Some prisoners having been sent from Norfolk Island, the criminal court was assembled on the 15th for the trial of one of them for a capital offence committed there; but for want of sufficient evidence he was acquitted. Great inconvenience was experienced from having to send prisoners from that island with all the necessary witnesses. In the case just mentioned the prosecutor was a settler, who being obliged to leave his farm for the time, the business of which was necessarily suspended until he could return, was ruined: and one of the witnesses was in nearly the same situation. But as the courts in New South Wales would always be the superior courts, it was not easy to discover a remedy for these inconveniences.'
A seaman of one of the transports having been clearly proved to have wantonly sunk a canoe belonging to a native, who had been paddling round the ship, and at last ventured on board, he was ordered to be punished, and to give the native a complete suit of wearing apparel, as a satisfaction for the injury he had done him, as well as to induce him to abandon any design of revenge which he might have formed. The corporal punishment was however afterwards remitted, and the seaman ordered to remain on board his ship while she should continue in this port.
Some of the soldiers who came out in the William and Ann transport having exhibited complaints against the master, whom they accused of assaulting and severely beating them during the passage, the affair was investigated before three magistrates, and a fine laid upon the master, which he paid.
On Wednesday the 21st his Majesty's ship Gorgon of forty-four guns, commanded by Captain John Parker, anchored within the heads of the harbour, reaching the settlement the following morning, and anchoring where his Majesty's late ship Sirius used to moor.
The Gorgon sailed from England on the 15th of March last, touching on her passage at the islands of Teneriffe and St. Iago, and at the Cape of Good Hope, where she remained six weeks, taking in three bulls, twenty-three cows, sixty-eight sheep, eleven hogs, two hundred fruit trees, a quantity of garden seed, and other articles for the colony. Unfortunately, the bulls and seven of the cows died; but a bull calf, which had been produced on board, arrived in good condition.
Six months provisions for about nine hundred people, with stores for his Majesty's armed tender the Supply, and for the marine detachment, were sent out in the Gorgon; wherein also was embarked Mr. King, the late commandant of Norfolk Island, now appointed by his Majesty lieutenant-governor of that settlement, and a commander in the navy; together with Mr. Charles Grimes, commissioned as a deputy surveyor-general to be employed at Norfolk Island; the chaplain and quarter-master of the New South Wales corps, and Mr David Burton, a superintendant of convicts.
By this ship we received a public seal to be affixed to all instruments drawn in his Majesty's name, and a commission under the great seal empowering the governor for the time being to remit, either absolutely or conditionally, the whole or any part of the term for which felons, or other offenders, should have been or might hereafter be transported to this country. Duplicates of each pardon were to be sent to England, for the purpose of inserting the names of the persons so emancipated in the first general pardon which should afterwards issue under the great seal of the kingdom.
To deserving characters, of which description there were many convicts in the colony, a prospect of having the period of their banishment shortened, and of being restored to the privilege which by misconduct they had forfeited, had something in it very cheering, and was more likely to preserve well intentioned men in honest and fair pursuits, than the fear of punishment, which would seldom operate with good effect on a mind that entertained no hope of reward for propriety of conduct. The people with whom we had to deal were not in general actuated by that nice sense of feeling which draws its truest satisfaction from self approbation; they looked for something more substantial, something more obvious to the external senses.
In determining the device for the seal of the colony, attention had been paid to its local and peculiar circumstances. On the obverse were the king's arms, with the royal titles in the margin; on the reverse, a representation of convicts landing at Botany Bay, received by Industry, who, surrounded by her attributes, a bale of merchandise, a beehive, a pickaxe, and a shovel, is releasing them from their fetters, and pointing to oxen ploughing and a town rising on the summit of a hill, with a fort for its protection. The masts of a ship are seen in the bay. In the margin are the words Sigillum. Nov. Camb. Aust.; and for a motto 'Sic fortis Etruria crevit.' The seal was of silver; its weight forty-six ounces and the devices were very well executed.
The cattle were immediately landed, and turned into the inclosures which had been prepared for them. One cow died in the boat going up.