"_Off Cape of Good Hope_ (_April 30th_).--We were likely to have a mutiny on board a few weeks since. The [female] prisoners laid a plan for strangling the doctor, but providentially it was made known by M. A. Stewart, a convict, just before it was executed. McNalty and Brennan were the ringleaders in the affair. When it was known, the officers of the ship went down in the prison with firearms. Fancy the scene! The doctor has now promised to forgive them if they conduct themselves well the rest of the voyage." More serious was the conspiracy which was discovered in a ship of which Doctor Galloway, R. N., was the surgeon-superintendent. This was brought to light just after the ship had left Plymouth Sound--as a general rule all such attempts are made in the early part of a voyage--and it was discovered by a sentinel who overheard a fragment of a conversation by the hatchway during the morning watch. The plot was cleverly laid. The convicts had observed that the old guard discharged their firelocks always at sunrise, and that the new guard did not reload till eleven o'clock. They planned therefore to mutiny in the early morning, just after the guard had fired, resolving to seize these weapons, and then overpower the captain, the rest of the soldiers, and the crew. The total strength of the military detachment was forty, and the convicts were two hundred and fifty. The plotters of this outbreak were promptly punished on proof of their guilt, twelve of them being carried in double irons for seven or eight weeks. In one of the earliest ships the opposing parties actually came to blows--so says one Barrington, at least, who went as a convict in 1790 to Botany Bay. The memoirs of this man (a very different person from Sir Jonah Barrington) were widely successful, and soon ran through several editions. His career of crime was more than curious. His London hunting-grounds were royal levées, court balls, Ranelagh, and the opera-house. At the palace he found it easy in the crush to cut the diamonds out of orders and stars. At the opera he picked Prince Orloff's pocket of a snuff-box worth £30,000, but being collared by the owner he restored the booty. He was eventually transported for stealing a gold watch at Enfield races from Mr. H. H. Townshend. According to Barrington's account two Americans among the people persuaded the others to conspire to seize the ship. They declared that the capture effected, it would be easy to carry the prize into some American port, where all would receive a hearty welcome. Not only would all obtain their liberty as a matter of course, but Congress would give them also a tract of land, and a share of the money accruing from the sale of the ship and her cargo.