• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

1788-1840 - Penal Colony

A little known result of the American Revolution was the establishment of the British colony of New South Wales. With the thirteen American colonies closed to the shipment of convicts as indentured servants, Great Britain realized that it had to find a new site for its convicted felons, and that it must be across an ocean. Unrest in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as the French Revolution, made the choosing of a distant site increasingly important. The number of prisoners was rising steadily. Old ships, called "hulks," were moored in the Thames, and other rivers, housing the extra prisoners under terrible conditions. Taking into consideration Cook's and Banks' recommendation that the east coast of Australia might be a good site for a settlement, the government decided in August 1786 that Botany Bay, New South Wales would be the site of a new penal colony.

To be sentenced to Botany Bay from England meant exiled villainy. The fact is, that though this place had the reputation of a penal colony, the convicts of England were not sent here at all, but to places approximate. But while the world stands, Botany Bay will mean the terminus of criminal transportation. No one can visit Australia without thinking of the times when the chains clanked as prisoners disembarked for lifetime banishment.

Misery and mercy fought for supremacy in this colony from 1788, when Australia became the place of punishment for unfortunate Englishmen, until 1840, when such transportation was prohibited. But after fifty-two years mercy triumphed, and happy homes and literary institutions now stand on the places where for half a century tragedies of suffering and outrage were enacted.

For the most trivial offences, for misappropriation of a chicken, for breaking of a window glass, for abstraction of a loaf of bread by a hungry man, for a defamatory word spoken, for the slightest stumble in morals, men were sent from England to Australia, never to return. If a man had enemies, they would conspire and for little dereliction, or no dereliction at all, get him shipped for these "ends of the earth." The convict ships were floating prisons, many of them commanded by fiends, and the asphyxiation from lack of fresh air, and the whip or shackle or bludgeon blow given for tire slightest protest, and the sicknesses that ravaged the rough bunks, made the ocean voyage an agony that shocked the heavens. The albatrosses and seagulls heard such groans as must have made them halt on their wings. Sixteen inches of room for a man. One hundred and seventy-eight men in a space of fifty feet.

Landed in Australia in pens, hunger and effluvia, and cursing and stinging cold, or sweltering heat and despair their portion. Many of them drowning themselves because life was unbearable. Many of them turned into maniacs through the maltreatment. Irons eating to the bone, or the men working up to their knees standing in the mire. Men committing murder that they might be hung and so escape the wretchedness of exile.

Rev. Dr. Ullathorne put upon the witness stand before a committee appointed to examine into the Australian outrages, testified in the following words: "As I mentioned the names of those men who were to die, they, one after another, as their names were pronounced, dropped on their knees and thanked God that they were to be delivered from that horrible place, whilst the others remained standing mute and weeping. It was the most horrible scene I have ever witnessed."

Australia was far from England, and captains of convict ships, and constables, and jailers, and turnkeys, abusing their power, were so far off from reprehension, and their tyrannies were so slowly reported-if reported at all-that it seemed safe to maul and beat and starve the helpless exiles. The distance from England, the few means of communication, the indifference of the English public to the fate of the inhabitants of a penal colony, or of any colony, rendered the governor, so far as the control of law extended, actually irresponsible. As there was no law, so there was no publicity and no public opinion to restrain the exercise of the despotism which was the only possible government in such a penal colony.

The government at home would never have allowed such atrocities if they had realized that such diabolism was being practiced. As soon as, through investigation, the abominations were proven, the British lion put his foot upon them, and Australia was forever freed from this disembarkation of unfortunates.

Some of the children and grandchildren of those expatriated ones are now in the most important and honorable positions of Australian life. They are physicians having on them all the responsibilities of the sick-room. They are attorneys pleading causes involving immense value of property and life itself. They are executors of estates. They are members of boards of trade and manage commerce. They are fathers and mothers of the best households. They are officers of religion, and carry the sacramental cup through the aisles of the holy communion.