To Whom it may Concern and to Posterity
I have been asked to leave an account of the plight of the first convicts to be transported from the Stroud-water district to New South Wales, or, less frequently, Norfolk Island. I have said that I will do this quite willingly. I do this through the words of _______________________ , and my pen.
But first, I will provide a list of the convicts themselves, their places of origin, the dates of their sentencing, dates of their transportation and their ships of transportation. I hope that you will find a perusal of this instructive, informative and enlightening.
Samuel Davis (killed 30 May 1788) from Stroud, sentenced in 1785 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.
Samuel Griffiths (als Brisco, als Butcher), sentenced in 1784 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.
Joseph Haines (Haynes), sentenced in 1785 for fourteen years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.
Elizabeth Lock 21 (m Richard Morgan q.v. 30 Mar 1788), servant, sentenced 1783 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Lady Penrhyn.
Joseph Long from Slimbridge, sentenced in 1785 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander (later Norfolk Island).
William Oakey (Oakey) killed 30 May 1788) from Painswick/Stroud, a labourer, sentenced in 1784 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.
Elizabeth Parker als Pugh, died 26 Feb 1788, (had a daughter, Ann, on the voyage), from North Nibley, sentenced in 1785 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Friendship.
Edward Risby from Uley, a labourer, sentenced in 1784 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander (later Norfolk Island, then Van Dieman’s Land).
Daniel Smart (died at Sydney Cove 11 Mar 1788), from Stroud, sentenced in 1786 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.
Richard Smart (died on voyage 24 May 1788), from Stroud, sentenced in 1786 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.
‘We were taken from Newgate and put in rowboats in the fogs of early in the year 1787. We shivered in our rags, coughing like hags, rattling our shackles, as we ploughed along the Thames. We thought a ship ought to be an improvement on what we had undergone: we had served part of our sentences in Newgate, and some of our number had exchanged a death sentence in exchange for transportation, it was said. We were a surly and irascible bunch. When we saw where we were to be chained below decks, some swore they regretted not taking the rope at the scaffold.
Now, I am a man of average height, about 5 feet 4 inches when not shod. But how could I stand upright in headroom of some 4 foot six inches? Can you imagine that discomfort and fixed contortion? I didn’t know I had a nine-month voyage ahead of me neither.
We were barricaded in, with marines on sentry to stop us from mutiny and standing upright.
Me and my Newgate cellmates were put on the Alexander. It was the largest ship on the voyage, at about 100 feet long, 30 feet in width and about 450 tons. They managed to put nigh on two hundred of us in there. The newest ship, the Lady Penrhyn, was for the women; it was the healthiest but I think it was the slowest ship in our entourage and the Alexander the fastest. Our convict fleet also included the Friendship. Every one of these ships was like a Noah’s Ark what with the animals all on deck.
Lamentable creatures! The cacophony was heart-rending straightway: the sea was in a bad mood in the Channel; they were on deck in the wind and waves, but we were chained below decks in the confined space. Lamentable creatures! The scurvy, fever, pneumonia and dysentery were all rife. Twenty of us were to die, and there was never less than twenty sick at every sunset.
It was a blessed relief when we reached the Canary Islands in June – not bad going, from the captain’s viewpoint. We were allowed up on deck then for some of God’s fresh, clean air.
The Atlantic Ocean beckoned, and Rio awaited us. We anchored there in August, awaiting the Lady Penryhn. And what tales we heard of life aboard that ship. Couplings and carnality and fecundity down there below decks with the crew pressing the women hard: it was little wonder that the voyage brought forth new life, in consequence. Marriage transpired too; it was not all base-born.
We left Rio and reached Cape Town in November. (I have such remarkable accounts to tell of adventures in New South Wales and so little paper and ink, that I will be quite perfunctory with the rest of the navigation.) We arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788, nine months after the commencement of the transportation. The Bay was not what the captain had been led to expect, and so we sailed on to Port Jackson and Sydney Cove.
We landed the animals, built wattle and daub huts, dug and hoed and assiduously set about breaking the obdurate soil. The eucalyptus trees were abundant, but useless to us. We had more hope for the fruit trees we carried from the Cape. We planted and carefully nurtured every tree. And the rats destroyed every tree, in turn.
The whole of nature appeared to be resistant to control. It was quite in keeping with the sense of fear, despair, hopelessness about the future, and animal sense of living in the present moment, that when the Lady Penrhyn arrived, thunder and lightning rent the whole welkin. Seamen and marines had their way with the women convicts in a scene of deplorable and unspeakable depravity. All those bibles that were landed would have been better given to the natives: the deadly sins were liberally displayed by our masters – they were on the lash, and we felt the lash.
But ink and paper run low, and I must inform you of the unfortunate adventures that befell two of my Gloucestershire comrades. To this I turn.
In short, Samuel Davis of Stroud and Thomas Oakey of both Painswick and Stroud had been ordered to cut rushes for thatch and roofing for our new cottages. Captain James Campbell of the Marines suspected them of laziness and an indolent aversion to labour, however, – and so he thought a visit their mangrove bush encampment would be in order too.
Alas!
A trail of blood ran from their tent to the bushes, where Oakey lay with three spears deep in his torso, his skull shattered, and his eyes gouged out (either by carrion or the Eora tribesmen).
Davis lay some distance away, and when discovered, his essentially untouched body was still warm. Captain Campbell surmised that Davis was dispatched by terror, as he witnessed the brutal murder of his old friend and cellmate from Gloucester gaol, whilst hiding in the mangrove bushes.
Much discourse followed on the deaths. Some thought the men might have used their tools of hatchets and bill-hooks as weapons against natives: their consequent deaths were retribution, it was argued. Others wondered if their deaths were retribution for a different reason – they had stolen a canoe, it was said, and canoes represented Eora souls in native folklore.
The surgeon, John White, and Governor Phillip himself, certainly thought so, for the Eora were customarily friendly and civil in their relations with the white men and women who had so recently arrived in their land. There had to be a reason for their violence, they thought.
In consequence, the Governor, the surgeon and armed marines and convicts followed a tribal path that led from the scene of the murder, right to the margins of Botany Bay. There they descried some fifty canoes on the sand, lined ceremonially. All the while they kept their eyes peeled for the dead men’s tools, but instead a meeting with some two hundred tribes people ensued.
The Eora men were heavily armed themselves with spears and clubs, but they were more intent on communicating through the symbolism of theatre rather than force of arms. One displayed a wound most likely caused by an axe. Another portrayed the murder of a friend by the slashing of the stomach by an axe of a rush-cutter.
Whatever the cause, the melancholy fact is that Samuel Davis and William Oakey met deaths far removed from what they might have expected if they had obeyed the law in their Stroud hills and valleys. Mangrove bushes and tribal bloody retribution under an alien southern sun, instead of the hoot of an owl in a yew-shrouded, moonlit churchyard on a Stroud-water hillside
Here endeth the account of ………………………. and my penmanship.
(Sources used: Transportees from Gloucestershire to Australia 1783 -1842, edited by Irene Wyatt and The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Story of the Foundation of Australia by Tom Keneally)