Weasel Words

‘During Lord Sydney’s time as secretary of state, the Home Office was a clearing house. Its jurisdiction included overseeing of naval officers involved in trade regulation, secret service and special projects. As a result, Sydney crossed paths with three men who left their mark on [Australia’s European] history – Horotio Nelson, William Bligh and Arthur Phillip. Andrew Tink, Life and Times of Tommy Townshend, 2001

Horatio Nelson, William Bligh and Arthur Phillip, each can be linked to the suffering and degradation experienced by Australia’s First Peoples following Britain’s invasion of New Holland, now Australia.

Sydney Cove – June 1790:  Following the coming of a second fleet in June 1790, Lieutenant John ‘MacMafia’ Macarthur of the New South Wales Corps aboard Scarborough, in the context of Britain’s ‘special projects, trade, secret service’, can be added to the mix of those whose lives are dominated by their ‘mark’. See: A Tale of Two Fleets 

‘Macarthur’s haughty quarrelsome nature which manifested itself on the voyage was to provoke much more conflict after his arrival in New South Wales in June 1790’. Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet, Britain’s Grim Armada of 1790, Library of Australian History, Sydney 1993

Macarthur’s ‘conflict’ sprang from self-interest. His ‘private benefit’ threatened to bring to nought Whitehall’s ambitious future plans for a very ‘special project’ in the southern oceans.  See Proximity Not Distance Drove Britain’s Invasion of New Holland.

The Southern Oceans not only had the potential to be a blockade-breaker in time of war the route opened up a long-sought opportunity for the Royal Navy to attack and loot Spain’s Central and South American Pacific Ocean ‘treasure’ colonies.

‘John Macarthur, a central figure in the military ‘mafia’ which quickly established itself as Australia’s first governing and property elite’.  Nigel Rigby, Peter Van Der Merwe, Glyn Williams, Pacific Explorations, National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Adlard Coles. Bloomsbury,  2018  

Falmouth:  The second fleet, contracted to Calvert, Camden and King a firm of London slave traders, embarked 1038 convicts, 368 died on the voyage. Many sick survivors died within a  month or so of landing.

Neptune embarked 424 men and the fleet’s 78 women prisoners. Of these 147 men and 11 females died during the passage, 269 landed sick.

Suprize  carried 252 men, 42 died during the passage, 121 landed sick. Scarborough with 256 had 68 deaths, 96 landing sick.

Australian historian Michael Flynn rightly named the second fleet ‘Britain’s Grim Armada’.

Yet when Donald Trial master of Neptune appeared in the dock of London’s Old Bailey accused of dereliction of duty and the murder of two (2) of Neptune’s crew he was acquitted.

London – Horatio Nelson: Trail had served under Nelson. It is believed either, due to the great man’s presence in the court-room or, a favourable character reference from the hero of Trafalgar, that Trail walked from court a free man. See: Arthur Phillip – Christopher Robin Mark l

Sydney Cove –  William Bligh: In August 1806 Captain William ‘Bounty’ Bligh RN arrived to take up his commission as Britain’s fourth ‘autocratic naval governor’ of New South Wales.

Sydney Cove – 26 January 1808:  A coup – on the 20th anniversary of the First Fleet’s landing at Sydney Cove, at the instigation of John Macarthur by then an-ex-officer, Major George  Johnson of the New South Wales Corps, seized and imprisoned Governor William Bligh RN. See: Australia Day Rebellion 26 January 1808

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‘During the period 1763-1793 the character of the Second British Empire was being formed…the empire of commerce in the Indian and Pacific Oceans’. Vincent T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire 1763-1793, Vol. 2 Longmans, 1963

England – 1771: Lieutenant James Cook RN returned to England from the Endeavour voyage (1786-1771). He reported the island continent named New Holland by Dutch explorers, now Australia, was inhabited.

‘The natives of the country…live in Tranquility which is not disturb’d by the inequality of condition’. James Cook, Endeavour Journal

According eighteenth century international law only if territory was without inhabitants could it be claimed by another nation to be shared  amongst that nation’s citizens.

‘The whole claim of sovereignty and ownership on the basis of terra nullius was manifestly based on a misreading of Australian circumstance, not that this prevented Phillip from hoisting the Union Jack in 1788 and expropriating the owners of Sydney Cove. Stuart Mac Intyre, A Concise History of Australia, Melbourne University Press, 2004  

‘ACTUAL OCCUPATION’ OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY – ‘EXISTING IN FACT

England’s lawyers burned midnight oil as they sought to establish legal grounds that would allow Britain take ‘effective occupation’ from those in ‘actual possession‘ of New Holland.

To that end they studied the tortuous twists and turns of English law, as laid down in the ‘Commentaries’ of England’s leading jurist Sir William Blackstone.

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‘It is well known…without a sufficient proportion of that [female] sex…it would be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders…HMS Supply…may be employed in conveying to the new settlement a further number of women from the Friendly islands, New Caledonia etc…from whence any number may be procured without difficulty’.  Home Office, Heads of a Plan for Botany Bay.

London –  1786, August 8 August:‘His Majesty [George III] has thought advisable to fix upon Botany Bay’.

1786-1868:  During the period 1786 to 1868 Britain transported approximately 163,000 convicted criminals to New Holland, now Australia. Only  25,000 were women. One-half of these 12,500 went directly to Van Diemens Land now Tasmania.

West Australia: Between 1858 and 1868 the embryonic white settlement in the west, where transportation ended in 1868, received ten thousand (10,000) male criminals and zero (0) women prisoners.

‘Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, such as;

killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

imposing measures intending to prevent births within the group;

transferring children of the group to another group’. Article 2, United Nations 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

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You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. His Majesty’s Instructions to Arthur Phillip RN, London, 25 April 1787.

Amity kindness

weasel words Britain saw their

fair land as fair game.