Tales from the Quarterdeck

Tag: Bolters

  • A Textbook Escape – The Badger 1833.

    Example of an English Cutter of early 1800s. Source: All About Ships, Dorling, 1912.

       In July 1833, the colonial cutter Badger left Hobart with its hold filled with supplies intended for Port Arthur. Only this time, as she set off down the Derwent River instead of rounding Cape Raoul and delivering her stores, she kept heading east, past Tasman Island, past Cape Pillar and out to sea. The captain and crew, all convicts still under sentence, had likely been planning their escape for some time. Now they were putting it into action.

       The Badger had a crew of four under the command of Captain William Philp.   All the men had been mariners before they had run afoul of the law and been banished to Van Diemen’s Land. All but one were serving life sentences, meaning there was no likelihood they would ever return home. Their captain was a former master mariner who had been found guilty of “Wilfully and maliciously destroying the sloop Jane”. Philp had been a part-owner of the vessel as well as its captain. Late one night, he loaded it with gunpowder and blew it up in Penzance Harbour after a falling out with his business partners.

       He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to transportation for life. Aged 51, Philp was sent out to Van Diemen’s Land on the convict transport Argyle in 1831. During the passage, he was suspected of conspiring with others to seize the ship and make their escape. The evidence was circumstantial and most likely supplied by a convict informant, but that was enough for Philp and eight or so others to be clapped in chains and separated from the rest of the prisoners. On the Argyle’s arrival in Hobart, the conspirators, including Philp, were tried, found guilty and sentenced to serve hard labour at Macquarie Harbour. 

       On his eventual return to Hobart, Philp finally got a break. He was put in charge of the 25-ton schooner Badger, ferrying stores from Hobart to Port Arthur about 70 kilometres sailing down the Derwent River. Port Arthur had recently been established to replace Macquarie Harbour, which was about to be shut down the following year.

    The Colonist, 6 Aug 1833, p. 3.

       By 1833, the Badger’s entire crew were experienced seamen. It was not uncommon for the authorities to assign sailors to work on government vessels, for they already had the necessary skills. However, there was always the obvious risk that the colonial administrators were giving them the means of effecting their own escape. Such was the case with the Badger. Governor Arthur was mercilessly criticised for allowing such a situation to eventuate.

       On Tuesday, 23 July 1833, William Philp took the Badger out of Sullivan Cove and headed down the Derwent River much as he had done many times before. As well as carrying plenty of provisions, on this trip the Badger was also well equipped with nautical charts, navigation instruments and several muskets recently procured by Philp and his men. What’s more, as many as a dozen convicts had also been smuggled aboard and hidden in the hold.

       The Badger left the wharf unchallenged and did not raise any suspicion as she sailed under the guns of Battery Point. To everyone but those on board, she was on her regular passage to Port Arthur. But before she had gone more than five kilometres down the Derwent, she briefly pulled into shore and picked up a final passenger, one George Harding Darby.

       Darby, like all the rest of the men on the Badger, was a convict still under sentence. But he enjoyed many privileges not accorded to ordinary convicts sent out to the colonies. A gentleman by birth, he was a member of the same class as the military officers and administrators governing Van Diemen’s Land. At the time, he was employed as a signalman at Mount Nelson Signal Station, which relayed messages from Port Arthur to Hobart. He had also worked at the Water Bailiff’s office and was likely the person who got Philp his job as the Badger’s master and ensured he had a crew of loyal and competent sailors.

    Courtesy Google Maps

       Darby and Philp, both nautical men, had become friends while held in a prison hulk awaiting transportation. Darby had come out to Van Diemen’s Land on the William Glen Anderson the same year as Philp had come out on the Argyle. George Darby had served in the Royal Navy and, during Greece’s war of independence from the Ottoman Empire, had commanded a naval vessel under Lord Cochrane. He was also reputed to have served with distinction during the battle of Navarino in 1827 further enhancing his reputation among Hobart’s administrators. However, by 1830, he had left the navy and had found employment as a clerk. By 30 March 1830, he was standing in the docks answering charges of stealing £90 from a fellow gentleman. He was found guilty and sentenced to be transported for life.

       Several days passed before anyone realised the Badger had not delivered her stores to Port Arthur. Boats were sent out to track her down. It was thought that Philp might have sought refuge in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand.   So, the brig Isabella was even sent to investigate with a party of soldiers on board. However, she returned to Hobart in late September, having found no trace of the missing Badger. Philp, Darby, and the others had somewhere much further afield in mind when they sailed away from Hobart. They had made their way north, first through the Tasman and from there into the Coral Sea. In September, they pulled into Lifuka in the Friendly Islands (present-day Tonga) before resuming their journey north across the equator and on towards the Philippines.

       Philp, Darby and the rest of the runaways eventually arrived in Manila in a longboat, claiming their ship had sunk not far from that port. It is certainly possible that they ran into trouble close to their destination, as they claimed. But it is more likely they had deliberately scuttled the ship rather than risk it being identified as the missing Badger. Philp and Darby would have known that Governor Arthur would have sent a description of the Badger and its runaways far and wide in his effort to track them down.

    The Pria Granda, Macao, by Thomas Allom, from a sketch by Lieut. White, Royal Marines. (1843)

       The bolters did not linger in Manila for very long. They boarded a Spanish ship bound for the Portuguese colony of Macau. But in Macau, their luck nearly ran out. William Philp was spotted by the master of the British merchant ship Mermaid, which happened to be in port. Before taking command of the Mermaid, Captain Stavers had served as the mate on the convict transport Argyle. He immediately recognised Philp as one of the convicts who was suspected of plotting to seize his ship.

       Stavers tried to have the Portuguese colonial authorities detain the Philp and his mates. He showed the officials an old copy of the Sydney Herald newspaper, which included a report on the seizure of the Badger as evidence. Philp and Darby were picked up and questioned by a Portuguese official, but they claimed to have never heard of the Badger.

       As Philp and the others had kept their noses clean while in Macau, the Governor was not inclined to lock them up on the say-so of a foreigner brandishing an old newspaper in a language he did not understand. Philp and Darby were released to go about their business unmolested, but now that their true identities were known, they thought it was time to move on in. Apparently, most of the runaways had already found berths on an American-flagged ship about to leave port. Philp was last seen in Macau after kindly declining an invitation to join a ship bound for Sydney, telling the British captain, “[he] did not wish to go so far southward.”

    Philp, Darby and the rest of the men who fled from Van Diemen’s Land on the Badger are among a very select group of convicts. Of the many hundreds who escaped in stolen or seized vessels, very few are known to have made it to a friendly port. None of the Badger’s men were ever heard of again after leaving Macau.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • BOLTERS: An Unruly Bunch of Malcontents

    Convict crewed boats crossing the bar to unload ships at Norfolk Island. Courtesy National Library of Australia.

    More than 160,000 of Britain’s most unwanted souls were banished to Australia between 1788 and 1868.   These convicts ranged from petty thieves to hardened criminals.   Fraudsters, burglars and pickpockets rubbed shoulders with highway robbers, rapists and murderers in the fetid prison cells of transport ships bound for Australia.    Political prisoners, social reformers and ordinary men and women struggling to feed their families also found themselves trapped in a brutal judicial system determined to rid Britain of its undesirables.  

    The vast majority of these men and women made the best of the hand fate had dealt them.   They earned their freedom and took up land and farmed it, started businesses, married, raised children, and helped found the country we know today.   But this book is not about them.   Library shelves are lined with volumes praising the accomplishments of those worthy and not-so-worthy folk.   Rather, Bolters tells the stories of those unruly malcontents who stepped ashore and thought, “This place is not for me,” and began plotting their escape.  

    Those who tried to abscond and failed, or flout any of the many other rules and regulations governing their lives were often sent to places of “secondary transportation.”   These isolated penal settlements established at Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Moreton Bay and Macquarie Harbour were intentionally harsh.   They were places where floggings were frequent, work was backbreaking, living conditions were wretched and life expectancy was short.     Norfolk Island would later surpass them all for its brutality.  

    Hobart Town convict chain gang. Photo courtesy State Library of Victoria.

    Australia’s penal settlements were gaols without bars.   There was often very little to prevent anyone from taking their leave and hiding out in the bush.    But what could they do then?   The countryside was wildly unfamiliar, and the already dispossessed Aboriginal peoples were often hostile towards anyone encroaching further onto their land.   Despite this, there were several bolters who lived for many years in Aboriginal communities.   Alternatively, runaways could hole up on the outskirts of settlements, preying on whoever presented themselves as easy targets.   These “bushrangers” were the scourge of early administrators in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.   The authorities went to great lengths to hunt them down and bring them to justice, often at the end of a rope.   Eking out an existence on society’s fringes was not a viable long-term proposition.   Those truly serious about escaping had to look not towards the country’s interior, but out to sea.    Where townsfolk, farmhands, labourers and the like viewed the expansive ocean with justifiable trepidation, it was seen in a very different light by the many seamen and mariners in the convict ranks.

    A flogging as Illustrated in The Fell Tyrant published in 1836. Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

    Ships had brought them out to the colonies.   They could whisk them away.    Stowing away was the most frequent method of absconding, especially for those without seafaring skills.   A cat-and-mouse game soon developed, with stowaways finding ever more inventive places to hide while the authorities devised new ways of flushing them out.   Rarely did a ship leave Australia during the convict era without someone trying to stow away.

    For men of a more ruthless and violent temperament, seizing control of a ship and sailing to some far-flung port proved an irresistible temptation.    Ships transporting prisoners between settlements were always on alert for trouble, but that did not stop some desperate characters from trying their luck.  Captains of vessels, complacent of port regulations, risked their ships being taken by convicts ever vigilant for lapses in security.   A few enterprising convicts even built their own craft to make their escape.   Few of these endeavours ended well, for the distances to be traversed were vast and the ocean unforgiving to frail and unseaworthy watercraft.  

    Detail from an 1828 watercolour of Hobart by Augustus Earle showing the brig Cyprus (centre), which was seized by convicts en route to Macquarie Harbour. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

    Bolters tells the stories of many of those convicts who chanced their luck to regain their liberty.   The narratives draw heavily on the personal accounts left behind by those determined to escape and official reports written by the men whose job it was to stop them.    In 1791 William and Mary Bryant and a band of runaways made off with Governor Phillip’s cutter and sailed it to Timor in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).   To this day it is still recognised as an outstanding feat of seamanship and survival.    It was unfortunate for them that their luck ran out shortly after.   However, Mary and a handful of others reached England and were later pardoned. They proved escape was possible, inspiring many others to follow their lead.    In 1803, William Buckley fled from a short-lived settlement on the shores of Port Phillip Bay.   He was taken in by the local Aboriginal people and remained with them for the next 32 years.   Macquarie Harbour saw many inmates try to escape that god-forsaken place.   No story is more chilling than that of the infamous cannibal Alexander Pearce and the men who fled into the wilderness with him.  

    Sketches of Alexander Pearce made shortly after he was hanged. Artist: Thomas Bock. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

    When a group of determined prisoners captured the Cyprus in 1829, few could have imagined that they would sail the vessel to Japan before scuttling it off the coast of China.  Several men made it back to England before being arrested. Then, five years later, the prisoners entrusted with completing the Frederick at Macquarie Harbour took off for South America rather than deliver her to Port Arthur as supposed.    The book ends with the liberation of six Irish rebels from Fremantle Prison by the American whaler Catalpa in 1876.   This was arguably the most carefully planned and executed escape during the convict era.   Along the way, the book delves into many lesser-known but no less desperate and dramatic attempts to flee Australian shores.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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  • Capture of the Harrington, 1808

    Brig – similar to the Harrington.

    Robert Stewart was not your typical convict born into England’s poverty-stricken underclass and sentenced to transportation for committing some petty crime. Rather, he came from a comfortable though modest middle-class family. Born in 1771, the first ten years of his life would have likely been idyllic, but then his father died, and a year later, his widowed mother enrolled him into the Royal Mathematical Institution. There, he joined the ranks of boys learning maths and celestial navigation, preparing them for apprenticeships in the merchant marine or Royal Navy. Had he graduated, Stewart would have had a respectable and rewarding career that would one day see him master of his own ship. However, Stewart harboured ambitions of one day enjoying the sort of wealth and privileges that “higher-born” gentlemen took for granted.   

    In June 1785, Robert Stewart’s rebellious nature and frequent absences led to his expulsion from the institute.  He then joined the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman and over the next 12 years rose to the rank of Petty Officer. But in 1798, aged 27, he deserted, likely embittered that he would never be promoted into the officer ranks.  Three years later, he stood trial on fraud and forgery charges. Stewart had purchased goods while posing as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and paid for them with a forged cheque. Caught, charged and found guilty, he was sentenced to transportation for life and sent to Van Diemen’s Land.

    Sydney Cove c1809. Courtesy State Library of NSW.

       Stewart arrived in Hobart on the Calcutta in 1803 and did not attract any undue attention for a year or so. However, twice, he attempted to escape by seizing small colonial vessels and setting sail. Both times ended in dismal failure, and he was returned to Hobart to face punishment. After his second attempt, he was sentenced to death. Stewart was only spared that punishment due to a blanket pardon given to all prisoners under capital sentence by the recently appointed Governor of NSW, William Bligh. However, in 1808, he was sent to Sydney to serve a period of time at hard labour.

       But Stewart never gave up hope of regaining his freedom. This time, he had his eye on the 180-ton brig Harrington anchored in Sydney Cove. She had recently returned to Port Jackson from China with her hold filled with tea after delivering a cargo of Fijian sandalwood. So lucrative was the trade that the Harrington’s captain was set to do it again.   The ship was stocked with enough supplies to last the crew several months and was to sail any day.   

    At 10 o’clock on the night of 15 May 1808, Stewart led as many as 30 fellow convicts out to the waiting ship in two boats they had just stolen. They came alongside as quietly as they could so as not to alert any sentries. But when Stewart climbed over the side, he found he had the deck to himself. The rest of the men swarmed over the gunwales. Some went forward to secure the crew. Others went aft to take care of the officers. The Harrington’s Chief Officer, Arnold Fisk, woke to the sight of Stewart holding a pistol to his head. The brig’s captain and owner could not be found, for he had gone ashore earlier that day. As Stewart and his men took control of the ship, the captain was blissfully asleep in his home overlooking Sydney Harbour.

    Sydney Gazette 22 May 1808, p. 2.

        With the ship’s company under guard, the convicts cut away the anchors and used the two stolen boats to tow the Harrington the length of Sydney Harbour. Once they reached the Heads, the sails were unfurled and the wind took them out to sea. By 7 a.m., they were about 20 nautical miles (40 kilometres) off the coast.

       Stewart ordered the Harrington’s crew into the two boats so they could make their way back to Sydney. They pulled into Sydney Cove later that afternoon to learn the alarm had already been raised. Earlier that morning, Captain Campbell had looked out across the Harbour to find his ship was not there.

       It took authorities three days to organise a ship, the Pegasus, to go in pursuit. By then, Stewart and the Harrington were long gone. The Pegasus cruised the Fijian Islands and then sailed on to Tonga before returning to Sydney via New Caledonia. She was gone nine weeks and arrived back empty-handed. For a time, it looked as if Robert Stewart and his band of bolters had made good their escape. Stewart had sailed the brig nearly 8000 kilometres north and was approaching Manila in the Philippines when their luck ran out. HMS Dedaigneuse spotted the unfamiliar vessel, and her captain sent a boarding party across to investigate. By then, the Harrington was flying American colours, and Stewart presented the officer with papers purporting that the ship was of American origin. The forged documents did not fool the officer in charge of the boarding party who seized the ship. Stewart, now calling himself Robert Bruce Keith Stuart, was taken back to the Dedaigneuse while the rest of the convicts were locked in the Harrington’s hold, now under the command of a British naval officer and a prize crew.

       Shortly thereafter, the Harrington ran aground off the island of Luzon. Most of the convicts were reported to have got ashore where they fled on foot. However, there is some evidence to suggest that their “escape” might have been fabricated, and they were actually press-ganged into Royal Navy service.

       Stewart, on the other hand, had a much easier time of it. He spoke and carried himself in a gentleman-like manner, professed to have enjoyed a liberal education and that he had connections to some of Britain’s most prestigious families. Stewart claimed to have once been a lieutenant in the Royal Navy before he fell victim to the penal system. As a result, he was accorded considerable leniency by the Dedaigneuse’s captain.    Captain Dawson allowed Stewart “every reasonable indulgence and forbade to place him under personal restraint.” That was until Stewart tried to escape and came very close to succeeding. After that, he was placed under close confinement. Stewart was eventually delivered to British officials in India, where he continued masquerading as a gentleman in need of help rather than the escaped convict that he was.

    Calcutta circa 1809.

       He knew he could not hide the fact that he had committed an offence serious enough to warrant transportation to New South Wales. So, instead, he fabricated a preposterous story about his conviction. Stewart claimed he had eloped with a young lady from a very respectable family, though chivalry required him to leave her unnamed. But, after they were secretly wed, a junior Baronet who also had desires for the lady broke into their apartment. Stewart said he had shot and injured the young aristocrat in what he described as an affair of honour. Stewart said he had been unfairly found guilty of attempted murder and sent to New South Wales. That sounded more in keeping with a gentleman than being caught for the more tawdry crime of passing a forged cheque. His tale garnered much sympathy from the colonial administrators in Calcutta. The Chief Magistrate even went as far as to champion Stewart’s cause, penning a letter to his superior suggesting he should be released.

       But then, in August 1809, Stewart’s time ran out. The British officials could not ignore that he was a fugitive from justice, and the Governor General ordered him to be returned to Sydney. He was placed on board a ship bound for Australia, but before it sailed, Stewart went missing. At first, the captain claimed he had jumped overboard and likely drowned, but it later transpired he had been whisked away in a boat by one of his many admirers and taken back to Calcutta.

       So, Robert Stewart may have escaped justice and settled in India under yet another assumed name, or caught the next ship leaving port. No one knows for the trail grows cold then. One thing is certain: he never returned to New South Wales to serve out his sentence. Nor did he face punishment for masterminding the seizure of the brig Harrington.

    © Copyright C.J. Ison / Tales from the Quarterdeck, 2024.

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