven or fourteen years for which they are transported may be expired." At a later date (March, 1787), he wrote "Any man who takes the life of a native will be put on his trial the same as if he had killed any of the garrison. This appears to me not only just, but good policy. He descanted on the administration of justice and capital punishment. A strange notion was discussed, viz., sending murderers and those guilty of unnatural crimes to an island where cannibalism existed, and might make an end of them; but as to his own territory, the laws of England would, of course, be introduced-and there is one that I would wish to take place from the moment His Majesty's forces take possession of the country: that there can be no slavery in a free land, and consequently no slaves."
From Oct., 1786, to May, 1787, Phillip corresponded with various departments, as to supplies, appointments, dismissals, procurement of flax from New Zealand and bread-fruit from the Friendly Islands,[19] the power of changing the "species of provisions" to be issued in the colony, of suspending and sending home any officer who "from his situation cannot be tried by court-martial," trials by courts, and other questions.
It must be left to me to fix on Botany Bay if I find it a proper place; if not, to go to a port a few leagues to the northward, where there appeared to be a good harbour and several islands." Lord Sydney replied that there could be no objection to Phillip establishing the principal settlement where he thought fit, "but at the same time you must understand that you are not allowed to delay the disembarkation of the establishment upon the pretence of seeking a more eligible place than Botany Bay." On the 12th March, Phillip wrote:—
"I am prepared to meet difficulties, and I have only one fear. I fear, my lord, that it may be said hereafter, the officer who took charge of the expedition should have known that it was more than probable he lost half the garrison and convicts crowded and victualled in such a manner for so long a voyage; and the public, believing it rested with me, may impute to my ignorance or inattention what I have never been consulted in, and which never coincided with my ideas;-to avoid which is the purport of this letter, and I flatter myself that your lordship will hereafter point out the situation in which I have stood through the whole of this business, should it ever be necessary."
A glimpse at some of the obstacles encountered is afforded by a note from Phillip urging Under-Secretary Nepean to apply for "such forms as are issued for holding Vice-Admiralty Courts." "If I apply it is more than probable that I may not succeed." Nevertheless he fared better than he would if Lord Sydney had not been his patron, and Nepean had not been his friend. He pleaded earnestly for a supply of essence of malt or other anti-scorbutic. The situation in which the magistrates sent the women on board the Lady Penrhyn stamps them with infamy (the poor creatures were)-almost naked and very filthy."
On the 27th April Phillip received his formal commission and instructions,[20] and on the following day a dormant commission naming Captain J. Hunter as successor in case of Phillip's death or absence.
A source of lasting trouble revealed itself amongst the guards of the convicts while the fleet was slowly receiving its heterogeneous freight. Lord Sydney told Phillip (5th May) that it was "not thought advisable that the marines should be constantly supplied with wine or spirits," but that as on special occasions such addition to rations might be required, Phillip might at Rio Janeiro or the Cape of Good Hope obtain, through the commissary, bills for £200 to purchase wine or spirits, but "no further quantity will hereafter be allowed for that purpose." This unwise relegation, to a distant officer in time of difficulty, of a question which ought to have been decided at headquarters, where there was a possibility of supplying the places of insubordinate marines, was rendered less immediately harmful by the marines themselves. Some of them had petitioned in April against being "cut off from having any allowance of grog at their destined port, Botany Bay, contrary to the promise made to them at head-quarters," &c., and on the 4th and 7th May others in several of the ships, then at the Mother Bank, reiterated the complaint, which Lord Sydney set at rest, for a time, on the 10th May, by writing that, "wishing to remove any possible cause of dissatisfaction," he extended the permission to the three years contemplated, but "no further supplies of that sort will be allowed." Thus, unpresciently, did he write on a question which was to rack and disgrace the new settlement for years.
The "first fleet," under which designation Phillip's squadron became a household word for generations in Australia, began to assemble at its appointed rendezvous, the Mother Bank, about the 16th March, 1787.[21] The man-of-war Sirius conveyed the Governor, and the armed tender Supply accompanied him. Three storeships, the Golden Grove, Fishburn, and Borrowdale were freighted with provisions, implements of husbandry, and clothing for the convicts. Six transports carried the convicts, and a guard of marines accompanied each transport. It appears from a return dated 15th April, 1787,[22] that the total number of souls in the fleet was—of officers, marines (with twelve children), 253; of convicts (with eleven children), 729.
On the 13th May the fleet sailed, accompanied by the frigate Hyena, deputed to attend it through the Channel, "the most difficult part of the voyage," and to return with despatches. She returned on the 20th, taking no "account of the state of the transports, for the sea at that time ran so high that the Governor found it difficult even to sit to write, and quite impracticable to send on board the several ships for exact reports of their situation, and of the behaviour of the convicts." In this short space of time, however, the convicts on board the Scarborough had formed a plan for seizing the ship, and two ringleaders, having been taken on board the Sirius for "proper chastisement," were removed into the Prince of Wales. An early chronicler expatiated upon the flourishing state of navigation which. thus enabled England "without hesitation to send out a fleet to plant a settlement near the antipodes."
Phillip wrote (by the Hyena), "The provost-martial, who had not been seen for a considerable time before we sailed, is left behind; as it will be very necessary to have such an officer on the spot, I have ordered Mr. Henry Brewer to act as such, and shall be very glad if he is approved of."
Phillip touched at Teneriffe, to obtain water and vegetables. On the 5th Aug. the fleet anchored at Rio Janeiro. There Phillip received marked attention from the Governor, Don Lewis de Varconcellos, obtained provisions, procured tobacco and other seeds, orange and lemon trees, coffee, indigo, cotton, and other plants, and sailed away on the 4th Sept. Phillip's knowledge of Spanish was grateful to his hosts, and useful. Besides an official report (2nd Sept.), he wrote (to "My dear Nepean"): "At the Cape I shall have more time, for here, as the only one that understands the language, I have been obliged to be linguist and commissary."
On the 13th Oct. the fleet anchored at the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch Governor hospitably entertained his visitors, and Phillip took in provisions and live stock. "The ships, having on board not less than 500 animals of different kinds, but chiefly poultry, put on an appearance which naturally enough excited the idea of Noah's ark." On the 12th Nov. the ships left Table Bay. After much baffling wind, being only eighty leagues eastward of the Cape on the 25th Nov., Phillip left the Sirius and went on board the Supply,[23] hoping to examine the country at Botany Bay, and fix upon the best site for the colony before the arrival of the transports. Lieutenant P. G. King accompanied Phillip in the Supply, which reached Botany Bay on the 18th Jan., 1788. On the 19th the Alexander, Scarborough, and Friendship arrived, and on the 20th the Sirius, with the remainder of the convoy, the whole fleet having rounded Van Diemen's Land in their course.
Phillip was not satisfied with any site at Botany Bay, and on the 22nd he proceeded, with three boats, "to examine Port Jackson, a bay mentioned by Captain Cook, immediately to the north." Here all doubt and disappointment vanished. The prime necessity of a noble harbour for shipping was doubtless first in Phillip's thoughts, and such a harbour he said he found in "the finest in the world, in which a thousand sail of the line might ride in the most perfect security."
But no one ever entered Port Jackson—with its jutting promontories, its retreating coves, its fringe of shrubs and trees interspersed with brilliant flowers, its picturesque rocks, its apparently unending wealth and variety of shapes and windings, whether of water or of land—without feeling within him a spring of wondering pleasure. With such feelings the breasts of Phillip and his companions must have glowed. But work was his immediate object. He promptly examined the different coves, and selected one which he named Sydney Cove, after Lord Sydney, the Secretary of State. There he found a spring of water available for close-anchoring ships. Fresh from visiting Rio Janeiro, he yet told Lord Sydney: "This harbour is in extent and security very superior to any that I have ever seen." On the 24th he returned to Botany Bay, noticing at sea two French ships, which he rightly concluded to be the discovery ships Astrolabe and Boussole, under La Perouse. On the 25th he sailed in the Supply to Port Jackson, ordering the remainder of the ships to follow on the 26th. On the 26th also La Perouse anchored with the Astrolabe and Boussole in Botany Bay, being offered assistance and information by the English.[24] On the same day Phillip displayed his colours on shore, assembled his officers "round the flagstaff, drank the king's health and success to the settlement, with all that display of form which on such occasions is deemed propitious," and founded the town of Sydney. Time and labour were required to effect the landing of the convicts, and the Governor was personally active in planning and in directing his subordinates.
On the 7th Feb., 1788, with due solemnity, he gathered his subjects on a space previously cleared. The military were drawn up under arms; the convicts were stationed apart. The Governor's officers surrounded him. The royal commission was read by the Judge-Advocate. The brief, but comprehensive, Act of Parliament already quoted was read aloud, with the letters patent empowering the proper persons to hold the courts sanctioned by the Act. "A triple discharge of musketry concluded this part of the ceremony, after which Governor Phillip advanced and thanked the private soldiers for their steady good conduct on every occasion," and then turned to his new subjects—the prisoners. He bade them recollect that already most of them had forfeited their lives to the justice of their country, yet by the lenity of its laws they were now so placed that by industry and good behaviour they might regain the advantages they had forfeited. They were now far from temptation. There was little to plunder, and amongst so small a community detection was certain. He could hold out no hope of mercy to the guilty, nor indeed to any offenders. What mercy could do for them they had already experienced; nor could any good be now expected from those whom neither past warnings nor the peculiarities of their present situation could preserve from guilt." While offenders would be rigorously dealt with, good conduct would be rewarded. The tendency to profligacy he denounced as injurious to the settlement, and he promised countenance and assistance to those who, by contracting marriages, would manifest a desire "to conform to the laws of morality and religion."
The first public English speech on Australian soil was received with acclamation, and in the following week the Governor might feel the satisfaction of success, inasmuch as fourteen marriages then took place among the convicts.[25] In May, 1788, Phillip wrote: "The very small proportion of females makes the sending out an additional number absolutely necessary, for I am certain that your lordship will think that to send for women from the islands in our present situation would answer no other purpose than that of bringing them to pine away a few years in misery."
It is equally necessary and interesting to glance at the component parts of the new colony thus established. One thousand and thirty persons are said to have been landed, but this number differs from that stated in the return dated 15th April, 1787. Ten were civil officers; the military, including officers, were 212; accompanying the military there were wives and children, and other free persons considerably raised the free population. Deaths at sea had reduced the number of convicts, and only about 700 were landed at Sydney. In guarding, controlling, and extorting labour from 700 prisoners the Governor had a task with which some men might have been content, his adult assistants being little more than 200 in number. But he had also a town to found, land to clear, seed to sow, and crops to wait for. The products of Rio Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope were to be planted with careful hands, and the result awaited with anxious hearts. Meantime, with the future in his thoughts, there were houses or huts to be built to shelter the community, from which, as a whole, the Governor could expect little sympathy or genuine help. It is true that the number of men under long sentences of imprisonment was small, thirty-six being transported for life, twenty for fourteen years, and the remainder for seven years. Many of the latter class had passed through several years of their sentences, and might be looked upon as desirous to shake off in a new country the stain they had acquired in the old. No savages, however, were more reckless of anything beyond the humour of the hour than some British criminals; and such a class, though it bears mournful testimony to the truths which are taught from the pulpit, is as little careful to obey human laws as to think of the Divine. And yet even about the worst of our race there cling some traces of the image they have defaced. They form friendships, have like affections with other men, and will do acts of kindness which, measured by their means, would put to shame some charities which are extolled as munificent. It is not only amongst condemned criminals that may be found a roll of wrongs done or duties neglected. This army of convicts had formed friendships on its voyage amongst the mariners, and one of the earliest sources of trouble was the landing of the sailors from the transports, bringing spirits to carouse with their acquaintances among the prisoners. The consequences were debauchery and riot.
As early as 11th Feb. a court was assembled; one of the prisoners was ordered to receive one hundred and fifty lashes for an assault; another, for taking some biscuit from a comrade, "was sentenced to a week's confinement on bread and water on a small rocky island near the entrance[26] of the cove." A third, sentenced to receive fifty lashes, was pardoned by the Governor. Before the end of the month a plot for robbing the provision store was detected, although at the time the quantity of provisions supplied was the same for soldier, officer, and convict. With but scant stores of food, and far from any port of supply, the Governor was bound at all risks, and for the sake of the convicts themselves, to guard with care the little he had. One man at once suffered death, and others were sentenced to banishment from the settlement.[27] On the following day the Governor, having made an example, pardoned some offenders, one of them on condition of his becoming the public executioner.
To conform to his special instructions, Phillip, within a few weeks of his arrival, deputed Philip Gidley King, second lieutenant of the Sirius, to establish a settlement at Norfolk Island. Phillip sent to Lord Sydney a copy of the instructions given to King, adding "and I beg leave to recommend him as an officer of merit, and whose perseverance in that or any other service may be depended on.[28] King was instructed by Phillip to take measures
"for securing yourself and people, and for the preservation of stores and provisions, and immediately to proceed to the cultivation of the flax plant, growing spontaneously on the island, as also of cotton, corn, and other plants, with the seeds of which you are furnished, and which you are to regard as public stock, and of the increase of which you are to send me an account, that I may know what quantity may be drawn from the island for public use, or what supplies it may be necessary to send hereafter."To enable King to administer the law, he was sworn in as a justice of the peace, but capital crimes were reserved for the sentence of the Criminal Court of Judicature at Sydney. The instructions given to King afford a clue to the conduct of Phillip at head-quarters. The nature of the soil, its fitness for various productions, the prevailing winds, the tides, the changes of season, were to be carefully noted. No decked boat but the one intrusted to King was to be allowed at the island, and
"if by any accident any vessel or boat that exceeds twenty feet keel should be driven on the island, you are immediately to cause such boat or vessel to be scuttled, or otherwise rendered unserviceable, letting her remain in that situation until you receive further directions from me. You will be furnished with six months' provisions, within which time you will receive an additional supply, but as you will be able to procure fish and vegetables, you are to endeavour to make the provisions you receive serve as long as possible. The convicts being the servants of the Crown, till the time for which they are sentenced is expired, their labour is to be for the public, and you are to take particular notice of their general good or bad behaviour, that they may hereafter be employed or rewarded according to their different merits. You are to cause the prayers of the Church of England to be read with all solemnity every Sunday, and you are to enforce a due observance of religion and good order, transmitting to me, as often as opportunity offers, a full account of your particular situation and transactions. You are not to permit any intercourse or trade with any ships or vessels that may stop at the island, whether English or of any other nation, unless such vessels should be in distress, in which case you are to afford them such assistance as may be in your power."[29]
(12th February, 1788.)
Such was the spirit which guided Arthur Phillip in governing the new state committed to his care, and in instructing his subordinates; and though his care and valour may appear to the frivolous "a little out of fashion," it cannot be doubted that his manly sense of duty impressed itself strongly upon the frame of the colonial government, and continued amidst many changes and deflections to act as a power upon the management of affairs long after Phillip had left the scene. The old saw "quantula sapientia gubernatur mundus" is daily proved to be true; but there is a compensating truth. When some good, great, or competent man has established the affairs of a state, or of a private undertaking, upon a firm foundation, his successors may, and often do, without genius or capacity, successfully control, on the system they find at work, matters which are in their scope far beyond the understanding of the new managers. A road may be difficult to make, but it generally requires no genius to keep it in repair. There may be traced in the early days of the Australian colonies an habitual outward respect for law, a deference to constituted authority, and an orderly behaviour, which would hardly have been looked for amongst those who formed the bulk of the original population, and the existence of which may be partly accounted for by the precepts and practice of the first Governor. It was his aim to make the colony self-supporting as soon as possible, but the soil near Sydney was rocky and sandy. This fact must have been plain even to those unskilled in agriculture, but the advantage of having his criminal subjects concentrated near his seaport and capital would no doubt outweigh, in the Governor's mind, the objections arising from poverty of the soil. In spite of all difficulties, however, experiments were made in various localities. Parramatta (called at first Rose Hill, before the native name was known to the Governor) was the first place at which farming on any considerable scale was attempted. There, four years after the foundation of Sydney, more than 1700 acres were in cultivation. It must excite a smile to reflect that the agricultural settlement at Norfolk Island in 1791 exceeded that at Parramatta. There were then at Parramatta thirty-five grantees, holding in their several names a total of 1640 acres. At Norfolk Island there were fifty-two grantees, holding amongst them 2620 acres. All but one of the Parramatta settlers were convicts. Only ten at Norfolk Island were convicts, the remainder being marines or sailors. The free settlers at Norfolk Island held 60 acres each, the convicts 10. The one free settler at Parramatta was taken to the colony as agricultural superintendent. He held 140 acres. The convict settlers held farms of various areas, ranging from 70 to 30 acres, while one was limited to 20.
Naturally it was an object of intense anxiety with Phillip to supply his community with food;[30] but with roads to make, wharves, barracks, and houses to build, live stock to breed, and laws to administer, the progress of agriculture was slow. King was desired to report how soon Norfolk Island could maintain its inhabitants; whether it could absorb more; whether those already on the island were content to remain; what land was in cultivation (Aug., 1788); and generally on the state of affairs. He reported that in two years it might be hoped that the existing population might be maintained by home production; that with twenty more men and women he might make more rapid progress in clearing and cultivating; that he had not found one square yard naturally clear; that he had[31] "two acres and a-half in barley, and one acre in garden ground; in Sept. I shall have an acre in Indian corn and rice;" that there was no safe anchorage, and that vessels were compelled to remove to the lee side of the island as the wind changed; that the productions of the island were timber for shipbuilding, spars, and, "when the flax-plant can be worked, a sufficiency of cordage for the navy of Great Britain, which needs no cultivation, as the island abounds with it, and fresh leaves shoot from the roots;" that everyone was satisfied, and no one wished to be relieved; that occasionally when men could be spared to row, a plentiful supply of fish was obtained. Rats had been so destructive as to tax the ingenuity of the settlers to thin and destroy them.
It was plain that whatever might be done in after-years, an immediate supply of food was problematical. By Dec. 1791, nearly 1000 bushels of wheat and 500 of maize were harvested at Norfolk Island; but before that time arrived the settlements both there and at Sydney were reduced almost to starvation. Grumblers in the House of Commons denounced the whole scheme of colonization as absurd, and prophesied that the colony could never be self-supporting, but would continually tax the mother-country to feed it.
Phillip was wise enough to urge that free emigrants should be encouraged to try their fortunes, bringing with them the capital so sorely needed, with which they might bring land into cultivation, and spread their stock over the hills where pasture was annually wasted.
Before all the stores had been landed from his ships he wrote: (9th July) "If fifty farmers were sent out with their families they would do more in one year in rendering this colony independent of the mother-country, as to provisions, than a thousand convicts." Meantime, on importations "alone I depend." On the 10th July (1788) he suggested that immigrant farmers should be The
"supported by government for two or three years, and have the labour of a certain number of convicts to assist them for that time sending out settlers who will be interested in the labour of the convicts and in the cultivation of the country appears to me to be absolutely necessary. Lands granted to officers and settlers will, I presume, be on condition of a certain proportion of the land so granted being cultivated or cleared within a certain time, which time and quantity can only be determined by the nature of the ground and situation of the lands."
Officers cultivating lands must "likewise be allowed convicts, who must be maintained at the expense of the Crown."
Despatches from Whitehall (24th Aug., 1789)[32] which authorized grants to non-commissioned officers and marines, also instructed Phillip that he might give to other settlers grants of land to "such amount as you shall judge proper," and assign to each grantee the service of any number of convicts he might "judge sufficient to answer their purpose," the settlers maintaining and feeding the convicts, and paying annual quit-rent on the lands after five years' occupation. Teachers of tillage would be sent. The Secretary of State "flattered" himself that after the autumn "very little further aid would be wanted" in the colony. The nine instructors were hired for three years at £40 a year with rations, and during their engagement were "not to be allowed to settle any land on their own account." Between each of the grants made Phillip was to make reserves for the Crown. He was also to make reserves for fortifications, &c., for edifices, for "growth and production of naval timber, if there are any woods fit for that purpose," and for church sites, with glebes of 400 adjacent acres, and 200 acres for school purposes.
Phillip did not receive these instructions until June 1790. They shall be obeyed" (he writes), but if settlers could be sent out many difficulties would be "removed. . . . They appear to me to be absolutely necessary." It would be little less than two years before the lands would " support the cultivators."
Of the instructors sent only five had arrived, and "one only is a farmer; . . . the two gardeners are said to be lost, having left the ship (Guardian) in a small boat after that unfortunate accident which deprived the colony of those supplies which had been so liberally provided by the government." In July, 1790, replying to inquiries as to when the colony would be able to support itself, he told the Secretary of State, "it will depend upon the numbers employed in agriculture."
". . . Experience has taught me how difficult it is to make men industrious who have passed their lives in habits of vice and indolence. In some cases it has been found impossible; neither kindness nor severity have had any effect, (though in general the convicts) behave well. There are many who dread punishment less than they fear labour, hence; my being so desirous of having a few settlers, to whom, as the first settlers, I think every possible encouragement should be given. In them I should have some resource.
Again (5th Nov., 1791) he represented the need of "a few honest, intelligent settlers. Precept has little effect, but example will do much." In Dec., 1791, he deplored that he had received no answer as "to settlers being sent out, which is so much to be desired. I allude to settlers who are farmers or planters, and who are possessed of some property."
The original instructions as to grants of land to settlers and to non-commissioned officers and marines did not contemplate, in terms, grants to superior officers, and Phillip reported that several officers desired "grants of land, which they would cultivate for their own advantage while they remain in the country, and convey to children or others on return to Europe." He asked for "such information on this head as your lordship may judge necessary for my guidance."
The capable Henry Dundas conveyed the answer from Whitehall in July, 1792 (having previously ordered supplies of "grain and live stock" to be sent from the East Indies from time to time).
"In answer to the request made by several of the military and civil officers to have grants of land made to them which they may dispose of at their departure, I do not foresee that any inconvenience can arise from your complying with their requisition, provided the allotments are made, not with a view to a temporary, but to an established settlement thereon—that is, comprehending such portions of land and in such situations as would be suitable for a bond-fide settler, should it ever come into the hands of such a person."
Previously Dundas had written:—
"With respect to the officers, non-commissioned officers, and such convicts whose time of transportation has expired, who propose to become settlers, His Majesty's servants do not think it either advisable or necessary to limit you to any number of convicts to be assigned to individuals so widely differing in situation of life, character, and description; but from the opinion they entertain of your prudence and discretion, they leave you to decide upon a point which must be in a great degree decided by your knowledge of the character and ability of those to whom convicts are to be assigned."
Dundas strongly urged that the increase of live stock should be encouraged. Some could be obtained from the Cape of Good Hope, "but it is to Bengal that I chiefly look for an efficient supply of that nature." He enclosed a list of emigrants[33] who had embarked in the Bellona, which showed that Dorsetshire led the way in meeting Phillip's wishes.
Before he received instructions as to the quantity of land he might grant, Phillip wrote (4th Oct., 1792) that he did not object to officers cultivating land, but he had not convicts enough to assign labour to them all, though already he had assigned fifty-one to Major Grose and those under his command. After Phillip's departure, Grose was restrained by no public considerations in assigning convicts to officers, and while Phillip still held the reins, Grose urged (Oct., 1792, Dundas' instructions not having then arrived) that officers ought to have grants of land so that they might grow food. "One half of the ground allotted a convict who becomes a settler would be a matter of more accommodation than may be supposed;" but the Governor was without instructions on the point. The same volume (Record Office) which contains Grose's urgency of Oct. comprises a previous letter from him lauding the colony as furnishing "vegetables in great abundance. . . . I live in as good a house as I wish for. . . . I am given the farm of my predecessor, which produces a sufficiency to supply my family with everything I have occasion for. (There was wanting only one ship freighted with corn and black cattle, and) all difficulties would be over."
Phillip had taken a wider view of the needs of the colony, and it may be well to cite one of the careful warnings with which he supplied the Secretary of State as to its general condition and requirements. He wrote:—
"I beg leave to observe (Feb., 1790) that if settlers are sent out, and the convicts divided amongst them, this settlement will very shortly maintain itself, without which the country cannot be cultivated to advantage. At present I have only one person, with about 100 convicts under his direction, who is employed cultivating the ground for the public benefit, and he has returned the quantity of corn above-mentioned into the public store. The officers have not raised sufficient to support the little stock they have. Some ground I have had in cultivation will return about 40 bushels of wheat into store, so that the produce of the labour of the convicts employed in cultivation has been very short of what might have been expected. This I take the liberty of pointing out to your lordship in this place, to show as fully as possible the state of the colony, and the necessity of the convicts being employed by those who have an interest in their labour. The giving convicts to officers has been hitherto necessary, but it is attended with many inconveniences, for which the advantages arising to officers do not make amends. It will not, therefore, be continued after this detachment is relieved, unless particularly directed. . . . The numbers employed in cultivation will, of course, be increased as the necessary buildings are finished, which will be a work of time, for the numbers in the settlement who do nothing towards their own support exceed those employed for the public."
He proposed at the same time to place his free settlers on the banks of the Nepean river, where there was "as fine land for tillage as most in England." He would grant from 500 to a 1000 acres to each farmer; he would give to each at least twenty convict labourers, and would for two years support the labourers "from the public stores. In that time, if they are
"industrious, they will be in a situation to support themselves, and I do not think they would be able to do so in less time. At the expiration of two years they may return half the convicts they have been allowed, and would want no further assistance from government. It may be necessary to grant land to officers and soldiers, who, becoming settlers, will, of course, be entitled to every indulgence. But few officers now here have reaped any great advantage from being allowed convicts, and it is attended with unavoidable inconvenience, from their convicts being left much to themselves, and from their mixing with the soldiers."
Phillip never allowed the government to lull themselves into a conviction that the colony could exist without supplies from England. He told them (May, 1788) that he had sent the Supply to Lord Howe Island "to endeavour to procure turtle, in hopes of checking the scurvy with which most of the people were effected, and near 200 rendered incapable of doing any work." As early as July, 1788, he wrote (privately):—
"Your lordship may be assured that, anxious to render a very essential service to my country by the establishment of a colony which from its situation must hereafter be a valuable acquisition to Great Britain, no perseverance will be wanting on my part, and which consideration alone could make amends for the being surrounded by the most infamous of mankind. It is to your lordship and to Nepean alone that I make a declaration of this kind. Time will remove all difficulty, and with a few families who have been used to the cultivation of land, this country will wear a more pleasing aspect. As to myself, I am satisfied to remain so long as my services are wanted. I am serving my country and serving the cause of humanity. I flatter myself that by the return of the ships that bring us out provisions, and on which is placed our sole dependence, I shall be able to give your lordship a more satisfactory account of this country."
He wrote by the transport ships which, with Lieut. Shortland, agent for them, sailed northwards in May, sent duplicates by another vessel, and triplicates by the Borrowdale; but again (1st Sept.), thinking it "not impossible that the ships by which I have now the honour of writing may be the first to arrive," he carefully recapitulated the heads of his former letters. A dreary interval was to elapse before he received answers to any of them.
It was not until 1789 that the gallant Riou was despatched with supplies in the Guardian, which were arrested (23rd Dec.) by an iceberg. Even this abortive attempt to relieve them was for many months unknown to the starving colonists, and Phillip resorted to stringent means in order to husband the scanty stores he possessed. He determined to send H.M.S. Sirius to Africa for food, and told Lord Sydney (Oct., 1788), "We at present depend entirely on provisions being sent from England, and I beg leave to observe that if a ship should be lost in the passage, it might be a very considerable time before it could be known in England."
The Sirius sailed, under Captain J. Hunter, R.N., to the Cape of Good Hope. The passage from Australia to Africa was then untried. It was not known that Bass's Straits separated Van Diemen's Land from New Holland, and Hunter decided to pass to the southward of New Zealand and round Cape Horn. The voyage to the Cape lasted from the 2nd Oct. to the 2nd Jan., and the dreaded scurvy appeared among the crew, who had "for thirteen or fourteen months not tasted fresh provisions of any kind, nor had they touched a single blade of vegetables." At the Cape only did Captain Hunter learn any of the political events which had occurred in Europe after the departure of the first fleet for New South Wales, two years before. There also he heard that Lieut. Shortland, who had sailed from Sydney in July 1788, had reached Batavia in a distressed condition, with but one ship, the Alexander, the other transports, with the exception of the Friendship, having lost his company. Scurvy had raged in the Alexander and her consort, and the latter struck on a reef on the coast of Borneo. The Alexander had lost "eight men, and was reduced to two men in a watch, only four seamen and two boys being at all fit for duty." "The Friendship had only five men not disabled." "In this melancholy state of both ships, the western monsoon being expected soon to set in, it was indispensably necessary to give up one for the sake of preserving the other." The Friendship's stores were removed into the Alexander, and the former "was bored and turned adrift." When but one seaman was fit for work, and even the sails could not be furled, the Alexander reached Batavia, and begged assistance from the Dutch (18th Nov.). Assistance was given promptly and humanely. From other English vessels, with the assistance of a few from the Dutch Commodore, a fresh crew was at length made up, in which four only of the original seamen remained, the rest being either dead or not enough recovered to return with the Alexander when she sailed again on the 7th Dec." When Hunter boarded her at Table Bay (18th Feb.) he was received with hearty cheers by his remaining friends. Such were the struggles of English seamen in the southern hemisphere. Tante molis erat (longinquam) condere gentem.
On the 20th Feb., with such accounts to render of the fortunes of his old comrades, Hunter sailed from Table Bay with twelve months' provisions for the ship's company and six months' supply of flour for the settlement at Sydney, every officer's apartment and all the store-rooms being completely filled."
In May, 1789, the Sirius arrived at Sydney. Her supplies were welcome, but they could not permanently alter the condition of the settlement. No tidings from England had reached the colony. Such disastrous voyages as that of the Alexander might indefinitely strangle the hope of receiving fresh supplies. It might be that the new experiment would end in gloom, like that of the French essay at colonizing in Cayenne in 1763, when (although two years' provisions had been carried with them) thousands of persons were annihilated utterly by fever, famine, and an overwhelming flood.
If the French might be thought unskilful in contending with the elements, was there not the rumoured fate in 1629 of hardy Dutchmen, prone to navigation and successful abroad? Was it not written that while Captain Pelsaert left comrades on an island on the west coast of Australia, and went in a skiff to Batavia, his countrymen were at deadly feud, and that before the captain returned with aid from Batavia, 125 persons had been murdered by mutineers? Was it not written of Pelsaert and his friends, that "after mature deliberation, reflecting on the number of prisoners, and the temptation that might arise from the vast quantity of silver on board the frigate, they at last came to a resolution to try and execute them there, which was accordingly done, and they embarked immediately afterwards for Batavia?"
If these things could happen on the west coast amongst free men, what might not happen in the more remote east, in a community of criminals with scant guards to control them? Such thoughts must have passed through the minds of many of the bold men who now in the South had reared the flag of England. But whatever may have been their forecast, a strict performance of duty was their practice. The imminent present furnished enough to think of. How long could the scanty stores of food be guarded against a craving band of convicts, outnumbering so many times their guardians? Nay, worse. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
When Hunter returned from the Cape, he says, "Another melancholy piece of information we received on our arrival was that six marines had been tried by a criminal court and found guilty of robbing the public stores; they were sentenced to death and executed accordingly." This was in May, 1789. In Jan., 1790 (Hunter wrote):—
"The conversation turned upon the long expected arrivals from England, which we had been for some time past in daily expectation of, with a supply of provisions. Our store here was now in a very exhausted state, much more so than we ever expected it would have been; as it was always understood that the settlement would never have been reduced lower than one year's provisions in store. We all looked forward with hope for arrivals with a relief. In February[34] we began to look a little I received an order to serious on our disappointment of arrivals; prepare the Sirius for sea, and to embark the Lt.-Gov. (Ross) with one company of marines, and the officers, baggage, and also 186 convicts; in all, 221 persons; and I was directed to land them upon Norfolk Island."
At Norfolk Island, in Jan., 1789, there was a plot to seize the Lt.-Governor and his officers, and obtain a vessel for the convicts to escape with. The scheme was discovered and its concocters were punished, but it was well to strengthen the force on the island. Phillip (Feb., 1790) described the plot to Lord Sydney, and commended the conduct of King, whose force, including himself, was only sixteen in number, while there were fifty-one male convicts and twenty-three females to control.
At head-quarters Phillip set a personal example. Collins wrote:—[35]
"The Governor, from a motive that did him immortal honour, in this season of general distress gave up three hundred-weight of flour which was His Excellency's private property, declaring that he wished not to see any more at his table than the ration which was received in common from the public store, without any distinction of persons; and to this resolution he rigidly adhered, wishing that if a convict complained he might see that want was not unfelt even at Government House."
Such a man's motives were regarded with respect, even when he ordered the marines to death for stealing provisions. He maintained a cheerful countenance throughout this dreary period. Not only was the daily work of the settlement performed, but exploring expeditions were at various times sent out to discover what kind of land surrounded the settlement. Numerous efforts were made by Phillip to conciliate the aborigines. Alas! where the evil passions of a low subordinate may destroy in a moment all the effect of a leader's patient kindness, that kindness cannot be judged by its fruit.
Phillip had many troubles with his white subjects. Collins tells us (April, 1789): "Attention to our religious duties[36] was never omitted. Divine service was performed in one of our emptied storehouses on the morning of Good Friday, and the convicts were recommended to employ the remainder of it in their gardens. But . . . very few were observed to be so profitably employed."
Little forethought or assistance on the part of the convicts could be relied upon. When the Sirius and Supply had been about to sail for Norfolk Island in March, 1790, an order was issued to prevent the further destruction of live stock until some necessary regulations could be published, but the officers and people about to embark were not included in the prohibition." The mention of future regulations alarmed the convicts lest they should lose the benefits of their ownership in some manner, and Collins adds that, "under colour of its belonging to those who were exempted in the late order, nearly all the stock in the settlement was in the course of a few nights destroyed; a wound being thereby given to the independence of the colony that could not easily be salved, and whose injurious effects time and much attention alone could remove."
Many an hour of anxious care Phillip bestowed on the lives of his dumb subjects, on whose increase so much depended; and many times his care was thwarted. In April, 1788, on returning from exploration, he learned that five ewes and a lamb had been destroyed at the government farm. In May, 1788, there were two bulls and five cows at the settlement. In the end of that month, "by some strange and unpardonable neglect" of the convict herdsman (who did not report the loss at once), two bulls and four cows wandered away, and no search party was successful in recovering them. In Oct., 1788, the sole remaining cow, becoming wild and dangerous, was condemned to be shot. And in March, 1790, the convicts madly destroyed the greater part of the sheep, pigs, and fowls, because they dreaded, perhaps without cause, that they might lose some rights of separate ownership.
Commanders of expeditions in Arctic regions have found that amusements have lightened the toils and foiled the hardships undergone by their companions. Phillip resorted to the same expedient. In June, 1789, on the King's birthday, he permitted the convicts to perform the "Recruiting Officer" in a hut fitted up to serve as a theatre.[37] But though he might temporarily cheer his motley subjects he could hardly expect to restrain their wildness or despair. What hope was there for the settlement unless the Sirius should succeed in her voyage? After reaching Norfolk Island she was to proceed to China for provisions, and to return to Sydney.
The harbourless Norfolk Island had seriously occupied Phillip's care. On the 6th March, 1788, his subaltern, King, had formally taken possession with like observances to those adopted in Sydney. But neither Phillip nor King could be slow to apprehend the dangers of the situation.
"Dear King (the former wrote to the man he so much trusted) . . . I hope you get fish, which will enable you to make the provisions you have last much longer than the time for which they are sent, as our only dependence is on ships expected out, which may fail us. . . . You shall hear from me respecting the island and your wants by the Sirius; till when God bless you.
When King replied, the dreaded weevil had been found in the seed wheat he was preparing to sow. But he kept up his courage and asked for more men for agriculture. He had searched for the flax plant vainly at first, for his people looked for a congener of the European plant; but after some days they detected in abundance the Phormium tenax which Cook saw when he discovered Norfolk Island. In Oct., 1788, two flax-dressers were employed, and other work was so far advanced that Phillip's pleasant words, "I am fully satisfied that everything which is possible will be done by you," could be received with satisfaction. But in Feb., 1789, the situation became gloomier. More people were sent to Norfolk Island, but not sufficient food for them. King was implored to eke out subsistence with fish. Supplies were running short at Sydney. Phillip was well satisfied that—
"Everything which perseverance and industry can accomplish will be done by you, and I only thus particularly mark our situation that it may be fully known to you. We have not that resource in fish that you have, nor can we, from the nature of the ground, make that progress in cultivation which you will be able to do. . . . ships will most undoubtedly be sent in time from England, but the summer is far advanced."
When the plot was formed in Jan., 1789, by the convicts to seize the officers, a sailor learned the secret from a convict woman, and revealed it to King, who sent a ring-leader to Sydney, with a request that whatever sentence might be adjudged, might be inflicted at Norfolk Island "as an example to others." Fishing was still carried on in spite of the conspiracy, the discovery of which "was the most fortunate event that could have happened," as it induced King to clear the ground round the houses for future security, and a hurricane which tore up trees in the island had no food for its fury, the fall of which could injure the houses. Phillip wrote:[38] "It is with greatest satisfaction that I assure you every part of your conduct has met my warmest approbation, and I feel myself happy in having at Norfolk Island an officer who makes the public interest his own, and which will, I hope, meet a just reward." A guard of marines was sent from Sydney. King read service in his own house. The order for attendance was: "No person is to absent himself from public worship, which will begin every Sunday morning at eleven o'clock, in the commandant's house, when every one will come clean and orderly and behave themselves devoutly."
The ravages of caterpillars in May, 1789, alarmed the islanders, and in spite of all attempts to destroy the invaders, some acres of wheat were utterly devastated. A curious question was raised in 1789 by convicts, who averred that the terms of their sentences had expired, while the government had no documents by which to test the facts. Phillip, to augment the stores of food, suggested to King that until fresh papers could arrive from England in lieu of those which the masters of the transports had originally left behind, an oath might be administered about the facts, and that, to those petitioners "whose behaviour merited such indulgence," King might grant lands to be cultivated for the benefit of the grantees. If their allegations about their sentences should be found true, their grants would be increased; if found untrue, the penalty would be loss of the land and severe punishment. Cultivation of gardens was sedulously promoted in the meantime.
In Nov., 1789, Phillip congratulated King on the success attained at Norfolk Island, adding, "and I am, sir, sensible how much it is owing to your good conduct and perseverance. The richness of the soil, though the area cultivated was small, gave hope of abundant crops at the island, and the maize especially aroused hopes. Fishing-lines had been made of the native flax, but the manufacture was not understood, and King suggested that information as to the Maori methods should be obtained (6th Dec., 1789).
The island with a doubtful supply of daily bread had no charms for some of the convicts. Again Phillip wrote (Jan., 1790): "Those convicts who say their times are expired and wish to return to this settlement shall be sent for as soon as I hear from England, till when it is not possible to know whose times are expired, or the time for which any convict has been sentenced." It jars upon the feelings to find that women were flogged upon some occasions. On Christmas Day some attempt was made to arouse kindly feelings proper to the day. Divine service was performed at ten o'clock. Two pigs were killed, and an extra allowance of meat and flour was issued to all on the island.
"It excites a simile to notice that the Secretary of State (Grenville), cheered by the accounts of the little island, wrote (June, 1789) that, but for the great labour and expense already incurred at Sydney, he would, owing to its fertility, have been "inclined to recommend that Norfolk Island be made the principal settlement." Phillip wrote (June, 1790) that there was one insurmountable objection—"there is no harbour or good roadstead, and landing provisions is attended with some difficulties"—and added that King, "who made the settlement—an officer of merit and who could ill be spared, 'was on his way home' to give that information which could not so well be conveyed in letters." In spite of Phillip's bold bearing he felt the thorns he stood on. No help had come from England. Phillip determined to make a special appeal. He could not desert his post, but he felt that the testimony of an eye-witness was needed to show to gentlemen at ease in England what were the difficulties of a governor obstructed in the administration of justice by the commander of the forces, and what were the privations of Englishmen abroad, who managed starving convicts, and were so ill-fed themselves that six marines risked and underwent the penalty of death "for robbing the public stores." He selected the trusty King as his envoy. He had discharged him from the Sirius in order to enable her to have a full complement of officers in Jan., 1790. In Feb. he directed him to go as passenger by the Sirius, "the service making it necessary in order to give such information to His Majesty's Ministers as cannot be conveyed by letter."
Major Ross, of the Marines, was sent in the Sirius to take the post of Lt.-Gov. during King's absence, and one may suspect that Phillip was glad to detach from headquarters a man who had obstructed the administration of justice, and interfered with the efficiency of the nightwatch. All the hopes of both settlements depended on uncertain supplies from England, and on the voyage of the Sirius to Batavia under Captain Hunter, who sailed from Sydney on the 6th March, 1790, with 221 persons, of whom 186 were convicts to be left at Norfolk Island. There King also wistfully looked for news from England. Each time that the Supply arrived vain hopes were beaten down.
On the 29th Jan., 1790, her "return caused the greatest acclamations of joy through the whole settlement." But "a dejection took place equal to the joy visible a short time before." She carried twenty-three more convicts, but no provisions. The fish and vegetables of the island were supposed to enable it to give relief rather than require it. On the 18th March there was "tumultuous noise, huzzaing, and rejoicing." Two vessels were in sight at break of day. Every one was persuaded that relief had come from England, the little island "throned in the west," whence no tidings had been received since Phillip sailed with his charge in May, 1787. Convicts as well as guards, sailors as well as officers, felt a fervour which made eyes moisten, and hearts beat high. Now at last they were sure that the northern mother had held out her hand to her children in the far south. No. The ships were only the Sirius and the Supply, bringing more convicts, with instructions for King to go to England. His Journal tells the feelings of the inhabitants: "Our expectations were once more blasted; for instead of those pleasing hopes being realized which the appearance of the vessels had created in the morning, we were informed that no relief had arrived, nor had any intelligence been received from England."
On the 13th March the Sirius reached Norfolk Island. The landing of her passengers and stores was proceeded with, as weather permitted, until the 19th, and on that day this apparently last hope of the two settlements drifted upon a reef and was lost. The governing quality was called into vigorous action. While the captain and sailors were being dragged through a foaming surf to the shore, the new Lt.-Gov., Ross, ordered the beat of drums to assemble the marines and convicts; martial law was proclaimed, severe punishment promised if any animal were killed, or robbery committed; officers and marines were ordered to wear their side-arms, and guards were set over the barns and store-houses.
On the 21st a council was held, at which Ross, supported unanimously by King, Hunter, and all the commissioned officers of the Sirius, determined to take on himself the power to punish capital crimes with death (although this was a power specially retained by Phillip when he founded the settlement at Norfolk Island), to establish martial law, to appropriate all private stock, Indian corn, and potatoes, for the use of the public, to put everyone on half allowance until it could be known how much could be saved from the wreck, to put three locks on the storehouse and barn, of which one was to be kept by the Lt.-Gov., one by Captain Hunter, and "one by a person to be named by the convicts." These determinations were signed by all present. Ross wrote to Phillip that though there was "perhaps a want of sufficient authority for declaring martial law, which nothing but necessity could have induced us to do. . . . we shall trust to His Majesty and the British Parliament for such indemnification as the case may require. I hope and trust that your Excellency will authorize us to continue it until we are supplied with provisions, or, at any rate, that you will not forbid us." Phillip directed Ross to continue martial law while he thought it necessary. It remained in force until Aug., 1790, when a supply of food arrived from Sydney.
On the 22nd of March, at eight o'clock in the morning, so clear was the need of prompt action, all in the island were summoned to the lower flag-staff where the Union[39] was hoisted; the marines were drawn up in two lines, leaving a space in the centre, at the head of which was the Union. The colours of the detachment were then unfurled, the Sirius's crew drawn up on the right, and the convicts on the left, the officers being in the centre.
"The proclamation was then read, declaring that the island was to be governed by martial law until further orders; the Lt.-Gov. next addressed the convicts, and after pointing out the situation of the settlement, he exhorted them to be honest, industrious, and obedient; this being concluded, the whole gave three cheers, and every person, beginning with the Lt.-Gov., passed under the Union flag, taking off their hats as they passed it in token of an oath to submit and be amenable to the martial law which had then been declared."
Surely a more impressive spectacle was seldom seen than this vowing of obedience by the law-abiding, and the lawless, brought face to face with famine. The mingled good and evil of our nature was shown on the same evening, when two convicts, who had volunteered to go to the wreck "to heave the livestock overboard," refused to return at night, and were fired at to make "them quit the wreck or put the lights out, but with no effect. On this John Arscot, a convict carpenter, offered to go off; and although it was quite dark, and the surf ran very high, yet he got on board, and obliged the other two convicts to quit the wreck by the hawser. The two had set fire to the wreck, but Arscot "happily extinguished the flames."[40]On the 24th, King went on board the Supply, and sailed for Sydney, leaving a population of
He left with them 250 to 300 bushels of wheat, six bushels of barley, 130 to 140 bushels of Indian corn, and one acre of potatoes to be dug in May. There was a small stock of pigs, poultry, and goats, with one ewe. Without speedy relief starvation was sure.
Meantime in Sydney great efforts were made to eke out the scanty supply of food by substituting a proportion of ten pounds of fish for two and a-half pounds of pork. No pigs were allowed to be killed "under three months old," nor without information first given to head-quarters. "The provisions, when all collected under one roof and into one view, afforded but a melancholy reflection-it was well that we had even them."[41]
On the 27th March, no relieving vessel having arrived, the weekly rations were reduced to four pounds of flour, two and a-half pounds of pork, and one pound and a-half of rice, with a less proportion for women. In November, 1789, many convicts consumed their rations so heedlessly, that of food issued on Saturday none was left on Tuesday night, and in Nov., 1789, provisions were issued twice in the week. In March, 1790, it was found necessary to serve out the food "daily to every person in the settlement without distinction." Similar regulations were made by the Governor at (Rose Hill) Parramatta. "The garden ground was enlarged, those who were in bad huts were placed in better, and everything was said that could stimulate them to be industrious. The night-watch was in perpetual activity, for robberies were nightly attempted or committed." While Phillip thus confronted adversity, the Supply returned from Norfolk Island with tidings of the loss of the Sirius, "sufficient (said Collins) to have deranged the strongest intellect among us." Phillip assembled all his officers, civil and military. The weekly allowance of food was reduced to two pounds and a-half of flour, two pounds of pork, one pint of peas, and one pound of rice to all descriptions of people except children under eighteen months, who with regard to salt meat "were to have only one pound." Fishing and shooting became a public pursuit, and the fishing-boat was accompanied by an officer by night and by day, because the integrity of the fishermen was doubted. The Supply was ordered to Batavia under Lieut. Ball, R.N., to procure eight months' provisions for himself, and to hire a vessel and purchase for the settlement 200,000 lbs. of flour, 80,000 lbs. of beef, 60,000 lbs. of pork, and 70,000 lbs. of rice, with medical comforts, "sugar, sago, lard, vinegar, and dongaree." The Supply was expected to return in six months. She sailed on the 17th April, taking with her Lieut. P. G. King, Phillip's confidential envoy.
On the 20th April a pound of rice was substituted in the ration for a pint of peas. "The two pounds of pork, when boiled, from the length of time it had been in store, shrunk away to nothing." Throughout the settlement stalked gaunt famine visibly. Usually it pinches most, if not altogether, the poor. Here was one that laid its deadly gripe alike upon all. Then it was that Phillip gave up three hundred pounds of flour, his private property (already mentioned); and still with firm countenance he summoned offenders and thieves, "inculcating the absolute necessity for every man to cultivate his own garden, instead of robbing that of another." One convict was executed, and various sentences of flogging were inflicted. On a soldier who, while sentinel, robbed a garden, 500 lashes were inflicted. A reward of sixty pounds of flour was paid to a watchman who fired upon a garden-thief, and 500 lashes were ordered to be given to the thief; but as it was the Governor's garden that was robbed, Phillip remitted four-fifths of the punishment. At Rose Hill (Parramatta), where vegetables were more abundant, it was some consolation to find that the convicts "behaved with much greater propriety."
Throughout the fatal month of May, when (Collins wrote) "very little labour could be enforced from people who had nothing to eat," neither Phillip nor any of his officers could have had any comfort in their minds except that which springs from a sense of duty performed; but they worked without ceasing. They procured salt from the water of the harbour, and more than two thousand pounds weight of fish were caught during the month. All this, however it might alleviate, could not remove their sufferings, and they looked upon the return of the Supply as "under God their dependence."
From England they seemed hopelessly barred[42]. They had left it with a calculated supply of food for two years, and when the time elapsed, not an ounce of food nor a word of encouragement had been received. Divisi toto orbe from their native land, they might almost feel that they were forgotten. Yet it is pleasant to read of these gallant men that (Collins) they "bad long conjectured that the non-arrival of supplies must be owing either to accident or delays in the voyage, and not to any backwardness on the part of the government in sending them out."
It is consoling also to know that they conjectured rightly. The Juliana had sailed from England in July, 1789, with stores and with despatches concerning grants of land and the new corps raised for service in the colony. H.M.S. Guardian followed in November, carrying nearly half-a-million of pounds of meat, and 300,000 lbs. of flour. The tardy Juliana, after calling at Teneriffe, at St. Jago, and at Rio Janeiro, found, at the Cape of Good Hope, the fleeter Guardian, which bad struck upon an iceberg, and losing her rudder was tossed hopelessly upon the waves, in spite of the exertions of Riou, until a French frigate met and towed her to the Cape of Good Hope. There, to avoid the expense of keeping afloat a shattered hulk, Riou ran her on shore, and some of the stores, which had not been cast overboard to lighten the ship at sea, were afterwards forwarded to Sydney.
The brave Riou's services are commemorated in St. Paul's Cathedral. A despatch from himself at Table Bay (20th May, 1790) records his gratitude to twenty of the convicts whom he sent on to Sydney: "Without their assistance and support the Guardian would never have arrived to where she is. . . I publicly declared that not one of them, so far as depended on myself, should ever be convicts."[43]
Such are the gleams of light which occasionally illumine the dark ages of Australian history. Edward Riou will not be less regarded as a hero because he could elicit gallant support from convicts, and was manly enough to acknowledge his obligations.
With her accumulated stores the slow Juliana sailed from Table Bay, and hopes deferred were to be gratified amongst those whose hearts had so long been sick at Port Jackson. On the 3rd June, 1790, the signal for a ship was made at the South Head. The settlement was in an uproar of emotion. It was learned that the ship was the transport Juliana, from London, July, 1789, with 222 female convicts. The tidings she brought were eagerly devoured by the insatiate colonists. The loss of the Guardian; of the private effects of the colonists entrusted to her; the illness of the king; his recovery; tidings that 1000 convicts were to be sent at once to Sydney; that a corps of foot was to be raised for service in the colony; that Major Francis Grose of the 29th Regiment was to be its commandant; the change in the French Constitution; and the various domestic affairs of each officer and colonist, after a blank of three years, were poured into greedy ears. But the Juliana had brought no large supply of food, and the wolf was not yet driven from the door. Of the small quantity of flour brought by the Juliana, twenty casks were totally destroyed through the vessel's unseaworthiness.
On the king's birthday (4th June), Phillip pardoned all offenders under sentence; and on the 9th appointed a day of public thanksgiving for His Majesty's recovery, when "the attendance on Divine service was very full."
On the 20th another sail was announced, and the Justinian, storeship, arrived, after a passage of only five months from England. On the next day the full ration was restored, and the settlement breathed freely. In the same month the Surprise, Neptune, and Scarborough, transports, arrived, and the harbour would have been gay but for the condition of the new-comers. Two hundred and sixty-one deaths of male convicts had occurred in the three ships, and sickness still raged among them. Phillip reported (13th July) "the scene of misery which the hospital and sick tents exhibited" when the convicts were landed. They were too crowded on board, and thereby afflicted; "488 were under medical treatment" on arrival.
Of two men, very different in character, who arrived in these plague-smitten ships, a word must be said. The sagacity, energy, and enterprise of John Macarthur, of the New South Wales Corps, were to mould the destinies of Australia, and hasten by decades her material progress. D'Arcy Wentworth was to become the father of her greatest orator and patriot. They embarked in the same vessel, the Neptune, and a prophet might have said to her, Cæsarem rehis et fortunas suas. There were disagreements on board, and at the equator Macarthur exchanged duties with an officer on board the Scarborough. In all the ships there was pestilence. More than one hundred and fifty convicts died on board of the Neptune.
The father of John Macarthur had, with several brothers, fought for the Pretender at Culloden. His brothers were slain, and the solitary survivor, after fleeing abroad, settled in Plymouth. Twenty years after the death of his uncles, John Macarthur was born. He entered the army, and at the close of the war in 1783, studied to complete his education, his regiment having been reduced, and he being on half-pay. The expedition which winged its way to the South attracted a mind eager in character, and large in its conceptions. He purchased a commission in the New South Wales Corps, and with his young wife sailed to Sydney.
D'Arcy Wentworth, a dissipated youth, who was a tax to his friends, but had some knowledge of surgery, had been permitted to become a passenger in the Neptune. The early chronicler, Collins, says of him, "There came out in the Neptune a person of the name of Wentworth, who being desirous of some employment in this country, was sent (1st Aug.) to Norfolk Island as an assistant to the surgeon there, being reputed to have the necessary requisites for such a situation."
On the 28th July, Phillip sent the Justinian to land stores at Norfolk Island, and to proceed to China to load with tea for the English Government. On the 1st of August the Surprise was sent to Norfolk Island with thirty-five male and 150 female convicts. Before following the fortunes of Norfolk Island, it may be stated that the Supply, surpassing expectation, returned to Sydney on the 19th September with many much-prized articles for the colonists; that the Waaksamheyd, hired by Lieut. Ball to follow him, arrived with her stores on the 17th Dec.; that for the flour purchased at Batavia, 10¾ d. per lb. were demanded; and that consequently Ball had procured (instead of 70,000) 200,000 lbs. of rice, his purchases altogether amounting to nearly £12,000 sterling.
To conclude the record of starvation and endurance it is necessary to return to the inhabitants of Norfolk Island, who were in March left by the Supply. The ill-fated Sirius still held together even in May, and when weather permitted a few sailors went on board to save whatever articles they could take on shore. On the 4th June (Captain Hunter writes): "Our distress did not make us forget that this was the birthday of our beloved sovereign. In the morning colours were displayed, and at noon three volleys of musketry were fired by the marines as an acknowledgment that we were Britons, who, however distant and distressed, revered our king, and loved our country." Disorder and thieving were severely punished. The sailors of the Sirius made fishing-lines and hooks, and fished when the weather permitted. A party of marines, and all the convicts, cleared ground for corn and potatoes, but Hunter wrote: "The people in general were reduced so low in bodily strength for want of a sufficiency of food that much work could not be expected." Much ground was planted with potatoes, as likely to yield the promptesterop. The lonely islanders had some faint hope that when the Supply reached Sydney (in March, 1790) she might find that provisions had arrived from England, and might return to the island with relief. In May these hopes were abandoned. and the truth was surmised. On the 14th May the Lt.-Gov. and his Council issued the following order:
At a meeting of the Governor and Council held to consider of the very exhausted state of the provisions in this settlement, and to consult upon what means are most proper to be pursued in order to preserve life until such time as we may be relieved by some arrivals from England, of which we have been so long in expectation, but probably disappointed by some unfortunate accident having happened to the ships intended for this country, the state of the provisions having been laid before the Council, and the alarming situation of the settlement having been taken into the most serious consideration, the following ratio of provisions was unanimonsly resolved and ordered to take place on Saturday, the 15th instant, viz.: Flour, three pounds per week for every grown person. Beef, one pound and a-half per ditto; or in lieu of the beef, seventeen ounces of pork. Rice, one pound per ditto. Children above twelve months old, half the above ratio. Children under twelve months old, one pound and a-half of flour, and a pound of rice per week. In future all crimes which may by any three members of the Council be considered as not of a capital nature, will be punished at their discretion by a further reduction of the present allowance of provisions."
Every day the starving people looked wistfully upon the vacant sea, and 'every day they looked in vain. But for a providential discovery of birds on their own small island (five miles by three only) they might soon have ceased to look. In April it was found that the Norfolk Island petrel, known amongst sailors as the mutton-bird,[44] crowded at night upon Mount Pitt (so named by P. G. King after the great minister), the highest point of the island, and bond and free went out in parties to capture them. Small fires were lighted to attract the attention of the birds. The creatures having lighted on the ground, could not rise again without the aid of some jutting eminence, and the hungry islanders rushed on them and killed them. So numerous were they, that although between two and three thousand were captured nightly, at the end of May they seemed as plentiful as ever. But who could tell when they would cease to visit a spot which had been changed from the cradle to the grave of their race? How precarious was the winged supply of food! The birds came to their nests in the ground. The time must come when the visitors would be all destroyed, or the breeding season come to an end. Devoutly Hunter records that he might truly call them "birds of Providence," but adds that, "we reflected with pain that they must have an end, and that in all probability this would be the case before we got a relief."
Thus the weary time passed, when on the 4th of Aug. one of the seamen descried a sail. Rushing to his fellows, and crying as he ran, "A ship! A ship!" he stirred the whole community into a paroxysm of hope. The ship had an English ensign flying, but she made no sign of staying, nor even of making signals. The disappointment was crushing. "Every one (says Hunter) agreed in opinion that it would have been much better if no ship had been seen." By this time, too, to add to their anxiety, the "birds of Providence" were very scarce."
On the 7th of Aug. relief came to them. The Justinian and Surprise arrived from Sydney with provisions and more convicts, and poured into the ears of the islanders the same news from England which had been so welcome to the exiles in Sydney. Martial law was abrogated. The ships discharged their cargoes in about three weeks and proceeded to China, and the islanders were again uninterupted in their waterbound speck, until, in Jan. 1791, the Supply arrived to take back to Sydney the officers and crew of the Sirius.
The ships which arrived with succour from England in 1790 were long remembered as "the second fleet."[45] They carried the first instalment of the New South Wales Corps, afterwards to become the 102nd Regiment; and their arrival enabled Phillip to dispense with the doubtful services of Major Ross of the marines. The barren rocks which had been so niggardly in yielding food were to echo to the tramp of the soldier of the line, and it could not be dreaded that old England would again leave her sons to imminent starvation after establishing all the marks of her power on her new possessions.
And now that the young settlements are rescued from the jaws of death, we may pause to observe the general features of the land, and how it was tenanted by the tribes which studded its surface throughout its length and breadth, its plains and mountains, marshes and lagoons; and who even in the stony deserts knew how to wring a livelihood from the land which threatened to become the grave of so many hundreds of Englishmen.
- ↑ The estimated population in 1893, including New Zealand, was more than 4,000,000.
- ↑ "Early Voyages to Terra Australia." London: printed for the Hakluyt Society. 1859, &c.
- ↑ Tasman called his discovery Van Diemen's Land, after Van Diemen, the Dutch Governor-General in the East Indies; and the name remained long after Englishmen had founded their colony. A change being thought desirable when the colony ceased to be a penal settlement, the name of the first discoverer was chosen for Tasmania, with good taste acceptable to the inhabitants.
- ↑ "I dined (Aug., 1699) with Mr. Pepys, where was Captain Dampier, who had been a famous buccaneer, had brought hither the painted Prince Job, and printed a relation of his very strange adventures, and his observations. He was now going abroad again by the king's encouragement, who furnished a ship of 290 tons. He seemed a more modest man than one would imagine by the relation of the crew he had assorted with. He brought a map of his observations of the course of the winds in the South Sea, &c."—"Diary of John Evelyn."
- ↑ "Cook's Voyages" (2nd), vol. i. Introduction.
- ↑ Note 1894.—This statement, made in 1883, is amply confirmed by the publication in the "Historical Records of New South Wales," of the names of the crew of the Endeavour, amongst whom the name Jackson does not appear. The complete list is also published in "Captain Cook's Journal" (1893), by Captain Wharton.
- ↑ At Bishop Stortford, Herts.
- ↑ The Admiralty copy and Her Majesty's copy of Cook's journal include the word "South," which was not contained in the copy in the hands of Mr. Secretary Stephens.
- ↑ "Though the main passage now bears the name of Torres, Cook called his own passage Endeavour Strait, knowing that he had passed between New Guinea and Australia. When Torres passed he supposed that the land he saw at Cape York was an island, and that there were more islands to the southward. Cook was therefore the real discoverer, for only he discovers who proves. Mr. Major ("Early Voyages," &c.) says that when, at the capture of Manilla by the English in 1762, it was found that Torres, in sailing along the south coast of New Guinea, had unwittingly passed through the strait, "Dalrymple paid a fitting tribute" to Torres by giving his name to the strait, "which it has ever since retained." It is to be feared that Alexander Dalrymple had a meaner motive. He had applied for the command of a vessel sent for the purpose of obtaining observations of the transit of Venus in 1769, and Cook had been preferred. With Cook's Voyages" a large map, "by Lieutenant H. Roberts, R.N.." was published in 1785. In that map the name of Torres was not used; and it is strange that the Admiralty Banctioned (if indeed they ever formally sanctioned) the cancelling of the honour acquired by Cook. Mr. Major was aware of Dalrymple's injustice to Cook, for in his "Discoveries of Prince Henry the Navigator" (London, 1877) he says it is greatly to be regretted that Dalrymple hydrographer who panted for the glory of discovering a great southern continent, should have allowed his jealousy of Captain Cook's appointment to the Endeavour to lead him into an injurious insinuation that the great captain's discoveries on the coast of New Holland were the result of his acquaintance with one of pre-existent maps." Perhaps it is now too late to remedy the injustice done to Cook by the jealous hydrographer. It is therefore more incumbent upon the historian to point it out. How little the maps of the sixteenth century could have aided an explorer Mr. Major himself shows. The Dauphin map (1530) is extolled as laying down the east coast of New Zealand But it makes the land continuous from the longitude of New Zealand to Cape York in Australia Moreover, it does not show New Guinea. In one of the maps of the period made at "Dieppe par Nicolas Desliens, 1566," and preserved at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, the same features occur, and between Java La Grande or Australia (which is represented as extending far southward of the latitude of Cape Horn), and the Cape of Good Hope, a large island is shown, occupying about seven degrees of longitude and nearly five of latitude. On the principle of omne igiiotum pro magnifico it is appropriately styled "Isle des geantz." Perhaps Swift had an eye upon this map in satirically choosing the same place for his Lilliput.
- ↑ "Historical Records of N.S.W.," vol. i, part 2, p. 7. Paper drawn up by Mr. J. M. Matra, who communicated also with members of the Pitt ministry at later dates. Like many framers of plans Matra was inaccurately speculative. His proposal was to deport American loyalists to Australia, and he declared that "a sum not exceeding £3000 will be more than adequate to the whole expense of Government."
- ↑ "H. of Commons Journal," vol. xxxvii, p. 311.
- ↑ Dalrymple, the hydrographer, denounced the colony. The government would, he said, be utterly unable to control the convicts, who would, as buccaneers, become the terror of the seas, and a disgrace to England and the world. In a philanthropic spirit "the benevolent Howard," seeing the miseries of convicts in the gaols and hulks, deplored that penitentiaries were not built at Islington, and that the designs of himself and Dr. Fothergill had been defeated by those who "adopted the expensive, dangerous, and destructive scheme of transportation to Botany Bay."—Memoirs of John Howard the Philanthropist, p. 533. London, 1818.
- ↑ "A View of the Art of Colonization." (London, 1849.) E. G. Wakefield.
- ↑ "In the "History of N S W. from the Records" the Editor devotes many pages to the disparagement of Pitt's claim to any credit for the settlement of Australia. He admits that "the proposal to occupy the territory necessarily required the sanction of the Prime Minister," but thinks that "there was nothing in it that appealed to his imagination or stirred the current of his ambition." He adds (p, 381) that "there does not appear to be any foundation for the idea, to which some writers have given expression, that the scheme for the settlement waft matured by Pitt, still lees that it originated with with him in a patriotic desire to create new colonies in place of the old. " The writers alluded to are not named, but surely they may urge that Pitt's object in adopting the scheme was patriotic, and that by adoption of it he founded a new state which nothing but wickedness or folly can detach from the United Kingdom. Mr. Barton hints in several passages that there was really no idea of founding an Australian colony as an equivalent for the states in America, but in one passage he generously proves that the idea existed. He quotes these lines published in 1786:—"Let no one think much of a trifling expense;
Who knows what may happen a hundred years hence?
The loss of America what can repay?
New colonies seek for at Botany Bay!"Assuredly the satirist of 1786 might have wondered if he had been told that in a hundred years a writer would assert that the satirist invented the "idea" in order to quiz it.
- ↑ Since the publication of the text in 1883, Mr. Gladstone has proved his callousness by proposing the disruption of the United Kingdom itself, and by denouncing the blackguardism" displayed by Pitt in effecting the union of Ireland with England. When Lord Brabourne, in 1886, commented in Blackwood's Magazine on Gladstone's scurrilous reference to Pitt, Gladstone (compelled at the same time to admit "the fair and temperate tone of Lord Brabourne's article generally") wrote that "the mere phrase 'black guardism' was never meant for publication."
- ↑ "Contemporary accounts dwell but little on the formation of the settlement. Lord Stanhope, in his "Life of Pitt" (vol i., p. 338), says, however: "In this session of 1787 was passed the measure which laid the foundation of new colonies scarcely less important than those which we had recently lost. The want of some fixed place for penal exile had been severely felt ever since the American War, and the accumulation of prisoners at home was counteracting the benevolent efforts of Howard for the improvement of the British gaols. The discoveries of Captain Cook were now remembered and turned to practical account."
- ↑ Phillip's first commission as Governor was dated 12th Oct., 1786 (nearly two months before New South Wales was named by an order as a place to which convicts might be sent), and it made him Governor of all the "territory called New South Wales." An ampler commission defining his powers was issued on the 2nd April, 1787. On the same day Letters Patent constituting the Courts of Law were issued, the Criminal Court being specially authorized to proceed more summarily than was lawful in England. On the 5th May, Letters Patent constituting the Vice-Admiralty Court were issued. The composition of the Court was fixed. The Governor, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Commissary, the Surveyor of Lands, and certain captains and lieutenants were named. An order respecting "Trial of Pirates," made on 20th April, had similarly enumerated the commissioners, thus:-" Arthur Phillip, Esq., Governor, or the Governor for the time being; Robert Ross, Esq., Lieut.-Gov., or the Lieut.-Gov. for the time being: Andrew Miller, Esq., Commnissary of Stores and Provisions (or, &c.); Augustus Alt, Esq., Surveyor of Lands (or, &c.); John Hunter, Esq., Captain of the Sirius; William Bradley, Esq., 1st Lieutenant; Philip Gidley King, Esq., 2nd Lieutenant; George William Maxwell, Esq., 3rd Lieutenant; Henry Lidgbird Ball, Esq., Lieut. and Commander of the supply, armed tender; and all other captains and commanders of Her Majesty's ships who are, or shall be, within the Admiralty jurisdiction of New South Wales."
- ↑ In the "Annual Register" for 1791 the actual expenditure on the First Fleet was set down as £81,899 11s. 6d., which had all been paid. Tools and implements of husbandry had cost £3056 8s. 7d.
- ↑ Pitt's hand is visible on this subject. On the 9th March one Mr. Vanghan writes:-"Mr. Pitt having informed Mr. Long that every opportunity should be used to collect the bread-fruit plant in the South Seas, and afterwards to forward it to the British West India islands, I beg, &c. (the Chairman of the East India Company has been instructed to use the opportunity of his next conference with Mr. Pitt to ask for the attention of the Government on this subject on behalf of the East India Company.)"-Record Office MSS.
- ↑ Dated 25th April.—They enjoined him to procure seeds and livestock at ports on the way, to disembark at Botany Bay, and, "as soon as circumstances will admit of it, to send a small establishment 'to Norfolk Island,' to secure the same to us, and prevent it being occupied by any other European power." Norfolk Island was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774.
- ↑ Some of the statements in the text are quoted from "Phillip's Voyage." Stockdale. London: 1789. The Sirius had formerly been a store ship named Berwick, and her name was changed when she was chosen for the expedition to Australia.
- ↑ Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. i, part 2, p. 79.
- ↑ Note. This arrangement was anticipated in England. On the 5th May Lord Sydney (probably moved by Phillip) signified the King's pleasure that the Admiralty should "authorize Captain Phillip, upon his leaving the Cape of Good Hope, to proceed, if he thinks fit, to the said coast of New South Wales in the Supply tender, leaving the convoy to be escorted by the Sirius to the rendezvous which he may fix upon."
- ↑ "Lieutenant P. G. King was sent (1st Feb.) by Phillip to Botany Bay to interchange courtesies with La Perouse, who had already visited many islands of the Pacific, Norfolk Island, and New Zealand. He said to King, "Enfin Monsieur Cook a tant fait, qu'il ne m'a rien laissé a faire. que d'admirer ses oeuvres." The captain of the Astrolabe, De Langle, had been killed with thirteen others, of whom eight were officers, at the Navigator Islands. English convicts had asked La Perouse to carry them away (before King conversed with him), but he dismissed them with threats, and gave them a day's provisions to return with. La Perouse sailed from Botany Bay on the 10th March. Before he left there was a quarrel with the natives." Firearms were used. "This," the official record says, "joined to the ill behaviour of some of the convicts, has produced a shyness on their parts which it has not yet been possible to remove."
- ↑ "In a despatch from the commissary at Sydney to Lt. Governor King at Norfolk Island, 5th June, 1789, the following droll passage occurs: "The convicts who are married here -I never alter their names. There would be no end to it. The names they were convicted by in England are the names they should go by here."
- ↑ Collins. The island was christened "Pinchgut" at once by the prisoners, and retained the name long after its origin had been forgotten.
- ↑ Six men were condemned to death; one, who was the head of the gang, was executed the same day, the others I reprieved. They are to be exiled from the settlement, and when the season permits intend they shall be landed near the South Cape. . . . The one who suffered and two others were condemned for robbing the stores of provisions the very day they received a week's provision. . . ."—Despatch from Phillip, 15th May, 1788.
- ↑ Phillip and King were old comrades. The latter served in various ships of war in the East Indies from 1770 to 1774, in North America from 1775 to 1779; obtained his lieutenancy in the Renown in 1778; served in the Channel and at Gibraltar from 1780 to 1783, and under Phillip in the Europe from 1783 to 1785. Phillip wrote, privately, to Lord Sydney (July, 1788): "Lieutenant King, who is at Norfolk Island, is a very steady good officer. He, too, is cut off from all society, and is in a situation that will require patience and perseverance, both which he possesses, with great merit in the service as an officer. As such I beg leave to recommend him to your lordship. The rank of master and commander he well earned in the late war, and I should be very happy if he now attained it through your lordship. Of your lordship's friendship I have had proofs of which I retain a just sense. Add to the obligation, my lord, by believing that I merit the friendship you honour me with, and that I am, with esteem," &c.
- ↑ When King landed at Norfolk Island with his people, he wrote:—"I assembled all the settlement . . . I took possession of the Isle, drinking His Majesty, the Queen, Prince of Wales, Governor Phillip, and success to the colony, after which three cheers were given."
- ↑ Sir J. Banks told the committee of the House of Commons (1779) that a settlement "must certainly be furnished on landing with a full year's allowance of victuals, raiment, and drink." Lord Sydney, in 1786, told the Lords of the Treasury that "according to the best opinions that can be obtained, it is supposed that a quantity of provisions equal to two years' consumption should be provided." ("Historical Records of N.S. W.," p. 15.)
- ↑ Historical Journal of Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island," &c. By John Hunter, R.N. London: Stockdale, 1793.
- ↑ Additional Royal Instructions accompanied these Despatches. They dealt with the subjects of grants of land; assignment of convicts to grantees; reserves; church reserves, &c. A table of fees (governor's; secretary's; surveyor's; auditor's; registrar's) was attached.
- ↑ Thomas Rose (aged 40), farmer, from Blandford, Mrs. Rose (33), Thomas Rose (131, Mary Rose (11), Joshua Rose (91, Richard Rose (3), and Elizabeth Fish formed the farmer's family." There were also Edward Powell (30), farmer and fisherman, from Lancaster; Joseph and Thomas Webb, farmer and gardener; Frederick Meredith, baker; James Thorpe, millwright; and Walter Brodie, blacksmith. These pioneers in colonization were to have grants of land, agricultural implements, two years' provisions, the use of convict labour, and for each convict food for two years and clothing for one year. An unsuccessful attempt was made to induce fifteen Quaker families to emigrate and leaven with their propriety the moral chaos in Sydney. The Secretary of State reported the failure of the scheme in 1792.
- ↑ "It is noteworthy that the following remark occurs in one of Phillip's despatches written in this gloomy month:—"As near two years have now passed since we first landed in this country, some judgment may be formed of the climate, and I believe a finer or more healthy climate is not to be found in any part of the world."
- ↑ "An Account of the English Colony of New South Wales." By David Collins, late Judge Advocate and Secretary of the Colony. London: 1798.
- ↑ The prayers read were those of the Church of England. With what especial force the Litany must have struck thoughtful men wrestling with a wild and rocky soil, as they repeated the words: "That it may please Thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, so as in due time we may enjoy them."
- ↑ Though this fact is recorded by Collins (in his "New South Wales," 1798), who was on the spot, numerous writers have repeated a mistake which ascribes the first theatrical performance to a later period, 1796. In 1789 the performers modestly said their aim was "humbly to excite a smile." In 1796 the prologue (erroneously imputed to a convict, Barrington, but believed to have been written by an officer) declared—
"True patriots we, for be it understood
We left our country for our country's good.
No private views disgraced our generous zeal,
What urged our travels was our country's weal.
Sometimes, indeed, so various is our art,
An actor may improve and mend his part.
'Give me a horse!' bawls Richard, like a drone;
We'll find a man would help himself to one.Philip to King. 16th July, 1788, per armed tender Supply.
Philip„ King„ 28th September, 1788, per Golden Grove. - ↑ Phillip to King. 3rd June, 1789, per Supply.
- ↑ Journals of King: in Hunter's Historical Journal. Stockdale. London, 1793.
- ↑ For this daring service Ross asked Phillip to grant a pardon to Arscot. Phillip complied. In 1791 Phillip reported that Arscot had gone to Calcutta, and "it now appears that his term of transportation had expired prior to his emancipation."
- ↑ Collins.
- ↑ Phillip's first despatches, written in May, 1788, were not received in England until the end of March, 1789. It was not until June, 1790, that any despatches from England arrived in Sydney.
- ↑ The Secretary of State (Nov. 1790) instructed Phillip to pardon them "on condition of their continuing abroad."
- ↑ Procellaria fuliginosa.
- ↑ The master of the Scarborough, Marshall, had accompanied the first fleet, and when leaving Sydney in 1788 left with a Mr. Clark (an agent for the contractors who employed him) a Newfoundland dog. Collins reports: "On the return of his old master (in 1790) Hector swam off to the ship, and getting on board, recognized 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 shore, and returning with him on board." One is grateful to those who lid not sacrifice the dog when all were starving.