Prisons Over Seas / Deportation and Colonization; British and American Prisons of To-day

by Arthur Griffiths

Similarly, precise rules governed the conduct of the master of the ship. He also was promised a reward if his conduct gave satisfaction. He was especially desired to see to the preservation of health, by keeping his ship constantly sweet and clean, and by taking on board before departure everything necessary for the purpose. The master was especially charged with the care of provisions, and in this respect his conduct was to be closely watched. The fear was not so much lest the convicts should receive short allowance, although this happened too, in spite of all precautions, but that there should be a substitution of inferior stores for those of government, which were always supposed to be good of their kind. The former fraud was to some extent guarded against, chiefly by publishing plainly, in several parts of the prison, the scale of diet to which every convict was entitled; but even this was sometimes upset by the captain giving money compensation at the end of the voyage for food not issued. Another precaution lay in making every man of each convict "mess" attend in rotation to receive the rations, instead of having one standing delegate for the whole voyage as heretofore. It was found that imposition and corruption were less frequently tried with many than with few. As to the other kind of dishonesty, it was provided for by requiring the surgeon's attendance at the opening of each new cask of provision—a sufficient check, no doubt, so long as the interests of captain and surgeon were not identical. It was just possible, however, that they might play into each other's hands.

But one of the wisest steps taken after 1814, was when the government itself appointed the medical officers, giving the preference, as far as possible, to surgeons of the Royal Navy. On this point Bigge says, "A great improvement has undoubtedly arisen in the transportation of convicts from the appointment of naval surgeons to the superintendence of the ships taken up for this service. Much attention has been paid by them to the instructions of the navy board, that enjoin an attention to the performance of religious duties; and their efforts in preserving health have been no less conspicuous and successful." There was every reason to expect that the government would be better served by an officer of its own, than by some one taken indiscriminately from outside. But equally probable was it that there would be a conflict of authority between the master, who had been hitherto practically supreme, and the new style of official, who might be said to possess, to some extent, the confidence of the crown. This came to pass; and the difficulty was not smoothed away by the tenor of the early acts regulating transportation in which had been incorporated the provisions of the 4 Geo. I, cap. II, whereby a property in the services of the convict was vested (or assigned) to the persons who contracted to transport them.

The master of the ship, as representing the contractors, had this property with all its responsibilities; but he was bound also to obey all orders from the commissioners of the navy and attend all requisitions from the surgeon-superintendent. This apparent contradiction led to frequent altercations between these two modern Kings of Brentford. Where one looked only to the preservation of health, the other thought chiefly of safe custody. If the doctor wished to fumigate the prison, or send the "people" all on deck, the captain demurred, and talked of the danger he ran of losing his ship and his cargo, too, by one and the same blow. Being thus personally concerned in the security of all they had on board, the masters of convict ships for a long time maintained that they must be the fittest persons to hold the supreme power. On the other hand, many of the higher authorities leaned toward entrusting the real command to the surgeon. This, which was clearly the proper decision, did in time become the rule. The reasons for it yearly became more apparent. In the first place, the naval surgeon, as a commissioned officer, was more under the control of the crown; besides which, by degrees these surgeon-superintendents could fairly claim that they had gained experience, and had proved their aptitude for the service in which they were employed. As ship after ship was chartered the captains came and went. There was no certainty that the same vessel with the same master would be taken up twice over for the conveyance of convicts. But the surgeons remained, and sailed voyage after voyage to the penal colonies. Ere long, the power which had been at first contested rested altogether in their hands.

All contemporary authorities give but a sorry account of the condition of the convicts during the passage. Even when everything possible had been done to reduce the death-rate, by insuring a sufficient supply of food and proper medical attendance, the plain fact remained that here were a couple of hundred felons (or more) boxed up together for months, with no other employment or object in life than that of contaminating one another. As a rule all of the convict passengers remained idle throughout the voyage. A few might assist in the navigation of the ship so far as was possible without going aloft. Others who were mechanics found it to their interest to make themselves useful in their particular trades, gaining in return greater freedom as to coming up on deck, and perhaps some additional articles of food. "But the greater proportion of the convicts," says Bigge, "are sunk in indolence, to which the ordinary duties of washing and cleansing the prisons, though highly salutary in themselves and performed with great regularity, afford but slight interruption."

They spent their time in gambling, quarrelling, and thieving from one another. In these relaxations the crew generally joined, as it was impossible to prevent intercommunication between convicts and sailors. The latter were not always immaculate, and were not seldom charged with purloining the private property of the prisoners, which had been provided by friends when leaving England. The medium for gambling was chiefly the wine and lime juice issued as part of the daily rations. If the convicts had money—which was unusual, except in small quantities—then they played for cash, but this was prevented by taking all money from them, as far as possible, on embarkation, to be kept for them till the voyage was at an end. The other method of speculation was also checked to some extent by "strictly observing that the allowance of wine and lime juice is taken by every convict in the presence of an officer at the time of distribution." Another plan was to deprive the offenders of their allowance, but to compel them to attend at the "grog-tub," and administer that which they had thus forfeited to some other prisoner who had behaved well.

The only discipline enforced on board was just so much as was necessary to insure a moderate amount of repression. For this purpose the people were all for a time in irons; for the same reason, only certain fixed proportions of the whole number were allowed upon deck at one time. As a final bulwark behind all, should an ultimate appeal to the strong arm be at any time needed, stood the military guard. Every ship carried a detachment of soldiers: recruits sometimes, going out as drafts to join their regiments in Australia; at others, part of a battalion, which embarked in instalments on ship after ship, ending, according to one writer, with the commanding officer and the band. The guard, or the portion of it actually on duty, always carried loaded firearms; from it came sentries forever on the watch, some at the doors of the prisons, others upon the poop. As a general rule, ships with poops were preferred for convict ships, because the soldiers stationed thereon were sufficiently elevated above the deck to be able to control the movements of the convicts at exercise below, though altogether separated from them.

The dread of some outbreak among the "people," or convicts, seems to have been an ever present sensation with those in authority on board these ships. Nor was the alarm confined to those connected with the ship itself. Whenever a strange sail, in those days of profound peace, appeared above the horizon, she was set down always as a convict ship seized by its felon passengers, who were supposed to have turned pirates and to have hoisted the black flag to range the high seas in search of plunder. I suppose there was not one among the hundred ships that left the Nore or the Mother Bank, through the long years that transportation lasted, in which rumours of conspiracy did not prevail at some time or other during the passage. Yet nine times out of ten these fears were absolutely groundless. Outbreaks did occur, of course; but few of them were serious in nature, and nearly all were forestalled by the timely perfidy of one of the conspirators. Colonel Breton, in his evidence before the parliamentary committee of 1837, said that he had heard of one ship with female convicts which had been captured by the crew and carried into Rio. But I can find no corroboration of this statement elsewhere. The same authority talks vaguely of another plot in his own ship, which came to nothing, because another and a more desperate character turned informer. Convict ships with females on board were as a rule more easily managed than those with males. But the following extract from a letter from the matron on board the convict ship Elizabeth and Henry, in 1848, relates a curious incident:—

"Off Cape of Good Hope (April 30th).—We were likely to have a mutiny on board a few weeks since. The [female] prisoners laid a plan for strangling the doctor, but providentially it was made known by M. A. Stewart, a convict, just before it was executed. McNalty and Brennan were the ringleaders in the affair. When it was known, the officers of the ship went down in the prison with firearms. Fancy the scene! The doctor has now promised to forgive them if they conduct themselves well the rest of the voyage."

More serious was the conspiracy which was discovered in a ship of which Doctor Galloway, R. N., was the surgeon-superintendent. This was brought to light just after the ship had left Plymouth Sound—as a general rule all such attempts are made in the early part of a voyage—and it was discovered by a sentinel who overheard a fragment of a conversation by the hatchway during the morning watch. The plot was cleverly laid. The convicts had observed that the old guard discharged their firelocks always at sunrise, and that the new guard did not reload till eleven o'clock. They planned therefore to mutiny in the early morning, just after the guard had fired, resolving to seize these weapons, and then overpower the captain, the rest of the soldiers, and the crew. The total strength of the military detachment was forty, and the convicts were two hundred and fifty. The plotters of this outbreak were promptly punished on proof of their guilt, twelve of them being carried in double irons for seven or eight weeks.