Australian Penal Transportation refers to the manner in which British and Irish convicts were shipped en masse to Australia and Tasmania between 1788 and 1868 to work as laborers and servants in the various colonies there. They were absolutely crucial in the development of colonial Australia, building towns and cities like Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane and Perth. In total it is understood that 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia and Tasmania on board 806 ships meaning an average of 200 convicts per ship. The conditions on board these varied greatly and in some instances, such as the appalling conditions of the Second Fleet which arrived to New South Wales in June 1790, the mortality rate was extremely high and disease and malnutrition were rampant on board the ships.[1]
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Australian penal transportation chronology of eventsAustralian penal transportation chronology of events
Australia was founded as a penal colony in the late 1780s. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the British government had sent tens of thousands of convicts to the British colonies in North America, with the number increasing considerably following the passing of the Transportation Act in 1717. It stipulated that prisoners convicted of minor offenses would serve seven years of labor overseas before being granted their freedom, with fourteen years for capital offenses. Yet the American Revolution and the subsequent independence of the United States removed this as an option from the late 1770s onwards. Accordingly, proposals emerged to develop penal colonies in Australia, whose coast had been explored in 1770 by James Cook during his first expedition to the South Seas. In 1787 the First Fleet of nearly 800 convicts was sent out to New South Wales and established a British colony there. It was the beginning of the penal transports which would consist of 806 ships over the next eighty years, or an average of ten penal transports per year.[2]
The conditions of these ships varied greatly. The Second Fleet, which was sent out to Australia gradually from late July 1789 onwards and arrived in June 1790, merits particular attention for the appalling conditions in which the prisoners were kept. Just over one-thousand convicts were placed on board six ships. A company, Camden, Calvert & King, which was otherwise more well-known for transporting slaves across the Atlantic, was contracted to provide most of the ships and transport the convicts. There was no stipulation for them to arrive dead or alive. As a result, the company cut corners everywhere and showed no regard for human life.[3] 273 prisoners died during the voyage and nearly 500 were ill when they reached Australia. Many were kept below deck for virtually the entirety of the voyage, some in chains. Most were underfed and scurvy was rampant, while the vast majority were lice-ridden by the time they reached New South Wales. Many were unable to stand to leave the ships and well over a hundred more died within a week or two of arriving in Australia. The British authorities in Sydney strongly censured the company for the conditions the convicts had been kept in during the voyage. This was the prison fleet with the highest mortality rate during the entirety of the penal transport era.[4]
Generally speaking, conditions were better on most penal transports than was the case with the Second Fleet. That was particularly so from 1801 after the British government introduced numerous regulations that were imposed on those contracted to operate convict transport ships. For instance, clear rules around food, medical provisions, sanitation and time allowed on deck were laid out. As a result, it became common for convicts in the nineteenth century to arrive in Australia in better health than they had possibly been in before their arrest and conviction. Others were not so lucky. There were four recorded instances of convict transports being shipwrecked. One was the Waterloo, a British ship which was making its seventh voyage to Australia carrying convicts when it was wrecked in Table Bay in August 1842. Of the 302 crew and passengers, 189 lost their lives, of which 143 were convicts. Thus, while the appalling conditions of the Second Fleet were not generally repeated after the early 1790s, the penal transports could still lead to significant loss of life over the decades.[5]
Extent of migration associated with Australian penal transportationExtent of migration associated with Australian penal transportation
There were 162,000 convicts transported from Britain and Ireland to Australia between 1788 and 1868. Nearly 85% of these were males, some of them little more than boys who were convicted and punished as adults, as was the case with the 15% of the convicts that were female. The forced migration peaked in the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s, with 7,000 convicts or 4.3% of the whole arriving alone in 1833. Approximately 24% came from Ireland, a high number in terms of Ireland’s population comparative to that of Britain, but one explained by the manner in which petty theft was severely punished in Ireland. From the late 1840s, as the British government began phasing-out the penal system, the number of penal ships declined considerably. The last ship arrived in 1868.[6]
Demographic impact of Australian penal transportationDemographic impact of Australian penal transportation
The demographic impact of the penal transportation system was immense. It is estimated that 20% of Australia’s population today consists of people descended to one extent or another from the convicts who arrived between 1788 and 1868. The impact was greatest in certain parts of the country, notably around Sydney in New South Wales, on the island of Tasmania, around Brisbane in Queensland and at Perth in Western Australia, where the main penal colonies were established between 1788 and 1829. The demographic impact in Tasmania has an additionally bleak element to it in that the British settlement here from 1803 onwards resulted in the Black War between the British and the natives from the mid-1820s onwards and the virtual obliteration of the Aboriginal population, an act of clear genocide which has unfortunately been almost completely forgotten today.[7]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about Australian Penal TransportationExplore more about Australian Penal Transportation
- Australia, New South Wales Convicts Index, 1791-1873 record collection on MyHeritage
- Australia, New South Wales Birth Index, 1787-1916 record collection on MyHeritage
- Australia, New South Wales Death Index, 1787-1986 record collection on MyHeritage
- Settlers, Squatters and Selectors: Land ownership in Australia, 1788-1900 at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- A Cargo of Criminals: Transportation to Australia at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Researching in Australian Archives at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Exploring Irish Genealogy in the Aftermath of the Great Potato Famine at the MyHeritage blog
References
- ↑ https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/Convicts_and_the_Colonisation_of_Australia,_1788-1868
- ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/24442306
- ↑ https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/second_fleet
- ↑ https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/news/australias-tragic-beginnings-the-grotesque-story-of-the-second-fleet/news-story/0ad2523ddc1053ebab3d54c636ecd9ee
- ↑ https://convictrecords.com.au/ships/waterloo
- ↑ https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-victorians-and-australian-penal-colonies/
- ↑ https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/the-black-line