For many reasons, therefore, that situation was looked upon as one of extreme difficulty, and in many instances of hazard. The convicts were on this account treated as irrational beings; in dens like wild beasts; like them fed and kept in the closest restraint consistent with their health. The conduct of the prisoners in general seemed to justify severe measures of precaution and confinement. Many accounts of their having made attempts to regain their liberty; rising on their guards; and endeavouring to take possession of the ship, for the purpose of proceeding to a port remote from their place of destination, had been in circulation; but in no instance have any of those daring enterprises even in part succeeded, except in one which occurred about the beginning of 1798. At that time the system of transportation, it appears, was not so well organized as at present; for when a ship had been taken up for female convicts, if the proper number were not ready, the vacant portion was filled with male convicts to be secured in a separate prison. The _Lady Shore_ was engaged as a convict transport on such an occasion, and the consequences of placing male and female prisoners in the same ship unfortunately became evident, although the number of women was inconsiderable. In the course of the voyage an illicit intercourse had taken place between the female convicts and the sailors, of which it seems the male convicts, together with the recruits for the New South Wales corps which were on board, took advantage, by making the women induce the sailors to assist them in taking the ship. The plan was so well laid that the design was not at all suspected, until one night, when the sailors had liberated the prisoners both male and female, and were joined by the recruits, a general mutinous rising took place. The commander and his first mate were murdered; and the ship, containing, besides the public stores, a great deal of private property, (which was a heavy loss to the colony,) was taken and carried away to the river _La Plata_, where she was delivered up to the Spaniards. The prisoners, however, I believe, most of them, were afterwards sent again in pursuance of their sentence. Even when in any attempts of such a nature the convicts have been disappointed, their plans being detected before they were ripe for execution, their licentious and abandoned conduct still frequently continued to excite alarm, and to keep the guards on constant and harassing duty. The various artifices to which some of those desperate and dangerous characters had recourse, if detailed, would run to great length; but it is sufficient merely to mention the above incident, to show that the conveyance of convicts to the colonies is an undertaking not free from care and anxiety.