Some men in England managed to find out that on a certain night, one of the mail coaches (and here comes in the coach) was to carry a large amount of bullion, which they concluded would be placed in the front boot of the coach, as the safest place, and in this they were not disappointed. They then secured the four inside places for that night, and whilst on the journey set to work to make a way into the boot and abstract the coin. Upon arriving at the end of the journey they immediately handed this over to their wives, who were in readiness to receive it, and straightway made off with it. The men were taken up, tried and convicted of the robbery, and sentenced to transportation. Soon after they landed in the new country they were assigned to their respective wives as servants, and, as is said in the children's story books, "lived very happily ever after."
Such a glaring case as this of course could hardly occur a second time, but sufficient care was never taken to see that convicts were only assigned to those masters whose character and position warranted it. At last, like many other things, good in themselves, it was abandoned altogether, instead of the trouble being taken to administer it properly.
There was one institution I must mention connected with convict life, as I suppose it was quite peculiar to Van Diemen's Land. A penal settlement was established for those who committed offences after their arrival in the colony, situated on a small peninsula called Port Arthur, and separated from the mainland by a very narrow isthmus.
Across this, called Eagle Hawk Neck, there was placed a line of savage dogs, each one chained to a kennel with just sufficient length of chain to prevent anyone passing through the cordon without being seized, and at the same time short enough to prevent the dogs fighting each other.[2]
What strides have been made since then! Whether greater by sea or land appears doubtful; but one thing is certain—that the last forty years has produced more change on both elements than the previous hundred. In the year 1772 Captain Cook started on his voyage of discovery in a vessel of four hundred and sixty tons—about the same size as those that were in use at the time I have treated of; and I need not remind the reader of the immense growth in the size of ships since then. The time consumed in going from one part of the world to another has also been altered in a no less remarkable manner.
If to those who, at the present day, would shrink from trusting their lives and comforts for a long voyage to any vessel of less than three or four thousand tons, a ship of only five hundred tons, such as I have already mentioned, seems uncomfortable, if not hazardous, what will they say when I mention that the vessel on board of which I returned to England measured only two hundred and eight tons—probably about the same size as the largest boat carried on board some of the leviathan steamers of the present day.
But, however hazardous they may think it, I believe that so far from any extra danger being incurred from sailing in these small ships, it was not only as safe, but, judging from the accounts we read of the damage sustained by these monsters of the deep in heavy weather, the balance may be in favour of the smaller craft. They were so buoyant that they rose with the waves instead of going through them, and, like the little "Eudora," in which I made the homeward voyage, were like a duck upon the water.
In my own case, the small size of the ship had a special advantage, as I was allowed to take the wheel whenever I liked, which could hardly have been the case in a large one; and really the steering her over the grand waves in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in half a gale of wind was not very much inferior to driving a racing coach.
One day, however, I was let in for rather more than I bargained for. It was blowing an increasingly heavy gale off Cape Horn, such as it knows how to blow in that part of the world in winter, and the hands were all aloft taking in sail, when the skipper turned to me and said, "I wish you would take the wheel and send the man forward, as I want more strength aloft." Thus the whole crew were in the rigging, and if by any mistake I had allowed the sail they were reefing to fill, they must have been carried overboard with it.
It may seem rather a happy-go-lucky way of sending a ship to sea, for the crew to be so short-handed as to make it necessary to call in the aid of a passenger in such an emergency, but those were the "pre-Plimsoll days," and before ships' masters and other officers were subjected to examinations. In one ship on board which I sailed, the owner was overheard to say to a friend who had accompanied him on board, "With such a captain and such a mate, I only wonder the ship ever comes home safe again."