September.] On the 1st of September the Britannia sailed for the Cape of Good Hope, on a second voyage of speculation for some of the civil and military officers of the settlement. In her went, with dispatches, Mr. David Wake Bell, and Mr. Richard Kent (gentlemen who arrived here in the Boddingtons and Sugar Cane transports, charged with the superintendance and medical care of the convicts from Ireland). The Speedy also sailed on her fishing voyage, the master intending not to consume any longer time in an unsuccessful trial of this coast. Several persons were permitted to take their passage in these ships; among others, Richard Blount, for whom a free pardon had some time since been received from the secretary of state's office.
Soon after the departure of these ships, the lieutenant-governor, having previously transmitted with his other dispatches an account of the transaction to the secretary of state, thought it necessary to issue a public order, calculated to impress on the minds of those settlers and others at Norfolk Island who might think themselves aggrieved by his late determination of not ordering payment to be made for the corn purchased of them by Lieutenant-governor King, a conviction that although he should on all occasions be ready to adopt any plan which the lieutenant-governor might devise for the accommodation or advantage of the inhabitants at Norfolk Island, yet in this business he made objections, because he did not consider himself authorised to ratify the agreement.
He proposed to those who held the bills to take back their corn; or, if they preferred leaving it in the public stores until such time as an answer could be received from the secretary of state, he assured them that they might depend on the earliest communication of whatever might be his decision; and that if such decision should be to refuse the payment of the bills, he promised that grain should be returned equal in quantity and quality to what had been received from them.*
[* Governor Hunter on his arrival ordered the bills to be paid, which was afterwards confirmed by the secretary of state.]
How far the settlers (who in return for the produce of their grounds looked for something more immediately beneficial to them and their families, than the waiting eighteen months or two years for a refusal, instead of payment of these bills) would be satisfied with this order, was very questionable. It has been seen already, that they were dissatisfied at the produce of their second crops not being purchased; what then must be their ideas on finding even the first received indeed, but not accounted for; purchased, but not paid for? it was fair to conclude, that on thus finding themselves without a market for their overplus grain, they would certainly give up the cultivation of their farms and quit the island. Should this happen, Lieutenant-governor King would have to lament the necessity of a measure having been adopted which in effect promised to depopulate his government.
On the 10th and 11th of this month we had two very welcome arrivals from England, the Resolution and Salamander storeships. They were both freighted with stores and provisions for the colony; but immediately on their anchoring we were given to understand, that from meeting with uncommon bad weather between the Cape of Good Hope and Van Dieman's Land, the masters apprehended that their cargoes had sustained much damage.
The Resolution sailed in company with the Salamander (from whom she parted in a heavy gale of wind about the longitude of the islands Amsterdam and St. Paul's) on the 20th of March last; anchored on the 16th of April at the Isle of May, whence she sailed on the 20th; crossed the equator on the 3rd of May; anchored on the 25th of the same month in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro; left it on the 10th of June, and, after a very boisterous passage, made the southern extremity of New Holland on the 30th of August, having been ninety-three days in her passage from the Brazils, during which time she endured several hard gales of wind, three of which the master, Mr. Matthew Lock, reported to have been as severe as any man on board his ship had ever witnessed. He stated, in the protest which he entered before the judge-advocate, that his ship was very much strained, the main piece of the rudder sprung, and most of the sails and rigging worn out. The Salamander appeared to have met with weather equally bad; but she was at one time in greater hazard, having broached-to in a tremendous gale of wind; during which time, according to the tale of the superstitious seamen, and which they took care to insert in their protest, blue lights were seen dancing on each masthead and yard in the ship.
By these ships we learned that the Surprise transport, with male and female convicts for this country, was left by them lying at Spithead ready for sea, and that they might be shortly expected. The Kitty, which sailed from this place in June 1793, had arrived safely at Cork on the 5th of February last, not losing any of her passengers or people in so long a voyage and in such a season.
His Majesty's appointment of John Hunter esq to be our governor, in the room of Captain Phillip who had resigned his office, we found had been officially notified in the London Gazette of the 5th of February last. Mr. Phillip's services, we understood, were remunerated by a pension of five hundred pounds per annum.
The Irish prisoners were now again beginning to be troublesome; and some of them being missing from labour, it was directly rumoured that a plan was in agitation to seize the boat named the Cumberland, which had recently sailed with provisions for the settlers at the Hawkesbury. By several it was said, that she had actually been attacked without the Heads, and carried. Notice was therefore immediately sent overland to the river, to put the people in the boat on their guard, and to return should she reach that settlement safely: an armed long-boat was also sent to protect her passage round. After a few days suspense we found, that while providing against any accident happening to the Cumberland, some of the Irish prisoners at Parramatta had stolen from the wharf at that place a six-oar'd boat belonging to Lieutenant Macarthur, with which they got without the harbour undiscovered. She was found however, some days after, at Botany Bay. The people who were in her made some threats of resistance, but at length took to the woods, leaving the boat with nearly every thing that they had provided for their voyage. From the woods they visited the farms about Sydney for plunder, or rather for sustenance; but one of them being fired at and wounded, the rest thought it their wisest way to give themselves up. They made no hesitation in avowing that they never meant to return; but at the same time owned that they supposed they had reached Broken Bay instead of Botany Bay, ignorant whether it lay to the northward or southward of this harbour. The man who had been wounded died at the hospital the next day; and his companions appeared but very ill able to provide for themselves, even by those means which had occasioned our being troubled with them in this country.