Читать книгу History of Tasmania - John West - Страница 10

Table of Contents

The establishment of a settlement in Van Diemen's Land, perhaps thus hastened by the jealousy of a rival power, was at first chiefly intended to relieve Port Jackson. Fifteen years had elapsed since its foundation, and from six to seven thousand prisoners had been transported thither: dispersion became necessary to security—to repress alike the vices of the convicts, and the growing malversation of their taskmasters. The want of prisons, or places of punishment, and the indolence and intemperance of emancipist settlers, endangered authority.

In 1800, the transportation of the defenders from Ireland, appears to have created continual anxiety: a committee of officers was formed to examine persons suspected, when Harold, a priest, was arrested, and accused his fellow prisoners. His testimony was insidious, and discredited; but the alarm led to the formation of a volunteer company of a hundred persons, who armed for the suppression of rebellion. The more distrusted of the Irish prisoners were conveyed to Norfolk Island; there, some months after, a conspiracy was detected to massacre the officers, and seize the island. On the night fixed for action, the plot was discovered. An Irish servant, muttering words of compassion, was overheard by his master: he was induced to explain, and was immediately taken to Major Foveaux, the officer in command. The danger was imminent: the warmth of the season (December) had tempted the soldiers to slumber with open doors, and it was said that the sentinels were implicated who that night kept watch. These being changed, and other precautions adopted, the plotters postponed their design; and next day were marched to church without suspicion. The door was beset with soldiers: the leaders were arrested; one executed—and on the following day, the blacksmith, charged with fabricating arms, was also hung. The necessity for dispensing with the forms of law was not made out, and these summary punishments were censured. That the danger was not imaginary, may, however, be inferred from the after attempts at Port Jackson.

The military force of New South Wales, drawn together by a love of adventure, or the hope of gain, when their own status was assailed, were often exacting and severe: but they slightly sustained the moral strength of the government. To select mistresses from the female prisoners was one of their earliest and most valued prerogatives, who, standing in this equivocal relation, became their agents and sold their rum.

The Governor, after struggling to abate the abuses around him, yielded to a pressure which seemed irresistible. He endeavoured to mollify by his liberality, those he could not govern by restraint: he multiplied licenses for the sale of rum, and emancipists aspired to commercial rivalry with the suttlers in commission. The chief constable was himself a publican, and the chief gaoler shared in the lucrative calling, and sold spirits opposite the prison.

The moral laxity which prevailed, produced its natural consequences—violations of discipline, which led to great crimes. The offenders, to escape immediate punishments, retreated to the remote districts; occasionally sheltered by the emancipist cotters. The feeble resistance offered to their depredations, inspired, and almost justified the prisoners in the hope, that the common bondage might be broken. A large agricultural establishment, belonging to the government, at Castle-hill, Parramatta, employed many Irishmen implicated in the recent disorders of their country. These prompted the rest to attempt to recover their liberty, but they were subdued by the military under Major Johnstone: some were shot, and several executed.

In this unsatisfactory condition was the colony of Port Jackson, when Van Diemen's Land was occupied. Its remote distance, its comparatively small extent and insular form, fitted it for the purposes of penal restraint—a place where the most turbulent and rapacious could find no scope for their passions. Its ports closed against commerce, afforded few means of escape. In New Holland, labor and produce were redundant: overwhelming harvests reduced the price of grain so low, that it was rejected by the merchants; goods could not be obtained in exchange;[33] and the convicts at the disposal of government were a burden on its hands—almost in a condition to defy its authority. Thus, Van Diemen's Land was colonised; first, as a place of exile for the more felonious of felons—the Botany Bay of Botany Bay—

"And in the lowest deep, a lower deep!"

Lieutenant Bowen, in the Lady Nelson, set sail from Sydney, and in August, 1803, landed at Risdon, on the east bank of the Derwent: his party included a few soldiers and prisoners, and Dr. Mountgarrat, the surgeon. A far more important immigration soon followed.

Port Phillip, on the east coast of New Holland, first discovered by Captain Murray in the Lady Nelson, 1799, was surveyed by Flinders in 1802, and in 1803 by Grimes, the surveyor-general. They reported the country to be lightly timbered, to abound in herbage, and gentle slopes suitable to the plough. The port offered an asylum against both war and tempests, sufficient for the fleets of all nations.[34]

The establishment of a settlement at Port Phillip being determined on by the ministry of Great Britain, an expedition was forwarded, which consisted of the Calcutta, 50 guns, Captain Woodriff, and the Ocean, a transport of 500 tons. In addition to the convicts, there were forty marines, four hundred male prisoners, twelve free settlers and their families, six unmarried women, six the wives of prisoners, and six children. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the morals of the officers, or of the women, were not superior either to the service or to the times. The events of the voyage, worthy of remembrance, were not numerous; it was disturbed by rumours of plots and conspiracies; punishments were not infrequent, and one woman was flogged for stealing the cap of a companion.

The Calcutta did not convey the settlers to the Derwent. On her return to Great Britain, Lieutenant Tuckey published an account of the voyage to Port Phillip, which he surveyed. In the year following (1805), the Calcutta was convoy to St. Helena, and encountered the Rochefort squadron. Captain Woodriff determined to engage the whole division: the merchantmen escaped; but the Calcutta, in the unequal contest, became unmanageable, and struck her colors. Captain Woodriff was soon exchanged, but Lieutenant Tuckey remained in captivity until the allied armies entered France.

Promoted to the rank of commander, he received charge of the expedition in 1816, sent to explore the Zaire; but with most of his people fell a martyr to the spirit of African discovery. He is said to have been handsome in person, and generous in hand. "He knew nothing of the value of money, except as it enabled him to gratify the feelings of a benevolent heart."[35]

The spot selected at Port Phillip, was ill-chosen as the site of a town, and they found great difficulty in obtaining pure water. These circumstances, represented by Collins to the Governor-in-chief, were thought sufficient to justify a removal to Van Diemen's Land, and long postponed the occupation of a country, inferior to few in this hemisphere; a measure lamented by several of the settlers. A lady, writing to her friends from the banks of the Derwent, censured, in terms of great contempt, the relinquishment of Port Phillip, which she described in glowing language: she seemed alone capable of estimating its future importance; but she pronounced Van Diemen's Land a dreary and desert region, destined never to prosper—thus she forfeited the credit of prophecy.[36]

Several prisoners attempted to escape; in one instance, with a singular result. Buckley, a man of gigantic stature, and two others, set off, it was said, for China! They rambled for some distance together, and suffered great misery: at last, they parted. Of his companions, Buckley saw no more, and when he returned to the settlement all was deserted. After months of solitary wandering, he found a tribe of natives, by whom he was adopted: he remained among them for three-and-thirty years, conforming to their barbarous customs, and forgetting his own language. Once only he saw the faces of white men; a boat's crew landed to bury a seaman: he endeavoured to arrest their attention; they looked at him earnestly, but took him for a savage—he was dressed in a rug of kangaroo skin, and was armed with spears. This man still survives: he contributed to the friendly reception of his countrymen; but during his long sojourn, he had imparted no ideas of civilisation.

The Lady Nelson and the Ocean conveyed the party from Port Phillip to the Derwent. The situation of the camp at Risdon had been found undesirable, they therefore landed at Sullivan's Cove. They arrived in two divisions, on the 30th January and 16th February, 1804. The names of the principal persons are as follows:—Lieutenant-Governor Collins; Rev. R. Knopwood, chaplain; E. Bromley, surgeon superintendent; W. Anson, colonial surgeon; M. Boden, W. Hopley, assistant surgeons; P. H. Humphrey, mineralogist; Lieutenant Fosbrook, deputy-commissary-general; G. P. Harris, deputy-surveyor; John Clarke and William Patterson, superintendents of convicts; Lieutenants W. Sladen, J. M. Johnson, and Edward Lord; 39 marines, 3 sergeants, 1 drummer, 1 fifer; and 367 male prisoners.

Meantime, the Lady Nelson was dispatched to Port Dalrymple, and surveyed the entrance of the Tamar: the report being favorable, a small party of prisoners were sent from Port Jackson, under Colonel Paterson, to form a settlement, who landed in October, 1804, and for some time held little intercourse with the settlement on the Derwent. Such were the pioneers of this important colony; and to so many casual but concurring incidents, we owe its existence.

The first annals of the settlement offer few events worthy of record. The transactions of a community, which in 1810 did not comprehend more than thirteen hundred and twenty-one persons,[37]—the greater part subject to penal control—could not, unassociated with the present, detain attention for a moment. The discipline which prevailed in Van Diemen's Land, and the results which it produced, will be hereafter related to illustrate transportation; for who would load the colonial fame with details, from which the eyes of mankind turn with natural disgust, or blend them with the fabric of Tasmanian history?

The first Governor-in-chief of Van Diemen's Land, the third of New South Wales, was Philip Gidley King, son of Philip King, a draper, of Launceston, Cornwall, England. At twelve years of age he entered the royal navy: by Admiral Byron he was made lieutenant, and holding that rank in the Sirius, he attended the expedition of Phillip in 1788.[38] He was employed to establish the settlement of Norfolk Island, where his proceedings, recorded in his official journal, and afterwards published in various forms, afforded great amusement and satisfaction. There he united in his person, for some time, the priest and the ruler: he experienced during his residence, most of the anxieties and difficulties incident to such stations, and detailed them with curious minuteness. As a cultivator he was energetic and persevering; but the rats devoured his seed, or torrents washed it away: or a tropical hurricane, which tore up huge trees, overthrew the frail buildings he reared. His people conspired to seize his government; he detected, and forgave them: yet he was not scrupulous in his methods of punishment. A woman he repeatedly flogged, for stealing the provisions of her neighbours. He, however, saw the little settlement gradually improve: it became the favorite residence of the officers; and, as the climate was better understood, the fertility of the soil yielded a surpassing abundance.

King was not inattentive to his own interest, and became the owner of considerable stock. Anecdotes of his humour circulate through the colonies: being asked by a settler to find him a man to perform certain work, he took him into his room and pointed him to a mirror. Again, when a marine was the suitor for some favour, in rejecting his petition he put him through his exercises, which ended in quick march. He had the frankness of the sailor, and neither aspired to state nor exacted homage.

David Collins, Esq., long judge advocate of New South Wales, was the first Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land. He was present with his father, General Collins, at the battle at Bunker's Hill, and thus witnessed an event accepted by exulting Europe as a signal that British sway over that region was lost. It was the lot of Collins to proclaim the dominion of Great Britain at the inauguration of Phillip, and thus announced the first day of a second and not less valuable empire.

Such incidents teach us that a single life may embrace events beyond the scope of imagination. We are reminded of the most brilliant passage in the oratory of Burke, delivered while the authority of the crown was trembling in the balance of fate. When illustrating how far the realities of the future might exceed the visions of the present moment, he stated that a venerable nobleman, Lord Bathurst, could remember when American interests were a little speck, but which during his life had grown to greater consequence than all the commercial achievements of Great Britain in seventeen hundred years. "Fortunate man," he exclaimed, "he has lived to see it: fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing which will vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day."[39]

Collins was favorably known to the public by his Account of the English Colony in New South Wales: his work was distinguished by the reviewers, amidst a crowd of publications, as superior to them all.[40] The stateliness of his style, and the pomp with which he ushers trivial events, were less apparent when the topics were new. In the last page he, however, complains that he had spent nine years in the colonial service, which intercepted the honors of his profession; a case of hardship, he remarks, everywhere admitted, both by those who could compensate, and those who could only condole.

In his dedication to Lord Hobart, the principal secretary of state, he drops the tone of complaint and disappointment: he tells that nobleman that his private virtues were rendered more conspicuous by the splendour of his talents as a statesman, and that praise could not be interpreted as flattery, when devoted to a name which commanded the veneration of the world. Remonstrances so skilfully advanced could not be unnoticed: Collins was at once raised to the rank of colonel, and the intelligence with which he delineated the proper objects and agents of penal government, exalted him still higher. He dated his dedication in 1802, and embarked the following year as governor of the settlement it had been resolved to form.