Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Edmund Fitzgerald sound-alike
From:
Teribus
Date: 22 May 02 - 05:33 AM
Thanks for the words of the song Martin!
Had a look round and came up with the following in answer to a search for "Convict Ships Australia"
Charles Bateson's "The Convict Ships 1787-1868" is regarded as the definitive guide to Australia's period of transportation. Information is given about the voyages to New South Wales, Norfolk Island, Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. It ranges from the life on board for both crew and convict, right through to records of deaths, numbers of convicts and the length of each voyage. A comprehensive index of the convict voyages has been extracted from Bateson's text and is presented on our convict shipping pages.
Apart from describing each ship, the index gives the dates of each voyage, the ports they travelled between, the number of male and female convicts embarking and disembarking at each port and the route they took. Discrepancies between the number who embarked and disembarked were often due to deaths on board, transfers to other ships en route, or landing at other ports.
Transported convicts were handed over to the master of a ship at the beginning of the voyage and formally transfered into the custody of the Governor of the colony who was receiving them. Indents, or Indentures, were the documents used to record the transaction on arrival.
Conditions on Board Convicts were housed below decks on the prison deck and often further confined behind bars. In many cases they were restrained in chains and were only allowed on deck for fresh air and exercise. Conditions were cramped and they slept on hammocks. Very little information seems to be available about the layout of the convict ships, but a few books do contain artists' impressions and reproductions of images held in library collections.
Although the convicts of the first fleet arrived in relatively good condition, the same cannot be said for those that followed during the rest of the century. Cruel masters, harsh discipline and scurvy, dysentry and typhoid resulted in a huge loss of life.
After the English authorities began to review the system in 1801 the ships were despatched twice a year, at the end of May and the beginning of September, to avoid the dangerous winters of the southern hemisphere. Surgeons employed by the early contractors had to obey to the master of the ship and on later voyages were replaced by independent Surgeon Superintendents whose sole responsibility was for the well being of the convicts. As time went on, successful procedures were developed and the surgeons were supplied with explicit instructions as to how life on board was to be organised. By then the charterers were also paid a bonus to land the prisoners safe and sound at the end of the voyage.
By the time the exiles were being transported in the 1840s and onwards, a more enlightened routine was in place which even included the presence on board of a Religious Instructor to educate the convicts and attend to their spiritual needs. The shipboard routines on some of the Western Australian transports during the 1860s have been transcribed and are worth reading.
I had a look through the voyage listings mentioned above and came up with a total of 862 (634 from UK mainland ports almost exclusively on the south coast; 214 mainly from the ports of Cork and Dublin; 14 voyages with no port of departure identified). Odd thing was there was no voyage to Australia by a convict ship in 1803 and none at all from Derry or Londonderry as I suppose it would have been called then - mind you there was a war on and Nelson was chasing Villeneuve around the oceans that would have been on their route - so perhaps a bit of artistic license is allowed as he had to find something that would rhyme with "sea".
The other thing that surprised me was how few the number of deaths en-route, but that is explained above.
Another oddity was that transportation to Van Deimans Land (Tasmania) did not start until later and seems to have been used to transport prisoners from English prisons - unless prisoners were transferred which would seem strange, as it must have been easier to take the ship to the port nearest to where the prisoners were being held.
But it was fascinating reading.
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awe
