Posts Tagged ‘first fleet’

KETCH CONNECTION: THOMAS BARRETT SYDNEY 1788 – MICHAEL BARRETT LONDON 1868 – ROBERT RYAN MELBOURNE – 1967

Tuesday, January 5th, 2021

‘The European colonial expansion between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries led to frontier wars on every continent…As part of this world wide European expansion, the British invaded and settled Australia.’ Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars, Conflict in the early colony 1788-1817, New South, Sydney, 2018

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‘There would be some justification for the saying that England won Australia by six days’. Professor Edward Jenks,  cited ,  H.E. Egerton, A Short History of British Colonial History,  Methuen, London 1936

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‘In the late eighteenth century it looked like the bad old killing days were returning….I estimate that some 35,000 people were condemned to death in England and Wales between 1770 and 1830. Most were reprieved by the king’s prerogative of mercy and sent to prison hulks or transported to Australia. Professor V.A.C Gatrell, The Hanging Tree, Execution and the English People 1770-1868, 1994.

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A hanging was one of the great free spectacles of London. Audiences of up to 100,000 were occasionally claimed in London, and of 30,000 or 40,000 quite often….when famous felons hanged, polite people watched as well as vulgar’. Gatrell. Op. Cit.

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‘The death penalty was brought to Australia with the First Fleet’. Mike Richards,The Hanged Man, The Life and Death of Ronald Ryan, 2002.

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 LONDON  1868 – Michael Barrett

Middlesex – 1867 December 13:  Shoppers hurrying that Friday afternoon to a near-by market that served the poorest of the poor,  took no notice of a wheelbarrow propped against the outer wall of London’s Clerkenwell Detention Centre.

Packed with gunpowder when ignited it produced an explosion powerful enough to demolish not only a substantial section of the gaol’s exercise yard but many ramshackle slum dwellings opposite.

In Queen Victoria’s Great Britain this was a period of increasing Irish terrorism. And intelligence had played large part in the bombing.

The breach in the wall was timed to coincide when Colonel Richard O’Sullivan-Burke, a ‘Fenien’ insurgent from America and Joseph Casey, would be in the exercise yard.

Flying stone, bricks and debris killed six (6) children playing alongside the wall.

In the crowed street market six (6) people died. As many as a hundred (100) men women and children were injured.

Some so badly they later died.

‘In St. James nearby is a tablet commemorating the victims of the 1867 bomb’. Richard Byrne, Prisons and Punishment of London. 1992

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AN UGLY WAR – BRITAIN VERSUS ‘THE OTHER’

Thursday, December 31st, 2020

‘The territory of England is too small for its population. She requires a monopoly of the four [4] corners of the globe to enable her to exist. War procures this monopoly, because it gives England the right of destruction at sea’. Napoleon, cited Jonathan Holslag, A Political History of the World, 3000 Years of War and Peace, Pelican, 2018  

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‘Phillip was authorised to see to the defence of the colony…Military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted  from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.

These raids [‘kill 6… bring in the heads’] had commenced by December [14] 1790′. Professor Bruce Kercher, History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995

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‘Dawes whose duty it was to go out with that party [14 December] refused that duty by letter’.  Professor G. Arnold Wood, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society Vol. X, 1924, Part  1

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‘From 1788 there had been continuous disputation between the civil power represented by the autocratic uniformed naval governors and the military’. John McMahon, Not a Rum Rebellion But a Military Insurrection, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 92, 2006

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1790 – September 7, Manly Beach: A ‘tremendous monster’ stranded on Manly Beach.  Aborigines greeted the seasonal return of their totem with ‘rapture’.  After an extremely lean winter the whale flagged the promise of coming abundance.See: Manly Location, Location, Location

The stranding however proved a tipping point for ‘further mischief’ that can be linked to the near annihilation of a free people, Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples. See: Arthur’s Algorithm – ‘infuse universal terror’ open – sesame

Governor Arthur Phillip’s career in the Royal Navy had began harpooning whales in the Arctic. Now (1790) armed with a pistol, dirk’ and a bottle or two of fine French reds he was rowed across to Manly where he met up again with the warrior Bennalong.

‘[The governor] uncorked a bottle, and poured out a glass of it, which the other [Bennelong] drank off with his former marks of relish and good humour, giving for a toast, as he had been taught “the King”. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961 

A little way off a group of ‘other’ Aborigines stood watching this strange pantomime.

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ARTHUR PHILLIP’S NEW HOLLAND – ‘FROM CAPE YORK TO SOUTH CAPE’ A SPECIAL PROJECT

Tuesday, December 8th, 2020

London -1786,  October 12: To Captain Arthur Phillip; ‘reposing especial trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage, and experience in military affairs, do, by these presents constitute and appoint you to be Governor of our territory called New South Wales…from the northern extremity…called Cape York…to the southern extremity…South Cape’. Court of St. James,  By Command, His Majesty’s [George III] – 12 October 1786, Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1

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‘Four [4]  companies of marines landed [1788] with the first Europeans…Twenty five [25 regiments of British infantry served in the colonies between 1790 and 1870…[they] participated in the great struggle at the heart of the European conquest of this continent’. Dr. Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, the British Army n Australia, Kangaroo Press, 1964 

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Sydney Cove – 12 December, 1790: ‘At headquarters…the governor pitched up me [Tench] to execute the…command…those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay…put ten [10] to death…bring in the heads of the slain [and] two [2] prisoners.

I am resolved to execute [them] in the most public and exemplary  manner in the presence of as many of their countrymen as can be collected……and my fixed determination to repeat it whenever any future breach of good conduct on their side, shall render it necessary’. His Excellency Governor Arthur Phillip, Orders to Marine Captain Watkin Tench. Governor Phillip, cited Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, 1961

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‘Military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries…These raids had commenced by December 1790‘. Professor Bruce Kercher, History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995.

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United Kingdom – 3 April 1889:  Privy Council Cooper V Stuart [1889] 14 AC, Lord Watson, Lord Fitzgerald, Lord Hobhouse, Lord MacNaghton, Sir William Grove ruled ‘it [New South Wales] was peacefully annexed to the British Dominion’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995

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Portsmouth – May 1787: Captain Arthur Phillip RN, commander of a large expeditionary force of eleven (11) ships, known in Britain and Australia as the ‘First Fleet’ sailed from Portsmouth, England on 13 May 1787 bound for the invasion of New Holland now Australia.

New Holland – 18/20 January 1788: All ‘First Fleet’ vessels, after eight (8) months voyaging 13,000 miles (21,000 km) of ‘imperfectly explored oceans’ by way of Spanish Tenerife, Portuguese Rio and Dutch Cape Town, were safely at anchor in Botany Bay. 

Botany Bay: HMS Supply, smaller of the two (2) king’s ships with Phillip aboard, was first to arrive. He immediately assessed Botany Bay, ‘so very wide open’ -difficult to defend unsuitable therefore for permanent settlement.

21 January:  Next morning, armed with Captain James Cook’s charts from April 1770, he set out with Captain Hunter commander of the fleet’s flagship HMS Sirius with surveyors to investigate the surrounding country-side.

Port Jackson: Later that day, nine (9) miles (14km) north of the initial beachhead, one (1) of the group’s  (3) cutters came across Cook’s notation, an entry ‘a quarter mile across’  into Port Jackson’.

Here’ Phillip wrote ‘a Thousand Ships of the Line may ride in perfect security’.

22 January:  The following day the English rowed around its vast harbour.  From a myriad inlets and bays hep chose a ‘snug’ deep-water cove; ‘so close to the shore that at very small expense quays may be made in which the largest ships may unload’.

Sydney Cove:  Phillip ‘honoured’ [it] with the name Sydney’. See: Botany Bay , Lord Sydney , Arthur Phillip & ‘Christopher Robin’ Mark 2

23 January: ‘We returned to Botany Bay on the third day’ with news. The ‘First Fleet’ had found a home‘It was determined the evacuation of Botany Bay should commence the next morning’.  Tench. ibid.

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LIEUTENANT WILLIAM DAWES – THE ‘ETERNAL FLAME’ & THE SHOCK OF THE NEW SOUTH WALES CORPS

Tuesday, December 8th, 2020

‘When leaving Botany Bay [for Sydney Cove 25 January 1788] Phillip noticed two French ships in the  offing….there would seem to be “some justification for the saying that England won Australia by six days”. Edward Jenks, History of the Australian Colonies, cited H.E. Egerton, A short History of British Colonial Policy, Methuen, London 1928

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‘Our wealth and power in India is their [France ] great and constant object of jealously; and they will never miss an opportunity of attempting to wrest it out of our hands’. Sir James Harris cited, Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip Sailor Mercenary Governor Spy, Hardie Grant Books. Melbourne, London, 2013

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‘English clockmaker John Harrison, a mechanical genius who pioneered the science of portable precision timekeeping…invented a clock that would carry the true time from the home port, like an eternal flame, to any remote corner of the world’. Dava Sobel, Longitude, Fourth Estate, 1998

Harrison H-4 Chronometer

‘Military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries…These raids had commenced by [on 14th] December 1790’.  Professor Bruce Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, Allen & Unwin, 1995.

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‘Bring in six [6] of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or if that should be found impracticable, to put that n umber [6] to death…bring back the heads of the slain’. Governor Arthur Phillip RN, General Orders to Marine Captain Watkin Tench, 13 December 1790. Cited Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, L. F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1961

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‘Lieutenant William Dawes whose tour of duty it was to go out with that party refused that duty by letter’. Professor G.A. Wood, Lieutenant William Dawes and Captain Watkin Tench, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal; Vol. 10, Part 1, 1924

Australia knows little of the ‘eternal flame’ or the remarkable role it played in the invasion of New Holland, and dispossession of its First Peoples.

Warranne – 26 January 1788:  K I – a faithful replica of John  Harrison’s  H-4 a ‘sea-going pocket watch’, given by Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne into the care of marine  Lieutenant William Dawes, fetched up at one particular ‘remote corner of the world’  – Sydney Cove – aboard HMS Supply one (1) of the First Fleet’s eleven (11) ships.

It was the essential ingredient in both the survival of the British invaders and near destruction of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples.

‘He [Dawes] was the scholar of the [First Fleet] expedition, man of letters and man of science, explorer, mapmaker, student of language of anthropology, teacher and philanthropist’. Professor G. Arnold Wood, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society Vol. X, 1924, Part 1

However, aside from Daniel Rooke, Kate Grenville’s star-struck cardboard cut-out hero of The Lieutenant, non-indigenous Australians know almost nothing of him.

‘Dawes whose tour of duty it was to go out with that [14 December 1790] party [refused that duty by letter’. Wood. ibid.

Australia either knows nothing of, or turns a blind eye, on Lieutenant Dawes’ pivotal role in revealing the how ,why and wherefore of the ‘war nasty and decidedly lacking in glory’ Britain waged against Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples. See: The Big Switch

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SHOCK AND AWE – ‘INFUSE UNIVERSAL TERROR’ ‘MY MEN HEARD A CHILD CRY’

Wednesday, November 25th, 2020

Sydney Cove – 1790 June 1 : ‘We had now been [thirty-six] months from England in which long period …we had been entirely cut off, no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th May, 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth.

Here on the summit of the hill, every morning from daylight until the sun sunk, did we sweep the horizon, in hope of seeing a sail…at every fleeting speck which arose from the bosom of the sea, the heart bounded’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. L.F. Fitzhardige, Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1961

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Sydney – 1790, June 3: ‘Great change came with the  Second Fleet of the first companies of the New South Wales Corps.[among them] Lieutenant John Macarthur  – a central figure in the military ‘mafia’ which quickly established itself as Australia’s first governing and property owning elite’. Nigel Rigby, Peter Van Der Merwe & Glyn Williams, National Maritime Museum Greenwich, Pacific Explorations, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, 2018

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Sydney Headquarters – 1790,  December 13:  ‘The governor pitched upon me [Tench] to execute the…command…those natives who reside  near the head of Botany Bay….put ten [10] to death…bring in the heads of the slain [and] two [2] prisoners to  execute in the most most public and exemplary manner;…my fixed determination to repeat it, whenever any future breach of good conduct on their side, shall render it necessary’.  His Excellency Governor Arthur Phillip RN, General Orders to Marine Captain Watkin Tench

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A TETHERED GOAT – JOHN McENTIRE- DECEMBER 1790

Tuesday, October 27th, 2020

Sydney – 1790 January 1: ‘Since we first arrived at this distant country [January 1788] all this while we have been as it were buried alive, never having the opportunity to hear from our friends…our hopes are now almost vanished’. Reverend Richard Johnson, 9 April 1790‘. Jack Egan, Buried Alive, Eyewitness accounts of the making of a nation 1788-92, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1999

June 1790  Flags Up…a ship with London on her stern’.

On the 3rd of June 1790,  two (2) months after  ‘hope [had] now almost vanished’– the cry ‘Flags Up’ rang out.  Lady Juliana with two hundred and twenty six (226) ‘useless’ women prisoners broke the terrible isolation.

She was first of four (4) vessels that made up the second fleet Britain’s Grim Armada .By the end of June 1790 Alexander, Scarborough Suprize the fleet’s death ships arrived with approximately one thousand (1000) men.

One hundred and fifteen (115) officers and other ranks, first contingent of the New South Wales Corps of Infantry guarded the prisoners during the voyage.

London Gazette Extract

‘The great change came in the arrival with the Second Fleet of the first companies of the New South Wales Corps’. Nigel Rigby, Peter van der Merwse, Glyn Williams. Pacific Explorations, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, London, 2018

Just six (6) months later; ‘military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. These raids had commenced by December 1790’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1995

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CATCH 22 – JAMES FREEMAN

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020

 James Freeman – ‘Hang or be Hanged’. 

 

Part of the original document pardoning a convict if he acts as executioner

Extract showing a pardon on condition of becoming the public executioner. Dated 1 March 1788, signed by Governor Arthur Phillip.

‘For here was an opportunity of establishing a Jack Ketch who Should, in all future Executions, either Hang or be Hanged’. Dr John White, Chief Medical Officer, First Fleet Journal.

1788 –  Friday 29th February: Shaped as another busy day for the infant colony’s’ criminal court.

To avoid Sydney’s intense midday sun and drenching humidity, after the long drawn-out dramas of the previous two (2) days, it had been decided court would convene earlier than usual. See: Blind Man’s Bluff

At 8 am convicts James Freeman and William Shearman, accused the previous day of stealing from government stores, were first to appear in the dock.

Both were found guilty. Shearman was sentenced to 300 lashes. Freeman was condemned to death with the execution to take place that same day.

Next to appear George Whitaker, Daniel Gordon and John Williams charged with stealing eighteen (18) bottles of wine. Whitaker was discharged.

Gordon and Williams, both Afro -Americans, were found guilty and sentenced to hang with Freeman.

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Proximity – Not Distance – Drove Britain’s Invasion of New Holland

Wednesday, August 12th, 2020

Port Jackson – 1788: ‘Here a Thousand Ships of the Line may ride in Perfect Security’. Governor Arthur Phillip RN to Lord Sydney, Historical Records of New South Wales Vol. 1, Parts 1 & 2

England – May 1787: Captain John Hunter RN commander of HMS Sirius, flagship of the ‘First Fleet’ a fully funded naval expeditionary force and, second-in-command to Captain-General Governor Arthur Phillip RN, departed Portsmouth on the 13th May 1787 to invade the island continent of New Holland, now Australia.

Botany Bay – 1788: By the end of January 1788, after a voyage of eight (8) months by way of Spanish Tenerife, Portuguese Brazil and Dutch Cape Town, the eleven (11) ships with a complement of 1500 – 1300 men – 221 women, approximately 50 free children, were at anchor in Botany Bay. See: Botany Bay – Lord Sydney, Arthur Phillip & ‘Christopher Robin’ Mark 2

Port Jackson: Governor Phillip deemed Botany Bay difficult to defend. Hunter supported relocating to Port Jackson nine (9) miles to the north ‘[w]here’a thousand Ships…’

Sydney Cove – January 1788:  From myriad of bays and inlets Phillip chose a ‘snug’ cove deep within the vast harbour. He named it Sydney after Home Secretary Lord Sydney. By the end of January the entire fleet were anchored there.

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