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Note from the author:
The
Blackheath Connection website has now been on the Internet
since March 2000. Since then, it has attracted a good deal of attention
(and e-mail) from Britain and Scotland, New Zealand, the Caribbean and
the US eastern seaboard, but much less so from Australians.
It
needs to be asked, why is this? Is it because Australians still have
cultural sensitivities about convict transportation that they do not
wish to discuss?
By now (mid-2003), it certainly seems so,
as a matter of a self-imposed truncation of cultural
curiosities/historical amnesia.
For example, e-mail from the
UK has been far more penetrating about England sending convicts to
"Botany Bay", than e-mail from Australians about Australian colonies
receiving convicts.
This website has had e-mail from some
academic historians in the US/UK, and from many family history-minded
people around the world, but from few, if any, historians in Australia,
or their students, including high school students, though some family
historians in Australia have e-mailed.
What is noticeable is
that international e-mailers find the information on the website to be
accurate and reliable, whereas Australians seem to be avoiding the
website's information and the directions the information seeks out.
That
is, people overseas find few cultural sensitivities with the material,
Australians seem to be finding "cultural reasons" to avoid the
material. (At last count, only one or two universities in Australian
have staff who have linked to The Blackheath Connection.)
It seems then, that Australians prefer the old stories on
convict transportation that they are used to, not new information which
provokes fresh thinking on the topic. So the questions arise... Does
this website cut too close to the bone? And if so, how and why?
Note: Some of the basic
information on these pages-to-come on shipping, convicts and colonial
European Australia is drawn from work by maritime historians Bateson
and Cumpston.
Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships,
1787-1868. [Orig. 1959] Sydney, A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1974.
John
S. Cumpston, Shipping Arrivals and Departures, Sydney,
1788-1825. Canberra, Roebuck, 1963-1964.
(Other relevant citations are given below in this file.)
The European settlement of eastern Australia began with the transportation of convicts, rejects of English society, and an excuse for making relatively cheap experiments in exploiting the earlier discoveries of Capt. James Cook in the Australasian region of the Pacific Ocean.
With roughly half its personnel
being convicts, the first colony founded, officially from 26 January,
1788, if it failed would have been no great loss. But if it succeeded?
In a variety of ways, it seems as the British government of the day
pitched its views - and its risks - roughly in the middle of the sets
of possibilities to be considered. By 1987, Australian historian John
Molony at Sydney University wrote about the decision of 18 August, 1786
to send the First Fleet to Australia... "the decision ... was made with
breathtaking nonchalance and almost criminal negligence..." a view
somewhat exaggerated, but worth considering.
John Molony, The
Penguin Bicentennial History of Australia: The Story of 200 Years.
Ringwood, Victoria, Viking, 1987., p. 1.
One such pitching of government views was that more or less, the new colony would not have an economy, as such. The colony would take time to develop agriculture, it was unknown what market might exist for agricultural produce. No one knew if the area - New Holland - possessed interesting mineral resources? Or good timber resources? Harvestable animal products, perhaps from exotic animals? It might have been thought, perhaps, that if the area became useful to trade, any port such as "Botany Bay" could become a useful ships' refreshment base? But then, what would the ships be trading? Apart from dropping new manifests of convicts, why would such ships even be in the area? While if ships were only in the area because they were transporting convicts, any argument about economic motives for the government's measure and ships carrying convicts became rather circular. While if such ships mostly carried convict passengers, they would anyway be leaving from London, Plymouth or Portsmouth, or an Irish port. Why would shipowners be interested?
Ah! But if the ships carried cargoes of Chinese tea back to England? In fact, by 1786-1788, because Cook had reported the matter, the only known harvestable animal product of the Australasian region was seal fur from the rookeries of Dusky Bay, New Zealand. And perhaps, out in the Pacific Ocean, or in the Tasman Sea, whales? Such are the questions to be asked of the early eighteenth century Australian colony by the economic historian, the maritime historian.
Such questions have been asked too seldom of the early colony at Australia's first city, Sydney. The British government's decision was made, rather thoughtlessly, that economically, the new convict colony would operate on monies allocated to its commissariat for general running and food supplies, plus disposable income available from the salaries of military, naval and associated staff, including clergy, educators, passing ships' captains (if any). Land grants would be made - this would be economic development from scratch on unknown agricultural soil by an unknown, untested maritime novelty named The Pacific.
The unpaid workforce would be convicts, working for one employer - the colonial government enforced by the convicts' guards. There was no assumption that any private enterprise would be encouraged on any admirable scale, since once they had served their term, convicts and any of their children would be working for themselves on a modest scale in an unproven environment.
Importantly, there was no avenue at Sydney till the early 1820s for the legal resorts, quite usual in Britain, for the recovery of ordinary commercial debts. That is, the assumption about "no normal economy" was confirmed by the absence of the legal machinery usually associated in British life with the resolution of normal debt management and debt recovery problems - the normal panapoly of Common Law traditionally resorted to by subjects of the British crown. In 1786-1788, the convicts, being convicts, had no resort to Common Law, or any of its more commercially sophisticated new fruits. The situations they would face once they'd served their time, even more so the situation of their children, were all in the unknowable future.
At this point in consideration of Australia's first colony, historians' discussions usually flow to the exploitation made of land-granting systems developed by persons of prestige, military officers and their lackeys, or clergy such as Rev. Samuel Marsden, and others, perhaps free emigrants, respectable enough and assumed to be competent enough to manage the resources they would presumably apply to the developing colonial economy.
This becomes the point of departure of this book. Given the un-economic assumptions shrouding the new colony in future-mystery, what were the motives of the mostly London-based shipowners who were willing to take contracts to ship convicts to New Holland?
Here arises a great contrast in standard Australian attitudes to the convicts transported. Great sympathy is extended to the convicts. Some residual bitterness is extended to those who transported them. But those who transported the convicts are never examined, as though by some unwritten cultural rule, they are not to be examined. This ambivalent attitude has had one drastic result. Australia's early maritime history is a shambles.
It is the intention of this book to try to organise this shambles, where the role of London's whalers in convict transportation is somewhat mistaken, the roles of a noted London slaving firm are not explained, the post-1800 involvement of merchants otherwise regarded as "East India merchants" is not well explained. Hence, a concentration on explaining the motives of the shipowners involved in convict transportation.
The problem of the shambles has a shape easy to explain...
Where: A= London or other British ports shipping convicts by contract
B= Descriptions of voyages, various
C= Eastern Australian destinations
D= New Zealand, non-convict destination, but a place of interest in Australasia
E= Western Australia as a later convict destination
(Note: Colours indicate phases of the convict shipping as follows: Red = 1786-1800 - Blue = 1800-1825. Green = 1825-1852. Brown = 1852 to 1765 and end of the system overall)
So, the question is, when convicts were transported to Australia, who owned the convict ships... ? While the above graphic gives only a rough approximation of a shape to maritime history...
Many Australians think that the convict transport ships were "government ships", without delving further. In general, the shipping was concentrated in London. Australians have given most attention to the dates ships arrived to convict colonies and then proceeded elsewhere (see C, D, E in graph above). These files are concerned with A.
In fact, between 1786 and 1865, only a few convict transports were naval ships. The rest were privately-owned, leased under contract/charter to the government for a specific use. This shibboleth persists despite the publication in 1959 of Bateson's examination of convict shipping, which has remained indispensable for the preparation of this book. Where possible, I have tried to expand on Bateson's painstakingly-collected information on ship voyages and ship ownership, finding that my research has involved correcting a few errors he had no opportunity to identify or correct.
Authoritarianism:
This shibboleth in turn connects with a
near-overwhelming attribute of the documentation the historian usually
reads, such as Historical Records of New South Wales.
Psychologically and politically, the events, the documents, many of the
people-histories ranged around the First Fleet are legalistic and
authoritarian in character, due to the reasons Britain felt it had to
transport convicts to "Botany Bay".
This British
authoritarianism can be difficult to question or confront, and is
perhaps the major reason why Australians advance so little in the ways
they look at the First Fleet.
On 18 August, 1786, the British Government met in Privy Council and decided to transport convicts to the eastern coast of Australia, to a place becoming known popularly as "Botany Bay". To New Holland, where a city grew after being named Sydney after Lord Sydney, Tommy Townshend, who had a large part in earlier discussions as well as the decision finally made.
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A great many things had soon to be put in train, including gathering of the necessary shipping, and here arises just one chronological patterning where historians might have done better from the 1930s.
Here, one can also ask: should the First Fleet be regarded as any sort of Australian myth-of origin? After all, it landed the first Europeans who would stay permanently on Australian soil, whether local Aboriginals approved or not. In the following two centuries, European Australians have evidently decided to downplay the First Fleet as being worthy of encouraging a myth-of-origin. Although, true, the official date of landing, 26 January, 1788, has become Australia Day, a national day of official and community observance.
But as historian Eris O'Brien wrote in the 1930s about penal
colonization, "the subject matter is not attractive".
Eris O'Brien, The Foundation
of Australia, 1786-1800: A Study in English Criminal Practice and Penal
Colonization in the Eighteenth Century. London, Sheed and
Ward, 1937. Sydney, (Second edition, Sydney, Angus and Robertson,
1950). See also in a rather Americanized view, Eris O'Brien, 'The
Coming of the British to Australia, 1770-1821', pp. 19-31 in Australia,
edited by C. Hartley-Grattan. Los Angeles, University of California
Press, 1947.
A variety of reasons arise then to not re-examine The First Fleet.
Dalrymple's "Admonition"
The British government's decision of 18 August, 1786 to create a new convict colony was a "silent majority" kind of decision, quietly assented-to by a wide range of figures such as judges and magistrates, provincial officials, social commentators and politicians, though with controversy provoked by a few dissenters who either disagreed on the grounds of principle, or humanity; with public views fuelled by various ambivalent newspaper reports, some of them of dubious factuality.
One noted dissident, the official hydrographer of the East India Co., Alexander Dalrymple, protested eloquently that the plan would breach, ignore and/or abridge the monopoly the East India Co. had possessed for years of, broadly, Pacific waters. At the time, Dalrymple knew a great deal about the South-East Asian waters north of Australia - more or less. Critic Dalrymple got at least one thing right. He complained that the project was too protean. That is, the project was so-multifaceted, it had so many limbs to its body, it was so "creative" as to risk being unmanageable. This it was!
Dalrymple's Admonition has been given a variety of attention by historians, several of whom have believed that Dalrymple was partly motivated to protest in 1786, as before 1770, he had failed to find a place on what became Cook's first voyage of discovery into the Pacific, when Botany Bay had been named by Sir Joseph Banks. Dalrymple's protest then has been interpreted as part-disappointment, and part-jealousy. I suspect also that the attention given to Dalrymple's protest is one factor which has led to certain other aspects of the history being overlooked.
The first such matter to examine is the phantom First Fleet which never happened, before the organization of the actual First Fleet that did sail.
At this point there begin to appear the silhouettes of men - mostly Londoners - whose names have been ignored or downplayed by historians - including historians of London itself. Since a variety of merchants involved in the early maritime history of European Australia lived at Blackheath, I have called the information relating to them, The Blackheath Connection.
If they are seen as shipping managers, their interests in the Australasian region are not easy to discern, and trying to discern their motives entails new ways of reading Australian history from 1786. But suffice to say, if they and their employees were interested in a new maritime region, their interests in acquiring, updating and discussing relevant maps would have been heightened. For this and other reasons, I have "translated" information on their ships' voyages from their usual context, penal history and convict transportation, into straightforward maritime history. What arises from this exercise is a new set of perspectives on an often-told story.
The Blackheath Connection:
Disconcertingly, various of these men are named in Historical Records of Australia, Historical Records of New South Wales, or various early writing on "Australia". Despite this, their careers have not been examined. In 1989, visiting London, I was quite amazed to discover that several notable names had lived at just one London suburb, Blackheath - about which no one - including me at the time - seemed to have any idea. It seemed that between 1786 and 1800, Blackheath had for one thing been a literal hot-bed of shipowners' interests in the Pacific in general, and Australasian waters in particular.
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Some information in
this section is based on information freely made available by noted
Blackheath historian, Neil Rhind in 1989, and I remain very grateful
for his generosity.
In 1989, this seemed quite attractive to someone interested in sorting out "the trade position" component of the Botany Bay debate that Australian historians had lately been engaged in, which I had been following, and it seemed a relatively simple matter to begin to replace these Blackheath residents into the story of the First Fleet and later convict transportation. But it became very difficult. A writer can find it hard work, finding forgotten identities and replacing them into an often-told story. One problem was, these "silhouetted men" were already named in the early official historical records of NSW.
For a few years before 1989, partly due to the approach of the 1988 Australian Bicentennial, several historians had set themselves to re-examine views on the First Fleet. For many years there had been mild controversy on whether the Fleet was organized efficiently, or not? Were the convicts properly fed, or not? Part of the motive here was also to re-examine the reputation of the first colonial governor of New South Wales, Captain Arthur Phillip. Phillip's abilities and reputation were disparaged by some even before he set sail in May 1787 for "Botany Bay:, and in the following two centuries, criticism of him has resurfaced from time to time. (Personally, I think that on balance, Phillip performed well as the first governor of New South Wales in respect of most of the issues he had to face.)
The phantom First Fleet:
Within three days of the 18 August decision being made, and it smacks of what is today called "insider trading", or using early information to get an inside running on gaining a government contract, the idea of organising a fleet of the necessary shipping occurred to a London firm which already had taken a few contracts to service government purposes - Turnbull, Macaulay and Gregory (TMG).
Historians have rewarded them by giving them a spurious identity - as a Mr. Turnbull Macaulay and presumably his partner, Mr. Gregory - which is how they are incorrectly referred to in Charles Bateson's book, The Convict Ships, first published in 1959.
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There never was a Turnbull
Macaulay. The Macaulay in question was London alderman George Mackenzie
Macaulay (1750-1803). His partners are more shadowy, though one of them
may have married a sister of Macaulay. Macaulay was a well-known figure
in London, well-respected for his abilities, regarded with wonder as he
solely owned an East-Indiaman, Pitt, and wondered
about as he had married two women named Theed, who were either sisters
or cousins. He lived at Blackheath in London. The house he lived in
still exists there, just opposite a small, still-standing Chapel of
Rest. And he lived just a few doors from two other major names to be
explained in this book, the "chieftain" of the South whalers, Samuel
Enderby Senior, and a Lloyd's name and an investor in the South whale
fishery, John St Barbe.
The outlines of the
St Barbe genealogy from post-Norman English times are given in Margaret
Urquhart, Sir John St. Barbe, Bt. Of Broadlands.
Southampton, Paul Cave Publications Ltd., 1983.
Given their connections to whaling, it is hardly surprising that Enderby and St Barbe (and some of their employees and associates) should be named in any discussion of "the trade position" in the Botany Bay debate. Both are named in Historical Records of Australia and Historical Records of New South Wales, yet their roles in the history of the Pacific Ocean have been much-overlooked. The phantom First Fleet never sailed - yet it can be connected with some enigmas of British ships visiting Tahiti that mysteriously return Pacific histories to Blackheath.
**************
When it became known in London that government was considering sending convicts to New South Wales, or, New Holland, Turnbull, Macaulay and Gregory were standing in the wings, ready to act quickly. They made an offer of shipping for a "first fleet" - but have largely been written out of history.
On 21 August, 1786, only three days after cabinet's decision, TMG offered a provision of sufficient shipping. Their quick response-time is one thing. Where they obtained their information, which was correct, is another. Their offer was rejected and quite properly, the matter was put out to tender by the navy in the usual, unremarkable way.
TMG sank into 210 years of obscurity. Their phantom first fleet never sailed. Today, most historical opinion is that the First Fleet took an uncommon long time to set sail - from September 1786 to early May 1787. The delay contrasts starkly with the speed with which the three men acted when news first broke of a special-need fleet to sail into the Pacific. Protean, as Dalrymple complained.
Questions can gather quickly around the TMG story. What on earth were their motives? Why bother, commercially, to send ships to the edge of the known world? Macaulay was a London alderman. So did he represent any of a majority of London's civic opinions about the pesky convict problem?
Business partners, TMG were alderman George Mackenzie Macaulay, John Turnbull and Thomas Gregory, partners in a firm that a while before had exercised government contracts to send food and supplies - vittles - to British troops in Canada. As regularly-used government contractors, they had an "in" on information about newly-arising business. We are speaking of London days when insider trading in commercial life was relatively common.
Government after earlier political confusions had made its decision to resume the transportation of convicts on 18 August, secretively. While it was only the members of the Privy Council that decided, it is known that George III fully approved. More so, almost all of Britain's political establishment agreed, or at least, did not dispute the decision. It was a silent-majority victory. Something had to be done about the state of crime, about the banked-up numbers of transportable convicts not yet transported, many rotting in the hulks system.
How did government interpret the TMG offer of shipping? Naval common sense and usual business practice prevailed along with generalized desires to rid the kingdom of unwanted transportable convicts. Perhaps, one or two government men blanched? Would it be politically useful, if it were known that just one "family business" had a motive to raise a fleet of convict transports? Probably not.
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Alderman Macaulay was recognized as a capable man, working
government contracts, importing tea and insuring ships at Lloyd's of
London. It seems probable that Macaulay's sister had married his
business partner John Turnbull - who remains hard to trace. Macaulay
had been working in the City of London since his teens, having started
with George Abel, a Lloyd's name at 15 Cloak Lane who'd lost heavily by
the American Revolution.
Abel
and Macaulay are just some British merchants mentioned in a rare
article, Katharine A. Kellock, 'London Merchants and the
pre-1776 American Debts', Guildhall Studies in
London History, Vol. 1, No 3, October 1974., pp. 109-149.
Macaulay, from the Isle of Wight,
had married into the wealthy Theed family. He had an uncle named Urry,
possibly the naval hero, Capt. John Urry, some of whose family were
connected with Isle of Wight.
Jonathan King and
John King, Philip Gidley King: A Biography of the Third
Governor of New South Wales. North Melbourne, Australia,
Methuen Australia Ltd., 1981., Chapter 1, Note 14, mentioning "one of
the great navigators of the period", Capt. John Urry, RN, famous for
his roles in the Battle of Havana.
Also from Isle of Wight was the extended family of Thomas
Gregory. More-or-less a family firm, TMG was tight until it fell apart
in 1797 amid family-type arguments as Macaulay was losing around 25 per
cent of his investments. About 1796-1797 was a crunch period for many
London financiers.
This outcome is found from
George Mackenzie Macaulay, [original diary] Occurrences and
Observations, Journal 1796-98. Add: 25,038. Copy, British Library.
(With Letters to W. Hastings, 1792. 1795. 29,172. f.461. 29174, f.5. I
am grateful to London researcher Gillian Hughes for tracking down this
rare document. Macaulay was a regular diarist; this is the only one of
his many diaries to survive.
Information that is almost alarming to stumble across is that a relative of Thomas Gregory, William Gregory, did "confidential work" for George III. William Gregory was a sometime British consul to major Spanish cities. Did Gregory, at the king's behest, rustle up a family-linked firm to help further the king's known desire to rid the kingdom of convicts? Did George III merely want some quick action in order to prod the bureaucracy to work faster? We may never know any facts here. William Gregory's whereabouts and movements at the time remain unknown. (His "confidential work" is noted in Burke's Landed Gentry for Gregory.)
Of this family group, Francis Gregory (died 1680) of the Isle of Wight had sons Mark, Francis, and John. One Mark Gregory, MP for Newport in 1777-1778 and a London merchant who married Sarah, daughter of one Captain John Urry RN. (Since George Macaulay had an uncle, Urry, was the uncle Capt. John?) We also know, that one Capt. Urry became one of many subscribers to the journal, "Transactions", of the later-governor of NSW, John Hunter, published in 1792).
Another William Gregory RN of this
family, a sometime British consul at Mexico, Madrid and Barcelona,
married Jane Joliffe. He died at Cowes in 1778. This William (the
consul) had a sister, Nanny, who married Sir Christopher Baynes
(1755-1837), first Baronet, whose father William (1719-1790), was a
gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Geo II and Geo III.
Burke's Landed Gentry
for Baynes; Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Baynes.
These connections could possibly explain any early information gained by TMG about a semi-secret decision - desired by the king? - to begin transporting convicts to Australia?
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The facts of the commercial lives of Londoners letting ships for use as convict transports for Australia have never interested Australians, and oddly enough, this represents a loss of many tall tales - as we will find.
Some facts: George Macaulay from the Isle of Wight had entered commercial life with Abel and Co., a Lloyd's insurer which lost about £5000 as debts owed by Americans prior to the American Revolution. As a British creditor, Abel's firm by 1786 was registered with The British Creditors, an English-Scottish lobby group of disgruntled merchants wanting to retrieve up to £2.5 million a debt monies from the victorious Americans.
A sometime-chairman of The British Creditors was Duncan Campbell (1726-1803), the overseer of the Thames prison hulks, whose staff by late 1786 would be checklisting the names of hundreds of transportable convicts. As chairman of the Creditors, Campbell had a fruitless interview with Thomas Jefferson in April 1786. That meeting in fact occurred within the timeframe treated in the recent splendid movie, Jefferson in Paris.
Suspicions about a "family business" wanting to ship out convicts grow worse. Both Campbell and Macaulay lived at Blackheath, as did Turnbull. What becomes interesting, then, is that the man who did get the First Fleet contracts, William Richards Jnr., did not live at Blackheath, though other men becoming interesting in shipping convicts also lived at Blackheath. Richards lived at Southwark in London.
Campbell was also the uncle-in-law of William Bligh, captain of HMAV Bounty. Ironically, one of Campbell's daughters, Elizabeth, married London barrister Alexander Pitcairn, brother of Robert whose name became attached to Pitcairn Island, where Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian fled. (Bligh did not know this until some time after he was deposed as governor of New South Wales in 1808).
Meanwhile, there are other twists and turns with the tale of "the phantom first fleet". William Richards finally saw to the First Fleet sailing for New Holland by May 1787 under the command of governor Arthur Phillip. Part of the fleet was the new Lady Penrhyn, which shipped women-only. Lady Penrhyn was owned by another London alderman, and a friend of Macaulay, the sea-biscuit manufacturer William Curtis. Curtis was a London lord mayor of the 1790s, and like Macaulay he sent a regular tea ship to China. Amusingly, Curtis was a patriotic Tory, and Macaulay was a Scots-feeling Whig who vehemently hated the prime minister, William Pitt. As friends, they presumably learned much of use from each other's prejudices?
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Why did these two aldermen bother? It seems likely that two London aldermen letting a ship into the First Fleet were expressing civic London's feelings about getting rid of unwanted convicts. If so, they were both written out of history for their pains. Is it that their views conflict a little violently with what has become Australia's traditional sympathy for "the convict underdog". To be realistic, it would be surprising if no London alderman had taken a personal interest in getting rid of convicts.
Macaulay and Curtis, who anyway sent regular ships for China tea, would have known about the enthusiastic market for seal fur at Canton. Both had become interested in getting seal fur from Nootka Sound (on the north-western coasts of Canada) to sell at Canton. Before May 1787, Macaulay chartered Lady Penrhyn from Curtis, once she had landed her convicts at what became Sydney, for a Nootka Sound leg of voyage.
Even more intriguing, Macaulay put his own man on the ship, Lt. John Watts, "who had been out with Cook". Watts had orders to take command of Lady Penrhyn after she left New South Wales, while she was at sea. (This overlooked information is found in the appendices to Gov. Phillips' Journal, published in London in 1789!)
But, a ship on her maiden voyage, Lady Penrhyn "developed a bad bottom", and it was suspected she could not handle sailing into icy north-Canadian waters. The seal-fur gathering exercise was abandoned. So she sailed to Tahiti instead, before going to Canton to ship tea.
Intriguingly, Lady Penrhyn got to Tahiti before Bligh arrived there in HMAV Bounty. The Tahitiians, who greatly respected Cook, wanted to know what had happened to him. Watts told them the truth - Cook had been killed at Hawaii. The result of this was that when he arrived at Tahiti on Bounty, Bligh, he who also "had been out with Cook", felt obliged to tell the Tahitiians - that what Watts had said was a "misunderstanding".
Intriguingly, coincident with the first British settlement of Australia, two mariners who had been "out with Cook", one famous, the other, Watts, hardly-known, were known to two men who lived at Blackheath in London, Duncan Campbell and George Macaulay. These two sailors commanded the first two British ships to arrive at Tahiti after Cook's death. What is really odd is that according to the well-kept Blackheath local history, both Campbell and Macaulay were members of the Blackheath Golf Club.
Was it a mere coincidence - in days when golf was not yet a popular game - that two Scotsmen in the same golf club, helped out with providing commanders of the first two British ships arriving at Tahiti? As Britain made a new burst into the Pacific? One doubts it was an accident!
This non-coincidence provokes reflections on what becomes well-known in history and what does not. Lady Penrhyn with her all-female cargo is best-known for carrying women-only convicts to "Botany Bay". What later happened to the ship's people (crew) has not yet been reported in a history book.
Many Pacific sea roads lead back to Blackheath. Before a ship sailed with convicts for Australia, a contract had to be made out. Before Macaulay's ship Pitt sailed with convicts in 1792, Macaulay made a share-deal for that contract with another Blackheath identity, John St Barbe. It was also not an accident that St Barbe lived two doors from the Enderby family, the "chieftains" of Britain's the South Whale Fishery. Enderbys had several ships in the Third Fleet to Australia, which preceded the voyage of Macaulay's Pitt's.
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A conclusion can be drawn - that various shipping men at Blackheath in London spent considerable time inspecting maps of the Pacific Ocean, because their employees were out there. Given such a strong common interest in the exploration of a new ocean, it seems hardly likely that these men ignored each other's views.
In similar vein, the Larkins family of Blackheath sent out Royal Admiral (I), Capt. Essex Henry Bond, later in 1792, departing not long after Pitt. Though generally, Larkins sent regular ships to India. (Oddly enough for any theme on civic London and any of its interests in new waters, Capt. E. H. Bond was married to a grand-daughter of Sir Thomas Chitty, Lord Mayor of London in 1760.)
London - or Blackheath - businessmen used the first few years of convict transportation to Australia to explore the Pacific, and the East, for new commercial possibilities. There were fewer useful possibilities than they hoped, but their disappointments, and their Blackheath connections, are not why their efforts have remained unknown to history.
The fulness of these commercial explorations is unknown to history because Australians ask too-few questions about the First Fleet - and why it was sent. Behind alderman George Macaulay's phantom first fleet are other phantoms of London and the Pacific...
The man who put the First Fleet together, William Richards Jnr, has also been mostly forgotten. Should his humpty-dumpty case be re-opened?
Today, few know, for example, that William Richards Jnr., shipping contractor for the First Fleet, went bankrupt by 1793. Should it be that Australia's official celebrations each 26 January ask us to recall a dismal bankruptcy?
Yet in The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes unfortunately writes, "To begin with, the [first] fleet was undervictualled by its crooked contractor, Duncan Campbell." Which is incorrect.
Duncan Campbell (died 1803) was the contractor for the Thames River prison hulks system, he was not crooked, he had little to do with the First Fleet except for checklisting the convicts he held who would go on the fleet. (Campbell was also a good friend of William Bligh, a later governor of New South Wales?)
The First Fleet contractor and family history:
The First Fleet
contractor, William Richards Jnr., lived in Southwark, London - and he
is so ignored in history, I am still unable to say when he died. He had
a son, William III Richards, a convict ships captain of the late 1820s,
who settled in New South Wales near Walcha at Winterbourne (which
is rather near Tamworth and Armidale, New South Wales). The site was
the subject of an archaeology dig by people from University of New
England more than 20 years ago.
J. Oppenheimer, 'Captain
William Richards', Chapter 5 in G. Connah, M. Rowland, J.
Oppenheimer, Captain Richards' House at Winterbourne: A Study
in Historical Archaeology. Armidale, Australia. Dept. of
Prehistory & Archaeology, University of New England, 1978.
(William III by one of his two wives, Jane Nicholas or Miss Wenner, had a daughter Sarah Jane (died 1937) who married Francis Willoughby Eliot (died 1882), son of an emigrant to New South Wales, Gilbert Eliot and his wife, Isabella Lucy Eliot (Eliot her maiden name). This is according to a website I found in 2002 which printed to more than 100 pages, the product of 40 years' research on the Eliots of Scotland, a clan with many branches (also spelled, Elliott or Elliot). The clan sent people to Canada, California, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India. It was quite usual for Britain's nineteenth century families to send emigrants to such far-flung places, although the historian finds regathering their identities and other connections a very sprawling business.
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Among the Eliot branches are several marriages of note. One Eliot woman married Lord Aukland, William Eden, the government official in London who did most in 1775-1776 to set up the Thames hulks system to be run by Duncan Campbell. Eden married Eleanor Elliot (sic) (1758-1818), daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot (1722-1777) (third baronet), a one-time treasurer of the Navy. (This Sir Gilbert also had a son, Gilbert, first Earl Minto, once a governor-general of India.)
Another key Eliot marriage was with the name Mangles of London.
The Mangles family had British East India Co. interests which they tried to translate to Australasia and partially succeeded. This family firm had sent one convict ship (if not more) to Sydney from around 1800, then their interest waned. The Mangles' however came back with a vengeance, since Ellen Mangles married the man who became the founder-promoter and first governor of Western Australia, James Stirling. Ellen had a brother, Ross Donnelly Mangles, a sometime member of the New Zealand Co.; Ross D. had a daughter Katherine who married Augustus John Elliot of the Bengal civil service - of the same Eliot clan.
Ross D. Mangles married Harriet Newcombe (mother of Katherine), daughter of George Newcombe, an official of the Audit Office at Whitehall. George Newcombe had another daughter who married to the Mangles family, Rose, who married a merchant in "the Australian trade", Charles Edward Mangles. (More appears in other files here on the Mangles family...)
Ultimately, as a transportation of convicts, the First Fleet was paid-for from the king's civil list. Here, the research historian is hard put to find when the civil list ceased paying for convict transportation, when the cost was transferred to some other government department. Richards had laid out £54,000 for the First Fleet and was still pleading for some of his money by May 1790.
Richards, who was of an evangelical religious persuasion, nevertheless became greatly interested in matters of convict management, at home or at Australia, and wanted to profit by it - so he criticized the overseer of the Thames prison hulks, Campbell.
Richards however was unpopular with a range of shipping experts. This is possibly one reason he wrote a series of letters (which read today as rather pathetic) to government officials, also to Sir Joseph Banks - letters to be seen in Historical Records of New South Wales - outlining how he was willing to establish a regular trade route to supply the new colony at Sydney.
Such ideas badly-fitted government views. Richards bankrupted, and was never heard from again; he literally disappeared from view. Oddly, his story has never been connected to what little has been written about his son, William III, settler at Winterbourne, Walcha and also an investor in the Australian whale fishery.
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Convict transportation as quasi-slavery:
With
the literature of convict transportation, notorious stories survive, as
with the ship of the the six-ship Second Fleet, in which Richards had
only one ship, the notorious, slow-sailing "floating brothel", Lady
Juliana.
See Sian Rees, The
Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary Story of the Lady Juliana and its
cargo of female convicts bound for Botany Bay. Hodder, 2001.
Three of the Second Fleet ships and half of the Third Fleet ships to early Sydney were organized by the London firm, Camden, Calvert and King (CC&K), members of the Africa Co. and perhaps the most active London-based suppliers of slaves from Africa to Jamaica around 1786-1788. By mid-1790, this firm was trying and failing to dominate trade to Britain's newly-created area for freed slaves, Sierra Leone, failing since the Board of Trade vetoed their proposals; probably, quite rightly.
Of all the Londoners shipping either slaves or convicts in the late 1780s, the best firm to examine would be CC&K, yet they remain hard to research. Nevertheless, the economics of convict shipping was the economics of transcontinental shipping.
It was no bother to CC&K to send ships full of reluctant passengers from Africa to Jamaica, or from British ports to Botany Bay. An Australian run gave them the added opportunity of finding a back door to East India trade. (One of their Third Fleet ships had bad luck at Goa.)
Historically then, with most discussions of people arriving by ship to Australia, the person least-discussed is the owner or manager of the ship in question. It is time this situation was adjusted.
BETWEEN 1785-1800, shipping convicts to a newly-opened ocean, The Pacific, and to Australia, interested only a few of London's shipping managers. They are generally referred to as merchants, but in a key sense, many of them can better be referred to as regular government contractors.
In the same period, 1785-1800, occasional allegations arose that the matter of taking the contracting for transportation had fallen into the hands of a distinct clique. If any such clique existed, it was because the favours of government flowed to relatively few men interested in opportunities provided by the Pacific - and its proximity to India and China.
Certainly,
the contractor for the First Fleet, William Richards Jnr., was given
little attention by men in government and was put out of the business
by 1792. Richards, of Southwark, has been given little attention by
historians, but it is thought that during the American War of
Independence, he had been a navy broker whose services were used
regularly.
See for example, David Syrett, Shipping
and the American War. London, 1970. (In July 1776 the Navy
Board had 416 transports of 128,427 tons, most of it chartered.) David
Syrett, 'The Victualling Board charters shipping,
1775-1782', Bulletin of Historical Research,
The Institute of
Historical Research, Vol. 68, 1995., pp. 212-224.
If so, Richards would have been known to various Naval officials.
Also well-known to Naval officials was John St Barbe, of Blackheath, who since the American War had rendered various services to government, and was otherwise known as an underwriter at Lloyd's and an investor in the South Whale Fishery.
Also well-known to government officials was Duncan Campbell (1726-1803), also resident at Blackheath, the overseer of the Thames prison hulks - who never, as some writers have thought, had any hand in any ship taking convicts to Sydney, New South Wales.
An especially well-known contractor connected with some of the supply to Sydney was Alexander Davison, a personal friend of under-secretary at the Home Office, Evan Nepean, and much a government contractor. Davison withdrew from interests in the new convict colony, to become a major supplier to the British Army.
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Less well-known to government officials, but well-known as a London alderman, and also resident at Blackheath, was George Mackenzie Macaulay, who died in 1803 as did Campbell. Macaulay was also a Lloyd's underwriting name. With regular contracts, Macaulay and his partners, Turnbull and Gregory, were also by 1786 supplying Loyalists and troops in Canada, and were thereby known to officials.
Apart from a variety of evidence which can be
adduced that various contractors were connected to convict shipping,
evidence of use of their ships arises from another source of
information - writings on the career of Sir Joseph Banks.
Harold B. Carter, Sir
Joseph Banks, 1743-1820. London,
British Museum (Natural History), 1988.
Banks' sets of interests almost ensured that he would take an interest in whichever shipping would be going newly into the Pacific Ocean, while his patterns of association, including with George III, helped ensure that nothing would interfere with his interests in ship movements. Carter especially in his biography of Banks outlines a set of information on Banks' interests in shipping which maritime historians have not yet emphasised - matters which these webpages will re-explore.
Note: Part One is continued in the next file
Alan Atkinson, `The Free-born Englishman Transported: Convict Rights as a Measure of Eighteenth Century Empire', Past and Present, a journal of historical studies, No. 144, August, 1994., pp. 88-115. (Note 72).
Alan Atkinson, `State and Empire and Convict Transportation, 1718-1812', pp. 25ff in Carl Bridge, (Ed.), New Perspectives in Australian History. London, Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1990.
Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia. A History. Vol. 1. Melbourne, OUP, 1997.
Felix Barker, (with additional material by Denise Silvester-Carr), Greenwich and Blackheath Past. London, Historical Publications, 1993. Revised 1999.
Lennard Bickel, Australia's First Lady: The Story of Elizabeth Macarthur. North Sydney, Australia, Allen and Unwin, 1991.
Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History. Melbourne, Sun Books, 1966.
George Blake, Lloyd's Register of Shipping, 1760-1966. London, Printed by Lloyd's Register of Shipping, nd? [1960?]
Frank J. A. Broeze, Mr Brooks and the Australian Trade: Imperial Business in the Nineteenth Century. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1993.
Dan Byrnes, (November, 1994), A Bitter Pill: An assessment of the significance of the meeting between Thomas Jefferson and Duncan Campbell of the British Creditors in London, 23 April, 1786. (Unpublished, updated 1996) Total pages, 79. Total words, 35,037.
Dan Byrnes, (December, 1993), "From Glasgow to Jamaica to London and Australia: the elusive Duncan Campbell (1726-1803)", Cruachan, No. 62, December, 1993. (The Journal of the Clan Campbell Society of Australia). Short article.
Dan Byrnes, "The Blackheath Connection: London Local History and the Settlement at New South Wales, 1786-1806", The Push: A Journal of Early Australian Social History, No. 28, 1990., pp. 50-98. ISSN 0155 8633. ISBN 0 646 09384 3. (Updated, 1996) Total words, 31,776. Total pages, 83.
Dan Byrnes, "Commentary" to Wilfrid Oldham, Britain's Convicts to the Colonies. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1990. ISBN 0 908120 77 X.
Dan Byrnes, "Outlooks for the English South Whale Fishery, 1782-1800, and the "great Botany Bay debate'", The Great Circle, Vol. 10, No. 2, October, 1988., pp. 79-102. ISSN 0156-8698. (On the strategies used by British whalers to open up the Pacific Ocean. Written before discovery of The Blackheath Connection in 1989 - updated, 1996). Total words, 19,319. Total pages, 38.
Dan Byrnes, ""Emptying The Hulks": Duncan Campbell and the First Three Fleets to Australia", The Push from the Bush: A Bulletin of Social History, April, 1987., pp. 2-23. ISSN 0155 8633. (Updated 1996)
J. M. R. Cameron, Ambition's Fire: The Agricultural Colonization of Pre-Convict Western Australia. Nedlands, Western Australia, University of Western Australia Press, 1981.
Charles Campbell, The Intolerable Hulks: British Shipboard Confinement, 1776-1857. Bowie, Maryland, Heritage Books, Inc., 1994.
Youssef Cassis, 'Bankers in English Society in the late eighteenth century', Economic History Review, Series 2, Vol. 38, No. 2, May 1985., pp. 210-229.
Youseff Cassis, City Bankers, 1890-1914. Cambridge University Press, 1994.*
See A. K. Cavanagh, 'The Return of the First Fleet ships', The Great Circle, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1989., pp. 1-16.
Sir Henry Clay, Lord Norman. London, Macmillan, 1957.
Graham E. Connah, M. Rowland, J. Oppenheimer, Captain Richards' House at Winterbourne: A Study in Historical Archaeology. Armidale, Australia. Dept. Of Prehistory and Archaeology, University Of New England, 1978.
Con Costello, Botany Bay: The Story of the Convicts Transported from Ireland to Australia, 1791-1853. Cork-Dublin, Mercier, 1987.
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K. M. Dallas, Trading Posts or Penal Colonies: The Commercial Significance of Cook's New Holland Route to the Pacific. Hobart, Fuller's Bookshop, 1969.
W. J. Dakin, Whalemen Adventurers in Southern Waters. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1977. [Angus and Robertson Non-Fiction Classics Edition]
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Dr Noel Dan, 'Surgeons of the First Fleet', Australian Medical Association Gazette, 15 May, 1980., pp. 16-17.
Maxine Lorraine Darnell, The Chinese Labour Trade to New South Wales. 1783-1853: An Exposition of Motives and Outcomes. University of New England, Armidale, Australia. January 1997. Ph.D. thesis.
Dawson - Sir Joseph Banks - Warren R. Dawson, (Ed.), The Banks Letters: A Calendar of the Manuscript Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks. London, Published by order of the trustees of the British Museum, 1958.
Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain's Grim Convict Armada of 1790. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1993.
Michael Flynn, Settlers and Seditionists: The People of the Convict Ship Surprize, 1794. Sydney, Angela Lind, 1994.
Alan Frost, Convicts and Empire: A Naval Question, 1776-1811. Oxford University Press, 1980.
Alan Frost, Botany Bay Mirages: Illusions of Australia's Convict Beginnings. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1994.
Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet. With appendices by Yvonne Browning, Michael Flynn, Mollie Gillen. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1989.
D. R. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders: Simeon Lord and his Contemporaries, 1788-1821. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1972.
Alexandra Hasluck, Thomas Peel of Swan River. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1965.
David T. Hawkings, Bound for Australia. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1988. (A book helpful for genealogists)
Ralph W. Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work, 17630-1861. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1949.
Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868. London, Pan Books/Collins, 1988.
Richard Humble, Captain Bligh. London, A. Baker Ltd., 1976.
A. G. E. Jones, Ships Employed in the South Seas Trade, 1775-1861 [Parts 1 and 2]: plus A Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen, transcripts of Registers of Shipping, 1787-1862 [Part 3] Canberra, Roebuck, 1986.
Katharine A. Kellock, 'London Merchants and the pre-1776 American Debts', Guildhall Studies in London History, Vol. 1, No 3, October 1974., pp. 109-149.
Jonathan King and John King, Philip Gidley King: A Biography of the Third Governor of New South Wales. North Melbourne, Australia, Methuen Australia Ltd., 1981.
Roger J. B. Knight, `The First Fleet, Its State and Preparation, 1786-1787', pp. 121-136, in John Hardy and Alan Frost, Studies from Terra Australis to Australia. Canberra, Occasional Paper No. 6, Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988.
David Kynaston, The City of London: A World of its Own, 1815-1890. Vol. 1. London, Chatto and Windus, 1994.
R. Langdon, (Ed.), American Whalers and Traders in the Pacific: A Guide to Records on Microfilm. Canberra, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1978.
Paul Lareau, The H.M.S. Bounty Genealogies. St. Paul, Minnesota, 3rd Edition, 1995 (?)
Charles Rathbone Low, History of the Royal India Navy, 1613-1863. In Vols. 1877. Reprinted by Royal Navy Museum, Portsmouth, in conjunction with London Stamp Exchange, nd. 1990?
George Mackaness, (Ed.), 'Fresh Light On Bligh: some unpublished correspondence', Australian Historical Monographs, Vol. 5, (New Series). Review Publications, Dubbo, NSW, Australia, 1976 (Reprint).
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David L. Mackay, A Place of Exile: The European Settlement of New South Wales. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1985.
David Mackay, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science and Empire, 1780-1801. Wellington, New Zealand, Victoria University Press, 1985.
Ged Martin, 'The Alternatives to Botany Bay', pp. 152-168 in Ged Martin, (Ed.), The Founding of Australia: The Argument about Australia's Origins. Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1978.
H. E. Maude, Of Islands and Men: Studies in Pacific History. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1968.
H. E. Maude, 'In Search of a Home: from the mutiny to Pitcairn Island (1789-1790)', Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 67, 1956., pp. 104-131.
Mui Hoh-cheung and Lorna M. Mui, 'William Pitt and the Enforcement of the Commutation Act, 1784-1788', English Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 300., July 1961., pp. 447-465.
Mui Hoh-Cheung and Lorna M. Mui, 'The Commutation Act and the tea trade in Britain, 1784-1793', Economic History Review, Series 2, Vol. 16, No. 2, December 1963., pp. 234-253.
Mui Hoh-cheung and Lorna M. Mui, `Smuggling and British Tea Trade before 1784', American Historical Review, Vol. LXXIV, No. 1, October 1968., pp. 41-73.
Michael Nash, Cargo for the Colony: The 1797 Wreck of the Merchant Ship Sydney Cove. Woden, ACT, Australia, Navarine Publishing Co., 2002.
N - Autobiography of George Wade Norman, Completed 3 September, 1857, Kent County Archives, Microfilm U310-F69. [Copy, Dixson Library, UNE].
Eris O'Brien, The Foundation of Australia, 1786-1800: A Study in English Criminal Practice and Penal Colonization in the Eighteenth Century. London, Sheed and Ward, 1937. Sydney, (Second edition, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1950).
Eris O'Brien, 'The Coming of the British to Australia, 1770-1821', pp. 19-31 in Australia, edited by C. Hartley-Grattan. Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1947.
Wilfrid Oldham, Britain's Convicts to the Colonies. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1990. (With a commentary by Dan Byrnes)
J. Oppenheimer, 'Captain William Richards', Chapter 5 in G. Connah, M. Rowland, J. Oppenheimer, Captain Richards' House at Winterbourne: A Study in Historical Archaeology. Armidale, Australia. Dept. of Prehistory & Archaeology, University of New England, 1978.
Lillian M. Penson, The Colonial Agents of the British West Indies: A Study in Colonial Administration mainly in the Eighteenth Century. Orig. 1924. London, Frank Cass and Co., reprint 1971.
Arthur Phillip, The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, With an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, including the journals of Lts. Shortland, Watts, Ball and Capt. Marshall. Melbourne, Facsimile edition for Georgian House, 1950.
Sian Rees, The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary Story of the Lady Juliana and its cargo of female convicts bound for Botany Bay. Hodder, 2001. (Historical account of a shipload of women convicts transported to Australia in 1789 - the ship Lady Juliana)
Rhys Richards, `The Cruise of the Kingston and the Elligood in 1800 and the Wreck Found on King Island in 1802', The Great Circle, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1991., pp. 35-53. (Note 28).
A. G. L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies: A Study of Penal Transportation from Great Britain and Ireland to other parts of the British Empire. London, Faber, 1966.
J. D. Shearer, Bound for Botany Bay: Impressions of Transportation and Convict Life. Sydney, Summit Books, 1976.
S. B. Singh, European Agency Houses in Bengal, 1783-1883. Calcutta, Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1966.
Eduoard A. Stackpole, Whales and Destiny: The Rivalry between America, France and Britain for Control of the Southern Whale Fishery, 1785-1825. University of Massachusetts Press, 1972.
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Pamela Statham, (Compiler), Dictionary of Western Australians, 1829-1914. Two Vols. Vol. 1, Early Settlers, 1829-1850. Nedlands, Western Australia, University of Western Australia, August, 1979.
Michael Stenton, (Ed.), Who's Who of British Members of Parliament: A Biographical Dictionary of the House of Commons. Peterhouse, Cambridge, UK. Harvester Press. 1976-1978. (Four Vols). Vol. 1, 1832-1885. Vol. 2, 1886-1918., Vol. 1, p. 356.
Margaret Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory: Britain in the Pacific, 1783-1823. Carlton, Victoria, Melbourne University Press, 1983.
David Syrett, Shipping and the American War. London, 1970.
David Syrett, 'The Victualling Board charters shipping, 1775-1782', Bulletin of Historical Research, The Institute of Historical Research, Vol. 68, 1995., pp. 212-224.
Michael Talbot, (Novel), To The Ends of the Earth. Glasgow, Fontana/Collins, 1988.
Philip Tardif, Notorious Strumpets and Dangerous Girls: Convict Women in Van Diemen's Land, 1803-1829. North Ryde, NSW, Angus and Robertson, 1990.
Kate Thomas, A Biographical Appraisal of John Hunter RN (1737-1821). (Hons Thesis) University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 1992.
Marjorie Tipping, Convicts Unbound: The Story of the Calcutta Convicts and their Settlement in Australia. South Yarra, Vic., Viking O'Neil, 1988.
Anthony Twist, Cambridge (town), England, a forthcoming biography of "the father of Lloyd's of London", John Julius Angerstein.(On the Internet as a PhD thesis by 2009 if not earlier - Ed)
Margaret Urquhart, Sir John St. Barbe, Bt. Of Broadlands. Southampton, Paul Cave Publications Ltd., 1983.
Robert V. J. Varman, The Bounty-Tahitian Genealogies of Pitcairn Island descendants on Norfolk Island. Central Coast, NSW, 1992
Maxine Young, 'The British administration of New South Wales, 1786-1812', pp. 23-41., in J. J. Eddy and J. R. Nethercote, From Colony to Coloniser: Studies in Australian Administrative History. Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1987.
Philip Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power: Barings, 1762-1929. London, Collins, 1988.
Read now another major article by Dan Byrnes on London-based British whalers entering the Pacific from 1786... "Outlooks for the South Whale Fishery", earlier print-published in an academic journal.
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