At the Cape of Good Hope Captain Parker had met with Captain Edwards of the Pandora, who delivered to him Mary Braud, the widow of Bryant, who escaped to Timor in the fishing cutter, with one of the children, and only four of the male convicts who accompanied Bryant in his flight. Bryant died at Batavia, with the other child, and two of his companions; one of them, James Cox, was said to be drowned in the Straits of Sunda. On their arrival in England the story of their sufferings in the boat excited much compassion; and, before the Bellona sailed, they had been brought up to the bar of the Old Bailey, and ordered by the court to remain in Newgate until the period of their original sentence of transportation should expire, there to finish their unsuccessful attempts to regain their liberty.
While the cargo of the Bellona was landing much of it was found to be damaged; the ship had been overloaded, and had met with very boisterous weather on her passage. This practice of crowding too much into one ship had in many instances been very prejudicial to the colony; in the present instance, of the Russia duck, which was excellent in its kind, and which had cost the sum of £6636 0s 9d; sixty-eight bales, containing thirteen thousand one hundred and forty-eight yards, were damaged; sixty-nine casks of flour also were found to be much injured. Of seventy-six hogsheads of molasses, eleven hundred and seventy-two gallons were found to have leaked out; one cask of pork was stinking and rotten; seventy-nine gallons of rum, and one hundred and ninety-eight gallons of wine, were deficient, owing to improper stowage; three hundred and thirty-five hammocks, thirteen rugs, five hundred and twenty-seven yards of brown cloths, and one case of stationary, were rendered totally unfit for use. Of the articles thus found to be unserviceable to the colony, there was not one which in its proper state would not have been valuable; and when the expense attending their conveyance, the risk of the passage, the inconvenience that must be felt from the want of every damaged article, and the impossibility of getting them replaced for a great length of time, were considered, it was difficult to ascertain their precise value.
Among the occurrences of this month one appears to deserve particular notice. On Friday the 18th, Eleanor McCave, the wife of Charles Williams, the settler, was drowned, together with an infant child, and a woman of the name of Green. These unfortunate people had been drinking and revelling with Williams the husband and others at Sydney, and were proceeding to Parramatta in a small boat, in which was a bag of rice belonging to Green. The boat heeling considerably, and some water getting at the bag, by a movement of Green's to save her rice the boat overset near Breakfast Point, and the two women and the child were drowned. If assistance could have been obtained upon the spot, the child might have been saved; for it was forced from the wretched mother's grasp just before she finally sunk, and brought on shore by the father; but for want of medical aid it expired. The parents of this child were noted in the colony for the general immorality of their conduct; they had been rioting and fighting with each other the moment before they got into the boat; and it was said, that the woman had imprecated every evil to befal her and the infant she carried about her (for she was six months gone with child) if she accompanied her husband to Parramatta. The bodies of these two unfortunate women were found a few days afterwards, when the wretched and rascally Williams buried his wife and child within a very few feet of his own door. The profligacy of this man indeed manifested itself in a strange manner: a short time after he had thus buried his wife, he was seen sitting at his door, with a bottle of rum in his hand, and actually drinking one glass and pouring another on her grave until it was emptied, prefacing every libation by declaring how well she had loved it during her life. He appeared to be in a state not far from insanity, as this anecdote certainly testifies; but the melancholy event had not had any other effect upon his mind.
The Kitty transport being ready for sea, on Sunday the 20th two subalterns, three sergeants, three corporals, one drummer, and sixty privates, of the New South Wales corps, were embarked, for the purpose of relieving the detachment from that corps now on duty at Norfolk Island under the command of a captain, who received orders to return to this settlement.
On board of this ship were also embarked, Mr. Clarke, the deputy-commissary for Norfolk Island; Mr. Peate, the master carpenter, who came out in the Royal Admiral; two coopers; two tailors; two officers' servants; John Chapman Morris, Benjamin Ingram (pursuant to the conditional pardon which he received from Governor Phillip), and a few women: and on the 25th she sailed.
On Saturday the 26th, the rice being expended, the convicts received three pounds of flour, and the civil and military one pound of flour in addition to the former allowance.
In the course of this month the lieutenant-governor judged it necessary to send an officer to Parramatta, whom he could entrust with the direction of the convicts employed there and at Toongabbie in cultivation, as well as to take charge of the public grain. This business had always been executed by one of the superintendants, under the immediate inspection and orders of the governor, who latterly had dedicated the greatest part of his time and attention to these settlements. But it was attended with infinite fatigue to his excellency; and the business had now grown so extensive, that it became absolutely necessary that the person who might have the regulation of it should reside upon the spot, that he might personally enforce the execution of his orders, and be at all times ready to attend to the various applications which were constantly making from settlers.
The lieutenant-governor, therefore (his presence being required at Sydney, the head-quarters of his regiment, and the seat of the government of the country) deputed this trust to Lieutenant John Macarthur, of the New South Wales corps; the superintendants, storekeepers, overseers, and convicts at the two settlements, being placed under his immediate inspection.
Charles Gray, a man who had rendered himself notorious in the registers of this colony by repeated acts of villainy, exhibited himself again to public view at the close of this month, and at a time when every one thought him a reclaimed man. He had been sent to Norfolk Island as a place where he would have fewer opportunities of exercising his predatory abilities than at Sydney; but the law having spent its force against him, he returned to this settlement as a free man in September last. On his declaring that he was able to provide for himself, he was allowed to work for his own support, and for some time past he had cut wood and drawn water for a drummer in the New South Wales corps, a man who, by much self-denial and economy, had got together and laid up thirty-three guineas, for the prudent and laudable purpose of hereafter apprenticing his children; but having unfortunately and most indiscreetly suffered this man to know, not only that he had such a sum, but where he kept it, Gray availed himself of a convenient opportunity, and carried off the whole sum, together with a shirt which lay in his way. On being taken up (for suspicion was directly fixed on him) he readily acknowledged the theft, and either was, or pretended to be, very much in liquor. On being urged to restore the property, he sent the watchmen to search for it in different places, but without directing them to the spot where he had concealed it. At last he was taken out himself, when accidentally meeting the lieutenant-governor he threw himself on the ground, pretending to be in a fit; on which he was directly ordered to be tied up and punished with one hundred lashes. After this he would not make any discovery, and was sent to the hospital. The drummer who had suffered so materially by this wretch, although the object of pity, yet, knowing as he must have done the character of the man, was certainly entitled to no small degree of blame for trusting with a secret of such importance to his family a man who he must have known could not have withstood so great a temptation.
The lieutenant-governor proposing to open and cultivate the ground commonly known by the name of the Kangaroo Ground, situate to the westward of the town of Sydney between that settlement and Parramatta, a gang of convicts was sent from the latter place for that purpose. The soil here was much better for agriculture than that immediately adjoining to the town of Sydney, and the ground lay well for cultivation; but it had hitherto been neglected, from its being deficient in the very essential requisite of water; on which account Parramatta had been preferred to it. The eligibility of cultivating it was however now going to be tried; and, permission having been received by the Bellona to grant lands to those officers who might desire it, provided the situations of the allotments were such as might be advantageous to bona fide settlers hereafter, if they ever should fall into such hands, several officers chose this as the spot which they would cultivate, and allotments of one hundred acres each were marked out for the clergyman (who, to obtain a grant here, relinquished his right to cultivate the land allotted for the maintenance of a minister), for the principal surgeon, and for two officers of the corps.