Life and Adventures 1776-1801 (13 page)
Read Life and Adventures 1776-1801 Online
Authors: John Nicol
Tags: #Australian and New Zealand history, #Autobiography
I have been a wanderer and the child of chance all my days, and now only look for the time when I shall enter my last ship, and be anchored with a green turf upon my breast, and I care not how soon the command is given.
Introduction
1
Simmons, J. J. (III), ‘Those Vulgar Tubes’,
Studies in Nautical Archaeology
no. 1, Department of Archaeology, Texas University, 1991.
2
Nicol, John,
The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner, with a foreword and afterword by Alexander Laing,
Cassell & Company, London, 1937, 27.
3
Life and Adventures,
1937, 26.
4
ibid., 28.
5
Life and Adventures,
1937, 23.
6
Flynn, Michael,
The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790,
Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1993, 1-8.
7
The Second Fleet,
461.
8
Walter, R.,
A Voyage Round the World in the Years 1740, 1, 2, 3, 4 by George Anson, Esq.,
Alex Lawrie & Co., Edinburgh, 1741, 1804, 20.
9
Life and Adventures,
1937, 25.
10
The Nore: a lighthouse near Hastings on the south-east coast of England.
11
These were men who had been kidnapped by press gangs and forced into naval service.
12
The American War of Independence had begun.
13
Lake Champlain: American Lake bordering New York and Vermont.
14
The flux: dysentry.
15
Batteau: a light, flat-bottomed river boat used widely in Canada.
16
Spruce: a kind of beer made from spruce (
Picea
) and sugar, and slightly fermented.
17
Bungs: slang name for a cooper.
18
anvil.
19
Diligence: public stage coach.
20
These were bowhead whales.
21
The Benji is made of an old firkin [a small cask] with one end out, covered with shark skin, and beat upon with two pieces of wood. The rattles are made of a calabash shell, and a few small pebbles in it, fixed on a wooden handle; these they shake to the time of the Benji.
22
Congées: ways of saying hello and goodbye.
23
Vendue-master: auctioneer.
24
Maubi is a drink like ginger-beer they drink among themselves, but as they knew sailors liked stouter drink, they bought rum. The price was one shilling and sixpence the gallon. A bit is equal to sixpence. Rum they call three-bit maubi.
25
The double moses is a large boat for taking on board the sugar casks. There are two, the single and double moses. The single holds only one hogshead, the double more.
26
Light: lung.
27
Staten Island lies south of Tierra del Fuego.
28
The Hawaiian Islands.
29
The king was more likely hiding it from his fellow Hawaiians.
30
The fish seen apparently entering the mouth were probably not young sharks but remora (suckerfish) which habitually accompany larger marine organisms.
31
A large cask of varying size.
32
Atooi: Kauai.
33
Onehow: Niihau.
34
Cook’s River: Cook Inlet, Alaska.
35
Starting: spilling.
36
Powder: gun powder.
37
This was probably ginseng (
Panax spp.
) which has a forked root.
38
Wampoa: a port town just outside Canton.
39
Bocca Tigris: the estuary at the head of which Canton is situated.
40
Perhaps this was a folk preventative against rabies.
41
Loblob Creek: the local red-light district.
42
Albicores and bonettos: fish similar to tuna and mackerel.
43
This was the
Lady Juliana
which sailed with the second fleet.
44
The
Lady Juliana
actually carried 226 convicts.
45
Elizabeth Barnsley was fashionably dressed and ‘had every appearance of gentility’ when she visited an expensive draper’s shop in Bond Street in February 1788, in the company of Ann Wheeler. They bought some muslin and Irish cloth, but a shop assistant noticed that Wheeler had slipped a whole bolt of muslin under her cloak and muff. Both women were convicted of theft, and Elizabeth spent over a year in Newgate prison where she paid half a crown a week to stay in a relatively comfortable part of the prison. She joined her husband in Sydney where she bore him two sons. The family presumably returned to England after 1795. (See Michael Flynn,
The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790,
Library of Australian History, Sydney, 1993, 150.)
46
Two women with the surname of Davis were on board the
Lady Juliana.
The younger, Ann, was sentenced to seven years’ transportation for trying to sell stolen clothing. The older, Deborah, had been sentenced to death (later commuted to transportation) for stealing jewellery from Mr Timothy Topping of Chislehurst. It is probably Deborah that Nicol is talking of here. (See
The Second Fleet,
235-36.)
47
Two convicts named Mary Williams sailed with Nicol. The one apparently referred to by Nicol had a tragic story to tell. Desperate to pay the rent of half a crown per week due on her room, she pawned a pair of sheets, two blankets and a pillow belonging to the room. She was sentenced to seven years’ transportation but spent eighteen months in Newgate prison waiting for the sentence to be carried out. She was twenty-four when she embarked on the
Lady Juliana.
(See
The Second Fleet,
613.)
48
Sarah Dorset was convicted of stealing a greatcoat from a London pub. She was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. Sarah in fact bore a son to Edward Powell, a seaman on the
Lady Juliana.
Powell did return to Sydney in 1793 but he then married Elizabeth Fish, a free woman, who returned with him to England. Sarah became housekeeper to John Woodward, butcher. The couple had three children. Sarah died in New South Wales in 1838. (See
The Second Fleet,
248.)
49
Eleanor Kirvein kept a ‘house of entertainment for sailors’ at Gosport. An important part of her business was ‘bomb-boating’—providing credit and accommodation for sailors and finding them berths on outward-bound ships. She was convicted of forging the will of a seaman and was sentenced to death. After a ‘panel of matrons’ found her to be pregnant her sentence was commuted to transportation for seven years. She married Henry Palmer, a convict, in July 1790. A few months later he was killed by a falling tree. She sailed for India, a free woman, in 1793. Michael Flynn notes that she was probably one of the few convict mothers who lived to see the children they left behind. (See
The Second Fleet,
386.)
50
William Pitt (1759-1806) was the current prime minister of Great Britain.
51
Sarah Whitlam, who was born in 1767, was in fact convicted of the theft of a large amount of cloth and clothing, including six yards of black chintz cotton, a raven grey Coventry tammy gown, a pink quilted petticoat, a pair of stays, a fine white lawn apron, a chocolate ground silk handkerchief, a woman’s black silk hat and a pair of leather shoes. Flynn speculates that her loot would have filled a cart and may have been stolen from a shop. (See
The Second Fleet,
610.)
52
Elizabeth Farrell was convicted of stealing clothing and linen from a house in East Smithfield. She eventually went to Van Diemen’s Land where she lived comfortably with her husband John Hall, a first-fleet convict. She died in Hobart in 1827. (See
The Second Fleet,
268.)
53
Mary Rose had the most extraordinary career of any of the convict women mentioned by Nicol. At sixteen she was sentenced to seven years’ transportation for stealing clothes. Fortune had smiled upon her, however, in giving her such a romantic and patriotic name. It seems that it never failed to elicit sympathy in her hour of need. Michael Flynn observes that Nicol’s view of her ‘mixes fact with romantic fiction’ but that ‘he was not the only one to fall under her spell’.
Following her imprisonment in Lincoln an anonymous poet penned a romantic ballad to publicise her plight. This it seems was associated with a plea for clemency from no less a person than Sir Joseph Banks! Nicol’s assertion that a pardon and clothing were waiting for her in Port Jackson is clearly impossible, as no vessel arrived in the settlement from England between the first and second fleets.
Nicol may have been misled by the fact that Governor Phillip was aware of Banks’ plea, and arranged for Rose to marry ‘one of the best men in this place’. Less than a year later Phillip lamented to Banks that ‘my desire of making her better has only been the means of ruining the poor devil who married her’. Rose lived on in Sydney until at least 1825. (See
The Second Fleet,
508.)
54
Sarah Sabolah cannot be traced. The name may have been an assumed one.
55
The ceremony of crossing the Equator was an occasion of much merriment. Often the oldest and ugliest sailor was dressed up as King Neptune’s wife, and another as Neptune himself. Many liberties were taken with the crew and the officers.
56
They were Abaroo and Nanbaree, survivors of the smallpox epidemic, who were then living with Surgeon White (Nanbaree) and the Reverend and Mrs Johnson (Abaroo).
57
John Nicol and Sarah Whitlam parted for the last time on 25 July 1790. On 26 July Sarah married John Coen Walsh, a first-fleet convict. She signed the marriage register with a cross. In June 1796 the couple sailed for England via India with their two sons. Walsh was back in Australia by 1801 but there are no further records of Sarah Whitlam.
58
Smilax glyciphylla.
59
Deal was one of the ‘cinque ports’ near Dover. The men of Deal were pilots, lifeboat men and smugglers known for ‘hovelling’, or taking disabled ships.
60
Island of Lopes: Lobos Island in northern Peru.
61
Accadent: spiritous liquor.
62
Admiral Anson sailed upon a voyage around the world in the years 1740-44, during which he plundered Paita but showed the inhabitants great mercy.
63
Coussinero: cook.
64
The Tagus is the estuary Lisbon is situated on.
65
Britain had by now entered the French Revolutionary Wars.
66
Perhaps this was the only means the old tar had of showing his displeasure at being pressed.
67
Batavia: Jakarta.
68
The
Britannia
is a first-rate, carrying 110 guns. She was the only ship that carried forty-two-pounders on her lower deck, and thirty-two on her middle deck. She was the strongest built ship in the navy. The sailors upon this account called her ‘Iron-Sides’.
69
Jonathan: A generic name for an American.
70
Aboukir Bay: near Alexandria in Egypt.
71
The seamen call the lower deck near the mainmast the slaughterhouse, as it is amidships and the enemy aim their fire principally at the body of the ship.
72
The Rock: Gibraltar.
73
Belleisle is in the Bay of Biscay.
74
Britain had entered the Napoleonic Wars.
75
Inclosing was the annexing of common fields, meadows and pastures into consolidated farms.
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