The shops, as usual, made more money than the diggers; and tradesmen, made casual by prosperity, adopted the “take it or leave it” tone and gave no change below a sixpence. The police were a nondescript force, mostly recruited from the emigrant ships, and the only emblem of their office was the regulation helmet. Indeed, dressed as they were, in the clothes in which they had arrived out, their appearance was not very uniform. However it was beyond the power of any force to preserve strict law and order at such a time, and the most that was expected of them was to keep the side walk and gutters clear of drunken miners and to pacify the pugnacious.
The “new chum” had hardly landed before he was regaled with hair-raising stories of bushrangers—apparently these gentry had an awkward habit of holding one up in the Black Forest on the way to the diggings. Thus firearms of every description were soon at a premium, many of them being more dangerous to the man who fired than to the man fired at.
Before leaving Melbourne for the sea, I must not omit to mention a well-known character of those days, namely George Francis Train. He combined the businesses of packer to the diggings and agent to the White Star Line. He was a real Yankee with an unceasing flow of flowery talk; and, after amassing a fortune in Melbourne, he returned to his native State and became a candidate for the American Presidency; and he informed everybody, that if he was elected, he intended reforming the world. Alas! they turned him down—he went broke and sank into obscurity. Appearances at the present day, however, seem to show that old Train managed to plant some of his seed in the White House.
First Gold Cargoes Home.
The first ship to land Australian gold in the British Isles was admitted by most people to be the smart little Aberdeen White Star liner Phoenician, commanded by Captain Sproat, a great passage maker. She arrived off Plymouth on 3rd February, 1852, after a passage of 83 days from Sydney. This was considered a record for the run home. She brought 74 packages of gold dust, valued at £81,000.
The first ship to arrive in Liverpool with a gold cargo was the Eagle Line packet, Albatross, Captain Gieves. She arrived on 31st August, 1852, with £50,000 of gold dust; but, what was far more remarkable, was that she arrived with the same crew to a man with which she had left England.
This was a very different experience to that of her sister ship, the Eagle, which left Port Phillip on the 2nd September, after waiting six months for a crew, and then paying between £50 and £60 per man for the run home. Apparently though, the Eagle’s expensive crew were worth their money, for she made the quickest passage ever known up to that date, arriving in the Downs on the 78th day out. She also had a record gold shipment of 150,000 ounces.
The Great Rush to the Gold Regions in 1852.
With the arrival in England of larger and larger consignments of gold, there was such a rush to take shipping to the Antipodes that both the Emigration Commissioners and the shipowners found themselves unable to put sufficient tonnage on the berth to carry the clamouring hosts of adventurers. In London the magnificent frigate-built Blackwallers of Green, Money Wigram and Smith were diverted from the Indian trade in a vain attempt to stem the rush; whilst Liverpool shipowners began hiring or buying American Transatlantic packets and clippers, besides sending a shoal of orders across to the Boston and Nova Scotian shipbuilders. As fast as driving could make them, ships came crowding into Hobson’s Bay, just as they were still doing in San Francisco Bay on the other side of the Pacific; and it soon became no uncommon sight to see a dozen ships waiting inside the Heads for want of pilots to bring them up to the anchorage.