The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1Whymper, Frederick
History
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 1
Whymper, Frederick
Adventure and adventurers; Arctic regions; Ocean; Voyages around the world
Captain Phillip found the bay was not a safe anchorage, and in other
respects was unsuitable. A few miles to the northward he discovered an
inlet, now named Port Jackson—from the name of the seaman who discovered
it—and which had been overlooked by Cook. The fleet was immediately
removed thither, the convicts landed, and the British flag raised on the
banks of Sydney Cove. Of the thousand individuals who formed this first
nucleus of a grand colony, more than three-fourths were convicted
offenders. For some time they were partially dependent on England for
supplies. It had been arranged that they should not, at first, be left
without sufficient provisions. The first ship sent out after the colonists
had been landed for this purpose was struck by an iceberg in the
neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope, and might not have been saved at
all, but for the seamanship of the “gallant, good Riou,” who afterwards
lost his life at the battle of Copenhagen. He managed to keep her afloat,
and she was at length towed into Table Bay, and a portion of her stores
saved. Meantime, the colonists were living “in the constant belief that
they should one day perish of hunger.” Governor Phillip set a noble
example by putting himself on the same rations as the meanest convict; and
when on state occasions he was obliged to invite the officers of the
colony to dine with him at the Government House, he used to intimate to
the guests that “they must bring their bread along with them.” At last, in
June, 1790, some stores arrived; and in the following year a second fleet
of vessels came out from England, one ship of the Royal Navy and ten
transports; 1,763 convicts had left England on board the latter, of whom
nearly 200 died on the voyage, and many more on arrival. The number of
free settlers was then, and long afterwards, naturally very small; they
did not like to be so intimately and inevitably associated with convicted
criminals. In 1810 the total population of Australia was about 10,000. In
1836 it had risen to 77,000, two-fifths of whom were convicts in actual
bondage, while of the remainder, a large proportion had at one time been
in the same condition. Governor King, one of the earlier officials of the
colony, complained that “he could not make farmers out of pickpockets;”
and Governor Macquarie later said that “there were only two classes of
individuals in New South Wales—those who had been convicted, and those who
ought to have been.” Under these discouraging circumstances, coupled with
all kinds of other difficulties, the colony made slow headway. Droughts
and inundations, famine or scarcity, and hostility on the part of the
natives, helped seriously to retard its progress. About the period of Sir
Thomas Brisbane’s administration, there was an influx of a better class of
colonists, owing to the inauguration of free emigration. In 1841,
transportation to New South Wales ceased. Ten years later the discovery of
gold by Mr. E. H.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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