“There were about one thousand people altogether,” said Dr. Whitney, “including 757 convicts, and among the convicts were 190 women and eighteen children. They had 160 soldiers to guard the prisoners, with a sufficient number of officers, and forty of the soldiers were accompanied by their wives. They had on the ships a goodly quantity of cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, and goats, and a large quantity of seeds from various parts of the world was sent out. It was not expected that the colony would be self-supporting for some time, and so it was arranged that supply ships laden with flour and other provisions should be sent from England at regular intervals. A year or two after the colony was founded one of these ships was wrecked on its way to Australia, and the colonists suffered greatly for want of food. Among the supplies taken by each ship there was usually a fresh batch of convicts, and quite regularly convict ships were despatched from England to Australia.”
Ned remarked that he thought a convict ship would not be a pleasant craft to travel on. A good many people did not like crossing the Atlantic on cattle ships, but he thought the cattle ship would be far preferable to one laden with convicts.
“And so it is,” replied the doctor. “According to all accounts, the life on board a convict ship from England to Australia was terrible. Remember that in those days prisoners were treated with great harshness; they were not supposed to have any feelings and were never spoken to kindly, and in many instances an order was usually accompanied by a kick or a blow. During the voyage the prisoners were allowed on deck one hour or possibly two hours of each day, care being taken that only a small number would be there at any one time.
“For the rest of the twenty-four hours they were shut up in close, stifling pens or cages, generally with nothing but a little straw to sleep on, and they were fed with the coarsest and poorest food. Coffee and tea with hard bread formed their breakfast; dinner was the same, with sometimes the addition of a piece of heavily salted beef, so hard that it was no easy matter to cut it into mouthfuls. Supper was the same as breakfast, and this was kept up with hardly any variation.
“The slightest infraction of the rules was punished with the lash, but this did not deter the criminals from making trouble. Constantly the boatswain and his assistants were kept busy in performing the floggings that were ordered, and sometimes the cat-o’-nine-tails was in steady use from sunrise to sunset. The more severe his discipline, the more highly an officer was regarded by his superiors, and if he occasionally hanged a few men, it rather advanced than retarded his promotion. A good many died on the voyage from England to Australia, partly in consequence of their scanty fare and the great heat of the tropics; but, according to tradition, a very large proportion of the mortality was the result of brutal treatment and privations.
“The passengers on the convict ship,” said Harry, “seem to have been treated pretty much like those on slave ships.”
“You are not far wrong there,” the doctor replied; “the sufferings of convicts on their way to Australia were not altogether unlike those of the unhappy negroes that were formerly taken from the coast of Africa to North and South America. The convicts were not crowded quite as densely into the holds of the ships as the slaves were, and the mortality among them was not as great; still they were packed very thickly together, and were treated quite as cruelly as the slave dealers used to treat their human property. Occasionally it happened that the convicts formed a conspiracy and endeavored to take possession of the ship. In nearly every instance they were betrayed by one of their number, and when the time came for action they were so closely guarded that any resistance was useless. Then the conspirators were seized, and after a brief trial were condemned to be hung or shot, generally the former, as it saved ammunition and did not soil the decks of the ship with blood. When there was an actual mutiny the mutineers were shot down without mercy, and those who escaped the bullets were speedily disposed of by hanging at the yard-arms.”
“Terrible times those must have been,” remarked Ned; “the wonder is that anybody survived.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Harry; “but man has a tough constitution and can endure a great deal.”