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

by Arthur Griffiths

In one of the earliest ships the opposing parties actually came to blows—so says one Barrington, at least, who went as a convict in 1790 to Botany Bay. The memoirs of this man (a very different person from Sir Jonah Barrington) were widely successful, and soon ran through several editions. His career of crime was more than curious. His London hunting-grounds were royal levées, court balls, Ranelagh, and the opera-house. At the palace he found it easy in the crush to cut the diamonds out of orders and stars. At the opera he picked Prince Orloff's pocket of a snuff-box worth £30,000, but being collared by the owner he restored the booty. He was eventually transported for stealing a gold watch at Enfield races from Mr. H. H. Townshend. According to Barrington's account two Americans among the people persuaded the others to conspire to seize the ship. They declared that the capture effected, it would be easy to carry the prize into some American port, where all would receive a hearty welcome. Not only would all obtain their liberty as a matter of course, but Congress would give them also a tract of land, and a share of the money accruing from the sale of the ship and her cargo.

The plan of action was to seize the arm-chest while the officers were at dinner. This was kept upon the quarter-deck, under the charge of sentries. The latter were to be engaged in conversation till the supreme moment arrived, and then, at a signal given, seized. This was to be followed by a general rush on deck of all the convicts from below. Barrington relates that he was standing with the man at the wheel when the mutiny actually broke out. Hearing a scuffle upon the main deck, he was on the point of going forward, when he was stopped by one of the Americans, who made a stroke at his head with a sword taken from a sentry. "Another snapped at me a pistol. I had a handspike, and felled the first to the ground." Meanwhile the man at the wheel ran down and gave the alarm. The captain was below, seeing to the stowage of some wine; but Barrington held the mutineers at bay, at the head of the companion ladder, till the captain came up with a blunderbuss in his hand and fired. This dispersed the enemy, and they thereupon retired. An immediate example was made of the ringleaders in this affair. Two were forthwith hanged at the yard-arm, and a number flogged. To Barrington, the captain and his officers were profuse in thanks, and at the end of the voyage they made him a substantial present. Told in Mr. Barrington's own words, the story of this mutiny tends rather to his own glorification. It is just possible that he may have exaggerated some of the details—his own valiant deeds with the rest. This trusty convict was received into high favour on landing in New South Wales and after holding several subordinate appointments became at length a police officer and gained high rank.

But as a rule the efforts made by the convicts to rise against their rulers on shipboard were futile in the extreme. Even Mr. Commissioner Bigge, in 1822, laughs at all notion of the convicts combining to capture the ships. He is commenting on the different practice of different doctors and captains, as to allowing the people upon deck and removing their irons. Some, he says, who are inexperienced and timid, dread the assemblage of even half on the upper deck, and they would not for worlds remove the irons till the voyage is half over. Others do not care if all the people come up together, and they take off all irons before the ship is out of the Channel. But he considers free access to the deck so important in preserving discipline, as well as health, during the voyage, that "no unwarrantable distrust of the convicts" ought to interfere with it, and "no apprehension of any combined attempt to obtain possession of the ship." He thus continues:—

"The fear of combinations among the convicts to take the ship is proved by experience of later years to be groundless; and it may be safely affirmed, that if the instructions of the navy board are carried into due effect by the surgeon-superintendent and the master, and if the convicts obtain the full allowance of provisions made to them by government, as well as reasonable access to the deck, they possess neither fidelity to each other, nor courage sufficient to make any simultaneous effort that may not be disconcerted by timely information, and punished before an act of aggression is committed. A short acquaintance with the characters of the convicts, promises of recommendation to the governor on their arrival in New South Wales, and an ordinary degree of skill in the business of preventive police, will at all times afford means of obtaining information."

The passage out of all these convict ships was upon the whole exceedingly prosperous. The voyage could be performed with perfect safety. Mr. Bigge says that up to his time no ships had arrived disabled; more than this, no disasters had occurred to any in Bass Straits, where serious mishaps so frequently happened. The chief and only difficulty really was the tendency to delay upon the road. There was a great temptation to both master and surgeon to call at Rio. All sorts of excuses were made to compass this—that the ship was running short of water, for instance, or that the passengers absolutely required a change of diet. Sugar was to be bought at Rio, and tobacco, and with a freight of these the officials could make a profitable speculation on reaching Sydney. For the doctor the temptation was especially strong, because he was for years allowed to land his goods at New South Wales duty-free. But if the superiors thus benefited themselves, it was at the cost of the discipline of the convicts, such as it was. The ship was for the time neglected utterly; the captain was busy and so was the doctor with their commercial enterprises. The convicts, for security's sake, were relegated to irons; but they found means to obtain spirits from shore, and wholesale intoxication and demoralisation naturally followed. In view of all this the masters of convict ships were ordered to make the run outwards direct. The requisite supplies might be calculated with care in advance, so as to preclude the chance of any scarcity before the end of the voyage. But if it so happened that to touch at some port or other was imperative, then the Cape of Good Hope was to be invariably chosen instead of Rio.

These orders to bear up for the Cape in case of necessity were clearly right and proper, but in one case they were attended with very serious consequences. I allude to the loss of the Waterloo convict ship in Table Bay, in September, 1842. In this case scurvy had appeared on board, and therefore the surgeon-superintendent gave the master a written order to change his course. It was necessary to touch at the Cape to obtain supplies of vegetables and fresh meat. To Table Bay they came in due course, and there remained—ignorant, seemingly, of the danger they ran, of which they would have been duly warned had the naval authorities been aware of their arrival. But the surgeon-superintendent failed to report it; and "in this omission," says Vice-Admiral Sir E. King when animadverting upon the whole occurrence, "he has only followed the common and very reprehensible neglect of duty in this respect of surgeon-superintendents of convict ships." Ill-luck followed the Waterloo. The master went on shore and left his ship to the care of his chief mate, a young and inexperienced seaman, who showed himself when the moment of emergency came either utterly incompetent or culpably negligent—probably both. One of those sudden gales which frequently ravage Table Bay rose without warning, and the Waterloo went straight on the rocks. Nothing was done to save her. The masts were not cut away, and everybody on board seemed helpless. Another ship, the transport Abercrombie Robinson, which was lying in Table Bay at the time, was also driven ashore; but her people were rescued, and she did not become an entire wreck. But the moment the Waterloo struck she broke up, and went to pieces. Terrible loss of life followed: 188 out of a total of 302 on board were drowned, and but for the merest chance not a soul among the convict passengers would have reached the land alive. The prisoners had been at first set free, but they were then ordered below again by the surgeon-superintendent, who feared they would rush violently into the surf boats coming to the rescue, and so swamp them. The poor creatures went below—obediently enough, and then followed one of those fatal but inexplicable mistakes which might have led to the most terrible consequences. The doctor as a matter of precaution had ordered the prisons to be bolted down, but the bolts in the hatches could have been easily at any moment withdrawn. However, the officious corporal in command of the military guard proprio motu affixed a padlock to the bolt to make it secure, and forgot to take it off again. The excuse made for him was that he was "under the influence of the panic incident to the unexpected and almost instantaneous demolition of the ship." Thus several hundred men were in momentary danger of being drowned like rats in a hole. "Most providentially," says the report from which I quote, "the awful consequences of the unaccountable conduct of the corporal were averted by one of the prisoners striking off the padlock with a hammer that had accidentally been left in the prison early that morning, it having been used to remove the irons from the only prisoners who wore them for some offence." So the convicts reached the deck in time to avail themselves of such means of escape as offered. But these were few. Had the masts been cut down, when the long boat was lowered, they might have formed a temporary bridge over which the people might have passed in comparative safety to the surf boats. As it was, nearly two-thirds of them were drowned.

This catastrophe attracted great attention at the time. At Cape Town the sudden and apparently unaccountable destruction of the ship led to great excitement in the public mind. A very searching inquiry was therefore set on foot. The débris of the wreck having been carefully examined by Captain Sir John Marshall, R. N., he reported unhesitatingly that the Waterloo must have been unseaworthy when she left England. "General decay and rottenness of the timbers appeared in every step we took." She had been repeatedly repaired at considerable outlay, but she had run so long that she was quite beyond cure.

As a further explanation of the disaster the mate and crew were charged with being drunk at the time the ship struck. But the only evidence in support of this was an intercepted letter of one of the convicts who had been saved. He asserted that the chief mate could not keep his legs; that in trying to drive in a nail he staggered and fell. The rolling of the vessel was deemed a more than sufficient explanation of this. Another charge was made against one of the seamen who swam back to the ship after he had once actually reached the shore. No man in his sober senses, urged the convict witness, would have risked his life in this way; whereas it was clearly proved that no man otherwise than sober could possibly have battled successfully with the surf.

It is but fair to add that the unseaworthy condition of the Waterloo was distinctly denied at Lloyd's. They certified that at the time of sailing she was "in an efficient state of repair and equipment, and fully competent for the safe performance of any voyage to any part of the world." And as the credit of the transport office had been more or less impugned, a return was about this time called for by the House, of the number of convict-ships which had foundered at sea, or not been heard of, between 1816 and 1842. It was satisfactorily shown that in this way not one single ship had been lost through all those years.

But there had been other shipwrecks, and among these none with more fatal results than that of the Amphitrite, which went ashore at Boulogne, in September, 1833. The story of this mishap is an instructive homily in more ways than one. The ship was proceeding gaily down channel, with a freight of one hundred and eight female convicts, when she was met by a violent and unexpected gale, accompanied by a very heavy sea. She was on a lee shore. The conduct of the master in presence of danger is described as seamanlike, judicious, and decisive. Seeing no help for it, and that he could not save his vessel from the land, he said openly to the mate that he must look for the best berth and run her straight on shore. They ran her up as high as possible, hoping the tide as it rose would drive her higher. Then with as much complacency as if they were safely lodged in a secure harbour, the crew went below, had supper, and turned in. Before daybreak the ship was smashed to atoms and only three lives were saved. The ship's fate was indeed sealed from the moment she went ashore. Nothing possibly could have saved her, and it was a matter of surprise to all who witnessed the catastrophe that she was not deserted while there was yet time. "All might have been saved, but for the deplorable error in judgment on the part of the crew."