My father had a B.A., mainly in philosophy and Latin. Nine
decades ago, that made him “educated”, but he had no notion of what mattered to
a boy whose interests were centred on things mechanical, natural and scientific.
Even though he never expressed it in as many words, I think he would have
endorsed poet Matthew Arnold’s words when, according to Lytton Strachey, the
idiot banished science from the curriculum at Rugby school thusly:
Rather than have Physical Science the principal thing in my
son’s mind, I would rather have him think the Sun went around the Earth, and
that the stars were merely spangles set in a bright blue firmament.
One Christmas, my father gave me a book called Great Escapes, a collection of essays
and excerpts that introduced me to a self-important Casanova, who made a great
fuss of his escape from the Leads, a prison in Venice, and Winston Churchill’s equally
exaggerated account of his escape from the Boers in Pretoria. Luckily I was an
info-sponge, and any book would suffice because I always turned to the
practical aspects of what I read.
I passed over the narcissistic excesses of two boastful liars
and soaked up the escapes from World War II German camps. These people forged
travel documents that would pass even close examination, but the escapees said that
most of the time, German officials gave the papers scant attention.
Enter my practical side, and while the statute of limitations
has probably run out, I admit nothing, but assert without comment that
officials are indeed lax in their scrutiny of paperwork. I always had the
legitimate documents with me, which would have saved my bacon, but I admired
the escapers, who lacked a safety net.
I fashioned keys with coat hangers, nail files and pliers, acquired
useful skills that I do not disclose (and never got to use), and kept the
escapers high in my Pantheon of Clever People. Had things turned out
differently, I was well prepared to emulate them, because escaping is an art,
not a science, and I had my bachelor’s in those arts long before I gained a real
B. Sc.
Because I am Australian, it was appropriate for me admire escapers,
because the original Australians were good at dodging the white hunters who pursued
them, and on the Gubba side, some of the invaders were keen to escape as well.
Most of these would-be escapers were convicts, and one of those felons was
active, even before any of them reached Australia.
The ships of the First Fleet left Portsmouth on 13 May, 1787,
and reached Tenerife in the Canary Islands on 3 June. There, they bought musket
balls and paper for musket cartridges (somebody had forgotten to bring these!),
but security was slack, and a convict saw his chance while working on the deck
of the convict transport Alexander in
Tenerife harbour. John Powers slipped over the side and rowed away in a jolly
boat, a smallish skiff, which had been carelessly left in the water, with oars.
The fugitive got ashore and fell asleep near the boat, which
was unwise. Next morning Marines found the boat, then they found Powers, and took
him back to the ship, where he was “heavily ironed”[1].
The masters of the transports would have taken extra care of
their involuntary passengers after that, because, as an assistant surgeon,
Arthur Bowes Smyth noted, ships’ masters had to land the convicts safely and
deliver them “into the Care of the Governor … under the penalty of 40£ for
every Convict that was missing”. [2]
In Sydney, in November 1788, John Powers received 200 lashes
for stealing some boards, presumably to make another boat, but after that, he
seems to have disappeared. Perhaps he just died and nobody bothered to mention
it. Then again, he may have stolen some more boards, made a boat and headed out
to sea, but if he did, he probably drowned.
At the end of 1793, David Collins listed the losses in that
year: two settlers, seven soldiers, seventy-eight male convicts, twenty-six
female convicts, and twenty-nine children had died. Added to that, there had
been other deaths: one convict was hanged; another was found dead in the woods;
one was killed by the fall of a tree and two more were killed by lightning.
That was an escape of sorts, but there were some real escapes as well.
To this decrease may be added, four male convicts, who found
means to escape from the colony on board of some of the ships which had been
here. [3]
Not all of the early escapees were white, though. In May
1795, an Indigenous warrior named Pemulwuy speared a convict “…within half a
mile of the brickfield huts” (800 metres from where Sydney’s town hall stands
today), and ran off. Soon after, the convict known as ‘Black Caesar’ (also a
frequent escaper, as we will see shortly) claimed to have killed Pemulwuy, but
in March of 1797, Pemulwuy was shot and wounded, and put in hospital, where he
recovered and escaped, still with an iron shackle on his leg.
The escapes kept on coming. In September 1803, a party of 50
under Lt. John Bowen landed at Risdon on the Derwent, and struggled to
establish a settlement. A few weeks later, Lieutenant-Governor David Collins
landed at Sullivan Bay on Port Phillip with a party including marines, free
settlers and convicts. One of the convicts was William Buckley, who escaped,
and later lived with the local people, surviving to meet the next wave of white
settlers in 1835. After that, he moved to Hobart.
And so far, we have yet to view the full richness of
Australia's many, many bolters, and their many, many motivations, but those
matters will be addressed in due course.
[1]
David Collins, An Account of the English
Colony in V, volume I, Introduction, page lxiv.
[2]
This is from the transcript of page A1085095 of the State Library of NSW copy
of Smyth’s journal. It is missing from the version in the National Library of
Australia. (This often happens when one of the versions was the original, and
another is a “fair copy”. Scholars say the State Library version is probably a
fair copy, and the National Library version is probably the original…)
[3]
David Collins, An Account of the English
Colony in NSW, volume 1, 332.
No comments:
Post a Comment