This file updated 27 April 2019
(Revised and updated, 1996-2000)
This article: (Total pages, 38. Total word count,
19,319 words. With 133 Endnotes as in the original).
This article was first published as Dan Byrnes, `Outlooks for England's South Whale Fishery, 1784-1800, and "the Great Botany Debate"', in The Great Circle, Vol. 10, No. 2, October, 1988., pp. 79-102. Revised and updated in 1996.
PART ONE
"The serpent we are nursing at Botany Bay..."
Francis Baring, Chairman, East India Company, 1793
JUST when the leaders of the English South Whale Fishery began to covet new Pacific whaling grounds with real hope of gaining them against the monopoly of the East India Company over Pacific waters is difficult to establish. Unhappily, a whaling historian, Jones, has written, "The comprehensive history of the southern whale and seal fisheries from Britain, from the 1770s to the 1850s still has to be written. When it is done it will be unsatisfactory as the material is so scrappy and scattered." (Note 1)
The long-term lack of a comprehensive treatment of the South Fishery is a mysterious deficit in the historical imagination of the seafaring people of island England. Many early voyagings received detailed treatment and information on the English discovery of Pacific Islands was compiled by 1803. And, in 1793, a chairman of the East India Company remarked acidly on "The serpent we are nursing at Botany Bay". Which serpent, indeed, was that? (Note 1a)
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The first three convict "fleets" despatched to Australia represented a major invasion of the Pacific and a significant commercial investment made possible only by ship insurance. (Note 3) Some of the merchants involved in the earliest convoys continued their activity to Botany Bay to 1800. This has been camouflaged, however, as historians have emphasised the First Fleet and relegated the two following convoys to the category of aftermath. Before the commercial pattern of activity can be discussed, the despatch of the first three fleets needs to be studied as a whole. (Note 4)
This government-backed maritime invasion establishing a convict colony was a far more co-ordinated and therefore stronger gesture than any made in the Pacific by American or French shipping. But given the particular men involved, it is misleading to speak in any watertight way of "East India merchants", "whalers" or "convict contractors". (Note 5) The commercial invasion of the Pacific was undertaken by men with many roles in London's establishment; these included roles in finance, insurance, import and commodity rehandling and maritime speculation.
As Jones indicates, "Most of the (South) owners regarded the South Sea trade as just one part of their business. Their main occupations were connected with the shipping trades, and they included sail makers, biscuit bakers, ship-builders, lightermen, ship owners, ship masters, coopers, anchor smiths, chain block, pump and rope makers, ship chandlers and merchants." (Note 6)
In respect of what historian Alan Atkinson calls "the great Botany Bay debate", (Note 7) some of the merchants under consideration here also exercised roles such as aldermen of London, political lobbyists, administrators of Lloyd's of London, convict contractors to New South Wales and, somewhat disloyally, to the East India Company - roles approaching those of renegade Company ship's husbands. (A husband being a merchant who had sent several ships for Company-regulated trading voyages, operating for the shipowner(s).) William Curtis is reputed to have been a banker to Pitt's government. George M. Macaulay was a sheriff of London by 1790. Some of the weight of the "great Botany Bay debate" concerning the mix of motives for the August 1786 Cabinet decision to settle convicts at Sydney should in future embody full biographical information on these few men, part of London's establishment then, and take account of their sometimes confusing use of various roles.
Jones has estimated that the Fishery in its life employed 1,500 ships. The trade reached its peak in 1820-1822. The greatest tonnage employed by 300, the smallest vessels being 75-95 tons; more commonly, 100 tons. Most ships over 500 tons were merely transients in the trade. Between 800-1,600 ships' masters were involved. Some masters became owners.
"Socially the South Seas trade was near the bottom of the hierarchy, and the seal fishery was lower still". Ships entered and left the trade rapidly. "Ships in three or more successive lists were no more than 8 per cent of the total". The owners with most stamina in the trade were Daniel Bennett and Samuel Enderby, (Note 8) the latter being the political promoter of whaling; the former the work-a-day, low profile and, in Jones' opinion, more successful whaler. The others, he says, in order of importance, were Hills and Co., Curling, Jarvis, Birnie, Roach, Champion, Lyall, Minburn, Wilson and Co., Rowe and Co., Lewellyn, Thomas Sturge, Brooke and Young. "There were 20 other owners who kept ships continuously employed for ten years or more. It was such a constantly changing trade that the average length of continuous employment was little more than six years." (Note 9) By this assessment, the whalers exploiting Australasian waters had remained the most powerful of their number.
Whalers were not interested only in whaling or sealing. Some East India Company men involved in Pacific whaling or sealing are best regarded as Company renegades, men who, probably due to their connections with government ministers, could see that whether the Company approved or not, changes were to be made and commercial horizons would be expanded. The Pacific appealed to sections of London's "financial imagination"; writings were being scrawled by opportunity itself on the walls. Even the men of the London Missionary Society from 1795 perceived commercial opportunities, and acted on them, as the later career of the Pacific timber-getter William Wilson indicates. (Note 10)
In the London shipping world, distinctions between merchant, shipowner, insurance underwriter, alderman or MP, broker, persistent lobbyist of government on matters which might have affected future legislation, or could even have affected international relations, were only shadowy and blurry. This is especially so with the history of the marine insurance institution, Lloyd's of London, which had intelligence-gathering capabilities appreciated by Evan Nepean, an under-secretary at the Home Office and later at the Admiralty. Lloyd's men routinely conveyed maritime information of use to government. (Note 9)
There were traditions of the East India Company, itself formed of alliances between various recognised interest groups, not shared by other groups of ship men. Government ministers were careless about such distinctions being made regarding the commercial world, so enhancing the entrepreneurial flamboyance already being allowed by Pitt's government, which was, where convenient, prepared to covertly or overtly back shipping men. This was noticeable in relations between Pitt's government and the principals of the South Whale Fishery, especially in the handling of the "Nootka crisis". (Note 10)
More detailed information on the Pacific as it came to hand from 1786 enabled London ship men to make further decisions on sending out more ships for exploratory or profit-taking purposes. Their decisions on despatching ships made for a "pulse rate" in Pacific history. Whatever type of shipping is considered, there is currently no published list providing complete information on when ships sailing to early European Australia actually left England. Once the dates are found and grouped, the decision-making of merchants becomes more evident. A sensible reworking of lists by Bateson and Cumpston, linking them to other information, allows patterns to become discernible, and merchant names to stabilise amid the flux of events. (Note 11)
The South whalers with 16 ships patrolling chiefly the Brazils in 1784, as listed on the Samuel Enderby Book, were Samuel Enderby and Sons, Calvert and Co., St Barbe and Co., Hammett and Co., T. Newby, T. Macy and Gibson and Co. On the Mediterranean were Meader and Co. (Note 12) In expanding the range of their activities, from 1785-1786 the whalers enjoyed assistance in Parliament, especially from Charles Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury. (Note 13) From then they mounted an attack on the monopoly of the East India Company, using four key areas as levers against the company. In chronological order these were: Nootka Sound and northwest America, from 1785-1786; (Note 14) the Cape of Good Hope and the shipping to Botany Bay; (Note 15) Cape Horn from 1788; (Note 16) and Botany Bay again from late 1790, with the Third Fleet. (Note 17) In the first area the London-based merchants involved were J. H. Cox, Meares, James Strange, Etches, William Curtis, George. M. Macaulay and, later, the Bristol whaler, Sydenham Teast. Macaulay, Curtis, the Enderbys, the Champions, Anthony Calvert and James Mather were concerned. The Cape Horn approach was pioneered by the Enderbys who were also involved, together with Calvert and St Barbe, in the Botany Bay region from 1790. These strategies which involved men and ships in a pattern of activity broadly agreed on by historians chronologically, are discussed below.
Nootka Sound (Note 18)
1785: On 17 January, 1789: As Enderbys wrote to George Chalmers; "His Lordship [Lord Hawkesbury] first took the Fishery under his Protection in 1785". (Note 19) Enderbys in 1789 wished to fish the Straits of Sunda and about Java, but dared not due to the East India Company. Etches on 14 March wrote to Sir Joseph Banks on plans by the King George Sound Company to promote trade to the northwest coast. Etches was aware whales were also there.
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Others involved in this north-western American sector were Dixon, Meares, Tipping, Strange, Portlock, Macaulay, Curtis and Sydenham Teast. Captain James Hanna was employed by John Henry Cox, a Company interloper from the China coast who pioneered the trans-Pacific trip for the fur trade to North America. From a Company viewpoint, Cox's backers were essentially "illegal". Eventually, the British adventurers came into conflict with Spain, necessitating writing of the Nootka Convention, 20-21 January, 1791. When the Spanish captured the whalers Sappho and Elizabeth and Margaret the London merchants became "bearers of a national grievance". The Board of Trade desired to encourage the whalers to become principal instruments for government policy on trade expansion in the northern Pacific. (Note 21)
Past the Cape of Good Hope
During January-February 1786, Enderbys, St Barbe and Champion presented to government a novel proposal that they send ships east of the Cape of Good Hope. Enderby and Alexander Champion were examined on the question at Whitehall. A "Whalefishery Bill" assisted by George Rose (of the Treasury) came up for discussion in April. (Note 22) And for example, not long after Phillip had landed convicts on 26 January, 1788 at Sydney, Alderman George M. Macaulay had advertised his interests to northwest America in England. (Note 23)
Botany Bay - the First Fleet: from early 1787
Two London aldermen, Macaulay and William Curtis, both seeking Nootka Sound furs, had by April 1787 joined in a deal devoted to exploration of the Pacific.(Note 24) In the First Fleet they sent Curtis' ship Lady Penrhyn, Captain W. C. Sever, with Lieutenant Watts (one of Cook's men) aboard with secret orders. (Note 25) Whaler James Mather possibly in conjunction with Champions, sent Prince of Wales. (Note 26) By 17 January, 1789, Enderbys wanted an unlimited right of fishing in all seas, and noted, "the settlements of New Holland would be often visited as there are many whales in those seas". (Note 27) Captains to China, they reported, had noted many whales about the Straits of Sunda and Java. (
Note 28) When in April, 1789 news arrived back from the First Fleet ships in Botany Bay, Enderbys shortly contacted Chalmers again.(Note 29)
Cape Horn
While readying their 1788 Pacific pioneer whaler Emilia, under Captain James Shields, Enderbys inquired of Sir Joseph Banks on 26 August, 1788, asking if Juan Fernandez was settled? Was there any risk of a ship being detained by the Spanish? Were any sperm whales about Cape Horn? Were any charts available? Did Sir Joseph desire anything about the African Coast? (Note 30) Just after Enderbys had fitted up Emilia, they wrote to Chalmers again that the ship would seek whales on the Spanish Coast of west South America:
"On the success of our ship depends the Establishment of the Fishery in the South Pacific Ocean, as many owners have declared they shall wait till they hear whether our ship is likely to succeed there, if she is successful, a large Branch of the Fishery will be carried on in those seas..."
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By 1789 Enderbys had further researched the waters by Peru with Emilia, followed for them by Friendship, Captain Melville, who was in 1791 sent out with the Third Fleet in Britannia. That is, Melville by 1791 had become a valuable man, the one whaling captain knowing most of the new whaling opportunities in the Pacific, both by Peru and near Sydney. During April, 1789 the whalers petitioned for further extensions of latitude about Cape Horn, and to be relieved of the expense of taking licences from the South Sea Company; but they were told, this was not convenient at present. (Note 31) (Note 32)
On 9 March, 1790, (Note 33) Enderbys reported the arrival back of the Emilia with a full cargo of oil and they again complained to Pitt that certain waters were denied their ships. (Note 34) On 30 August, 1790, Samuel Enderby Jnr. wrote personally to Pitt on fishery progress and on expanding the market for oil, asking for the enlargement of fishing areas and the removal of restrictions imposed by the East India and the South Sea companies. Shortly afterwards he also wrote to Pitt suggesting that whalers carry convicts and stores to Botany Bay, the ships thence to go whaling off South America.
The success of the Botany Bay settlement further fired the whaler imagination concerning the Pacific generally and northwest America especially. On 13 October, 1790, St Barbe suggested whalers take out convicts. (Note 35) Enderbys sent his ideas to Evan Nepean. The recent (October, 1790) signing of the Nootka Convention, expected to give British whalers more freedom in waters policed by Spain, had perhaps helped inspire St Barbe. Meanwhile, (Note 36) Alderman William Curtis MP in his maiden speech applauded the convention and noted that more ships were preparing for the Southern Fishery than on any other occasion. Curtis followed his remarks up by again applying, with Dundas' help, to send a ship to Nootka Sound. (Note 37) The Enderby/St Barbe suggestion was acted on with the mounting of the Third Fleet by the brutal Second Fleet contractor, Anthony Calvert. (Note 38) By 28 October, 1790, with the success of the Nootka Convention, British ships were allowed wider access to the fur trade and whaling on the Spanish American coasts.
Samuel Enderby Snr. on 25 November, 1790, wrote to Pitt expressing pleasure with the Nootka Convention and that, despite the likelihood of war with Spain, he was sending four ships into the Pacific that year. He referred to four vessels taken up to carry convicts in the Third Fleet. After delivering their convicts, five Third Fleet whalers went to work from Sydney. (Note 39) Dakin quotes one former whaling captain reporting that he saw more whales there in one day than off the coast of Brazil in six years. So by early 1791, the whalers had energetically provoked the East India Company on three fronts, Cape Horn, northwest America, and Botany Bay via Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope. From 20 January, 1791, the Board of Trade investigated whaling and the northwest American fur trade. The strategic need for whaling bases had shifted to the Pacific Coast of South America, and Vancouver's instructions later required him to search for such sites on his return to England, and to try and locate the mythical Isla Grande as well. The strategic shift appears to have resulted in a later downgrading of the profile of whaling opportunities about Sydney.
As the Third Fleet ships, including five whalers each with Company licences to fish about Peru, were preparing to embark over 1,800 convicts, on 20 January, 1791, Enderbys, St Barbe and Champion attended a meeting of the Committee for Trade and Plantations to seek explanation of their rights under the convention. (Note 40) They wanted premiums extended also to any vessels carrying convicts to New South Wales: the committee wanted technical information on whale oil use for policy development. (Note 41)
The whaler Astrea was then off the Patagonian coast, following up Emilia's voyage, but there was still uncertainty about the attitude of the Spanish. (Note 42) In January 1791, too, the Bristol whaler and fur trader, Quaker Sydenham Teast, sought information from the Board of Trade on the rights and privileges of his ships on the Pacific American coast. He asked where could they fish, where refit and refresh, if they could land to kill seals, whether they could trade to those coasts and to Nootka Sound?
Botany Bay: The Third Fleet (Note 43)
In 1791, according to Jones, London sent 62 vessels into the Fishery, Liverpool sent 2, Bristol 5, Hull 2, and Yarmouth 1. (Note 44) The Americans also perceived the value of Pacific whales and began a fifty-year period of whaling, finally using the largest whaling fleet the world have ever known. As convicts were bundled into the Third Fleet ships, around 10 February, 1791, the Board of Trade instructed England's Attorney-General and Solicitor-General to scrutinise the charters of the East India Company, the South Seas Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, and to report their opinion as to whether the whalers' interest might be so excluded therefrom. There followed in February an intense battle of wills between Pitt's ministry and the Court of Directors of the East India Company. The Company effectively lost the battle. (Note 45)
After considerable debate, on 7 March, 1791, Company committees met with Pitt present and a suggestion was raised that the whalers be allowed to trade under the same restrictions as Eastern "country traders". (Note 46) The Company found the proposition noxious. There was a 10 March decision on the use of Company facilities at Canton and the ladings of tea to be permitted. More meetings were held. Lushington (Note 47) replied for the Company. Finally the Company's Secret Court of Directors was confronted by Pitt's "inner cabinet". Dundas felt the Company charter did not assist the development of Britain's position in the Indian Ocean and Further Asia. Hawkesbury, Pitt and Grenville gave their support for the whalers.
On 17 March, 1791, (Note 48) the Secretary to the Company, Morton, wrote to George Rose at the Treasury on the matter of 400 more convicts to be sent to New South Wales. Rose asked the Company if there was any objection to a transport, Macaulay's Pitt, taking cotton home from Bombay. The Company acceded to the matter in the terms of letters of 30 September and 13 October, 1790, in what was partly a new initiative by St Barbe. In early March 1791, just after the Third Fleet had departed, St Barbe and Macaulay contracted to carry convicts on the Pitt, Captain Manning. The timing of the move had more impact for the whalers' battle with the Company than government's plans for additions to the Sydney convict colony. The Pitt carried Major Grose of the New South Wales Corps, and a Macaulay relative, Theed, presumably trading, and was instrumental in encouraging country trade shipping about India to service the Botany Bay colony. (Note 49)
By April 1791, a new Bill for opening a trade through the South Seas to China was being framed. (Note 50) The Company remained adamant that India-registered ships should not be permitted to trade between Asia and the west coast of America and the adjacent islands. It appears the Company, more worried about this trade than any developments in Australasian waters, was trading off lesser evils. By then, interloper ships were allowed, by the Whalers Bill of 1791, to utilise the Company banking facilities at Canton. The directors of the Company were therefore obliged to assist the development of a new, independent traffic in their own preserve, freelancers coming into Canton with mixed cargoes and selling to the Hoong merchants. The directors of the Company recognised the overwhelming political support engaged by the fishery and conceded, though they retained their control of the China Trade at Canton. The stipulations generally in the Bill were too broad; Pitt did not push for its passage; but a few years later his patience was rewarded by the success of a Bill allowing whalers to fish without restriction in Australian waters. One suspects that the East India Company feared that South whalers would trade promiscuously with American ships, if not at Asian ports, then on the high seas, or on Pacific islands. Here, it should be noted that from 1788, substantial US merchants were beginning to trade with China and India, especially Robert Morris, "the financier of the American Revolution". (NB: Matters here have been followed up in my article, A Bitter Pill).
* * *
In April, 1791 Vancouver was sent to Nootka Sound to restore the English trading post there, dismantled by the Spanish, and to further survey the Sandwich Islands. (Note 51) On 7 April, 1791, Pitt summoned Grenville and Dundas plus Hawkesbury to confer in private with the East India Company about whaling. In Harlow's words, "a fantastic situation" now developed. The Company charter was being broached after whalers took convicts to Sydney! Although whaling ships were frequently chartered by the government to transport convicts to Port Jackson, Australasia was strictly speaking outside their permitted fishery limits. However, American whalers and traders could sail into Sydney by 1801-1803. Enderby and Champion, allegedly supported by Governor King in New South Wales, as well as the Board of Trade, led "fresh attacks" on the Company, but it is still not clear if Governor King was partisan for the whalers, or, if he was a partisan, that he was an effective one? It is unnecessary, now, to be surprised, as Harlow was, that the Company charter was not being respected by government, whalers, or certain London merchants. (Note 52) On 21 September, 1791, the Company directors declined Macaulay's Pitt concerning a lading home of tea from China though she had been there before, chartered to them. An objection was that the ship was on the high seas at the time, and so could not be surveyed. (Note 53)
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During October, 1791 Lieutenant Governor King on Norfolk Island wrote to the Marquis of Buckingham concerning "a circumstance adding to consequences of this settlement", the whale fishery. King stated that HMS Gorgon had passed a school of 50 Whales, and that advantages would result from the industry. (Note 54) At Sydney on 22 November, 1791, Captain Thomas Melville of the Third Fleet Enderby whaler Britannia wrote to his employers. He had seen sperm whales off Van Diemen's Land and Sydney, and saw good prospects for establishing a fishery about eastern Australia. Melville had been "mortified" to find that governor Phillip had wanted to buy the Britannia. After seeing Phillip privately, and telling him things that Phillip did not know, Melville found Phillip willing to do everything possible to despatch Britannia to the fishery. Captain Philip Gidley King had used "all his interest in the business". Later, Phillip, who had wanted Britannia to go for stores, chartered the Third Fleet ship Atlantic for a "shopping trip" to Calcutta for stores. Melville went out whaling in company with William and Ann, Captain Eber Bunker who, on his next voyage, was to look at New Zealand flax for Captain King, part of an experimental effort that failed. (Note 55)
Steven has it that Britannia had left a sealing party at Dusky Bay in 1791, and went back for them in 1792 to find the gang had only 4,500 skins. This Britannia should not be confused with Raven's Britannia, also sealing to Dusky Bay. The Third Fleet ships Matilda and Mary Ann had meanwhile gone south of Sydney in search of seals; Matilda later being wrecked off Tahiti. In March 1792 (Note 56) Phillip at Sydney wrote to Nepean about Melville's Britannia trying the New South Wales coast for three months before trying Peru, and added his correctly based fears that the fur trade on the northwest coast of America would attract whalers away from the New South Wales Coast. Phillip had correctly discerned the decreasing emphasis the whalers were placing on Australasian waters by then.
* * *
In London on 21 December, 1791 the London merchants Neave and Aislabie contacted George Rose at the Treasury about William Curling, an owner and a South Sea husband, about stores to go on a ship to Sydney in about a month. (Note 57) Nepean's friend Alexander Davison was also to ship goods by Britannia, Captain William Raven, that ship then being on the Thames. Raven from 1784 had sailed about Africa, sealing or whaling for Hall and Company.
Curling's involvement is unclear, but St Barbe did arrange for Raven to leave Falmouth by 15 February, 1792, to arrive with Britannia at Sydney in July, 1792. Raven part-owned the ship with St Barbe, and had a three-year fishing licence from the East India Company. According to the 1793 Navy Office Accounts, Raven and St Barbe had a freight contract dated 15 December, 1791, only months after St Barbe and Macaulay had sent out Pitt. Raven, a likeable and competent man by all accounts, had as his task the opening of sealing grounds. He left a gang of sealers at Dusky Bay and otherwise made four voyages of service for the officers of the New South Wales Corps, for which he was repaid thousands of pounds in Paymaster's Bills. His ship was at times insured by the New South Wales Corps officers through their London army agents, Cox, Cox Greenwood and Company. (Note 58) Given this commercial nicety, it is difficult not to see St Barbe's despatch of Raven as a gesture, premeditated in London, of potential commercial utility to Major Grose and the officers of the New South Wales Corps, but, perhaps surprisingly, examination of the evidence gives little latitude to any such suspicions. No information has yet been produced, for example, indicating that Cox, Cox and Greenwood ever acted as middlemen in any unusual way between London merchants and military men in New South Wales, or between agents of either camp.
At a meeting of the Committee for Trade with Pitt present, on 20 April, 1792, Lord Hawkesbury told Enderby and St Barbe that an official Pacific survey would be made. This resulted in Lieutenant Colnett in November 1792 going out for Enderby in HMS Rattler. The voyage was a commercial failure, though Colnett did find a refuge for English whalers at the Galapagos Islands. (Note 59) Whaler interest in Botany Bay thus waned somewhat as merchants became more familiar with the wider opportunities and risks in the Pacific. On 2 August, 1792, (Note 60) a report for a Committee of the South Whalers was written by John St Barbe, who had kept up his interest in Sydney by sending out freight as he explored East India trade more carefully, apparently, than he explored whaling. His several involvements included victualling the William, Captain Folger, which brought out Samuel Marsden and other ventures with the Surprize and the Indispensable. (Note 61)
Pacific exploitation continued. By October, 1792 (Note 64) Raven's Britannia was leaving for Cape Town under a Sydney charter after leaving men sealing at Dusky Bay, and by late 1792 the Chesterfield, Southern whaler, Captain Matthew Bowles Alt, had been voyaging by the Cape of Good Hope, Kergeluen, and Norfolk Island. In 1793, twenty whalers returned to England from the Pacific fishery. Four had been off the New South Wales coast and were specifically listed thus.
Because, as Jones suggests, information is scattered, the record to 1800 can be formed only from incidental information. According to Jones, in 1796 the average size of vessels in the whaler fishery was 296 tons. (Note 63) London sent 55 vessels into the fishery, Cork 1, Bristol 3, Hull 1. Indicating the attractions of whaling in the Pacific, in January 1796, Rev. Thomas Haweis of the London Missionary Society even inquired concerning the outfit of Sally for the fishery. The London Missionary Society ship Duff arrived at Tahiti on 5 March, 1797. Within two years some of the missionaries had become so unpopular with the Tahitians that they left the island and repaired to Sydney, where some of them were employed by merchant Robert Campbell. (Note 64)
In 1797 the whalers presented another petition for the removal of restrictions preventing them fishing further north than the Equator and further east than 51 degrees east longitude, and hoped that the East India Company would "not be averse to removing the restrictions". (Note 65)
Dakin has noted that the years 1793-1800 were lean for the whalers, although Enderbys did not give up hope of the Australian and nearby whaling. Jones found from Lloyd's Lists that the South whalers during the 1780s were exploiting Brazil, Trinidad, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and, after the establishment of Botany Bay, Norfolk Island. By the 1790s they were exploiting Saldanha Bay, Walvis Bay, South Georgia, Kergeluen, Amsterdam Island, Patagonia, Cape Horn, Pacific Ocean, Peru and Botany Bay. (Note 66) These Lloyd's Lists indicate regular exploitation of the kind requiring ship insurance, a requirement based on decision-making processes based on receipt of the information prompting the whalers to deploy ships. Whaler decisions produced for the Pacific a maritime "pulse rate" that in respect of "the Botany Bay debate" has been reported far too incidentally.
The whalers were always constrained in their planning to using a lead time of 12-18 months. Among the factors they balanced were capital, the proceeds of previous voyages, the skills of men and captains, their political success, the attitude of the East India Company, limited knowledge on whaling migration patterns, bounties and subsidies available, refreshment bases for ships at sea and, finally, conflict with Spain that affected both sealing and whaling, plus the implications of new information coming to hand.
In 1797 on 14 November - their memorials have an air of recurrent deja vu - Enderbys wrote to Chalmers, noting that sperm whales abounded in the Pacific. (Note 67) Governor King confidentially had said that government was needing a ship to carry female convicts to New South Wales. Enderbys wished to obtain the contract and then give the New South Wales fishery a fair trial or, at least, refresh at Sydney before making for the coast of Peru. In December the whalers petitioned the Committee for Trade asking for a further removal of restrictions. A copy of their petition was ordered to be sent to William Ramsay, chairman of the East India Company, which finally acquiesced to such suggestions by late 1801.
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The passage of Act 38 Geo III cap. 57 permitted British whalers to exploit fully Australian waters; late in 1800 they were permitted to carry goods to Sydney under bond for sale to settlers. This last, it has been said, destroyed the East India Company's monopoly over carriage and sale of goods to the settlement, a monopoly that had been granted together with one for the transportation of convicts by government in 1792. (Note 68) Such carrying of goods however had been quietly, if erratically, going on for some time, although the whalers were much less inclined to the lucrative kind of retailing traditionally engaged in by East India captains.
Over mid-to-late 1797 the response of the whalers to the legislation was to send off to the Pacific their largest contingent since the Third Fleet, comprised of Sally, Bligh, Cornwall, Swain, Pomona, Clark, Diana, Lock, Britannia and Nautilus, ships that made Sydney "lively" as they arrived. These ships all sailed in line with available information on the most convenient season for whalers in the fishery. (Note 69)
By 1799 whalers were working around the Pacific Fishery, off New Zealand, past Tahiti, about the Philippines, where they caused conflict with the Spanish, and in southeast Asian waters generally. During 1799, two Spanish ships bound with cargo for Guayaquil from Lima were taken as prizes by the whalers Cornwall and Kingston and sold in New South Wales. (Note 70) In 1799 the ambitious Enderbys suggested to Pitt that an expedition against Peru and Chile could be based at Sydney and could use convicts for a landing force. Although the whalers had informed the government that fifteen whalers had been captured by the Spaniards off the Pacific coast of South America, the expeditionary plan came to nothing. (Note 71)
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PART TWO
By mid-1789 then the whalers had successfully been moving into the Pacific from both east and west, from the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. The South merchants were interested also in sealing. In time, in London, the two activities became specialisations and both sealing and whaling were conducted in Australasian waters by London and Australian-based shipmen, the Londoners by 1810 remaining resentful about the Sydney-based profits. (Note 72)
There is a long-established notion that in creating a convict colony at Sydney, Britain "atoned" (the word was Matra's) for the loss of her North American colonies. This notion suits the history of the fishery, which employed Loyalists, better than it suits the history of any other British enterprise of the time, that could be mentioned in the context of "the Botany Bay debate".
Credit for the original establishment of the Southern Whale Fishery goes to Francis Rotch, who in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1775 helped organise a whale fleet to fish about the Falkland Islands. Fleet news was to be sent to George Hayley of London, who preceded Samuel Enderby Senior as prime mover of the English South Fishery, and before his death (the date of which is disputed) was president of the insurance market becoming known as Lloyd's of London. (Note 73) By 1775 the Nantucket whalers dealt more substantially for the sale of their oil and candles with Englishmen - notably Hayley, Champions, Dickason - than they did with mainland Americans. (Note 74) The Nantucketeers remained Loyalists and their emigration after the American Revolution was partly motivated by a sense of the injustice dealt the English when the Americans repudiated their debts to English merchants who had invested in the American colonies. (Note 75) However, when the Nantucketeers sought to secure their livelihood after the beginning of the Revolution, they were moved more by a concern for the integrity of their industry and distrust of the Americans than any love for the English. After Rotch's experimental fleet failed, due to the Revolution, he moved to London and was employed by Champion and Hayley. After Hayley's death, Rotch became chief clerk for the share of the partnership managed by Hayley's widow, Mary, the sister of the London radical alderman, John Wilkes.
When peace returned, Samuel Enderby noted the debilitated condition of the Nantucket-based fishery and initiated the English Fishery, though he was forced to use British ships manned by Nantucketeers. This gave his ships the protection of the British Navy; he solved his manpower problems by deciding to recruit Nantucketeers individually with the promises of shares in catches. Lord Sydney might have thought it innocuous when, after the signing of the treaty with the new United States of America, the English placed an import duty of £18/3/- on American sperm oil. News of the imposition of this duty was a considerable blow to Nantucket Island. (Note 76) Samuel Enderby Jnr. shortly sailed for America to gain information and recruit Nantucket whalers. The Enderby's divide-and-rule employment policy destroyed Rotch, who wanted to preserve entire families in a transplanted colony of whalers.
The English fishery benefited from the energy of Alexander and Benjamin Champion, young men who, like Enderby Jnr., had joined with their father in a growing industry. They were joined by Thomas Dickason and St Barbe, recently a naval lieutenant, and reputedly an enterprising, adventurous merchant. Other merchants, more speculators than whalers, joined more confidently with them as time brought better results.
Enderbys by 1786 employed 30 Nantucket whalers. Essentially an internationalist, Rotch was aware of the value of whale oil and concerned about the integrity of the industry's skill base, as much as the profitability and the security of the ports from which the fishery might work. He was mistaken, however, in believing that the English would be as concerned for the integrity of the industry as he was. In London in July, 1785 to argue his case, Rotch was also trying to benefit the Nantucket families emigrating to Nova Scotia, where Governor Parr had befriended them.
When he offered government the whaling expertise of Nantucket, to his dismay, Rotch found his offer refused. In October, 1785, he sailed the west coast of England seeking a port haven for his "colony" of whaling people. On his return to London he laid proposals before the Privy Council. At this, according to Stackpole, there began a "duel of wits" between Rotch and Jenkinson at the Board of Trade. Rotch lost, and later took his people to Dunkirk, France.
The American politician, John Adams, in London during 1785 remarked to prime minister William Pitt, "We are all surprised, Mr Pitt, that you prefer darkness and consequent robberies, burglaries and murders in the streets to the receiving, as a remittance, our sperm oil". (Note 77) Refusing to take a bait, Pitt replied that Britain expected to be expanding its own fishery and therefore expected also to become self-sufficient in whale products. If Pitt felt any qualms about Adams' reference to England's lawlessness amid darkened streets, with the associated implication of a problem with "the state of crime", and any resulting glutting of the prisons with transportable convicts, he evidently did not betray them.
Problems were taken up by the Board of Trade, which until August, 1786 had the function of merely advising the Privy Council. After then the Board advised Pitt directly, and, still under Jenkinson, consequently exercised more power. This was to be crucial especially in respect of British policy toward the expansion of the industry, and was also to have effect on the maritime task of transporting felons to New South Wales. (Note 78)
During a personal interview in November, 1785, Rotch laid another memorial before Pitt. Pitt referred this to the Board of Trade, then also perusing a Memorial from Enderbys, Champions and St Barbe on their industry. In May, 1786, following moves earlier in 1786, Pitt, Lord Hawkesbury, Lord Mulgrave and Sir Joseph Yorke formed a committee to take more evidence from leading whalers. (Note 79)
Enderbys and others had argued in January, 1786 that they were receiving competition from the Nova Scotians and still regarded their county of 40/- per tun as the basis of the incentive for whalers to continue to be recruited individually. The Commissioners of the Customs, reviewing the position in May, 1786, took an opposed view that whaling should have been able to stand by itself without subsidy and recommended discontinuance of the bounty.
The whalers by that time had become more adventurous, Enderbys proposing they send their ships around the Cape of Good Hope and awaiting Dundas' opinion on the proposal. (Note 81) Enderbys recognised that the depressed state of Nantucket made it no threat, but regarded the migration of the Rotch colony to Dunkirk as a distinct threat. By early 1786, Jenkinson had accepted the whalers' view and the Commissioners of the Customs and thereafter always strove to find a middle course. (Note 82)
Lord Sydney in April, 1786 informed the disappointed Governor Parr of Nova Scotia that Nantucket captains would in future be recruited individually. To Parr and his friends this meant the Enderby-dominated fishery had won the fray. Jenkinson in early 1786 was appointed President of a not-yet-reconstructed Board of Trade and created Lord Hawkesbury. In reporting for the Board of Trade on the various proposals of the whalers in May, 1786, to Pitt, Carmarthen, the Earl of Denbigh, Lord Amherst, the Earl of Cartown, Lord Howe, Lord Sydney and Henry Dundas, he stuck to his course of favouring equally the parts of the Lords Commissioners of Customs and the South Whalers. The Privy Council, whose members obviously had acquaintance with England's "convict problem", determined to allow the whalers around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, so opening parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans to their ships, waters hitherto the province only of the East India Company and the South Sea Company.
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The South Sea Company soon yielded to political pressure and began issuing licences to whalers, since it had no real or physical assets, resources, or trade lines to protect. The East India Company feared "clandestine trading", especially at Canton, but also yielded ground. The result has been described as "a great victory for Jenkinson and the Board of Trade - a breakthrough in the monopoly of the Honourable John Company ... a scope of triumph not to be realised for several years to come". An Act, the first of many whittling away the power of the Company over various waters, was passed in June, 1786. (Note 83)
Whether it was an important "coincidence" or not for the history of a colony at New South Wales, with this "victory" over the East India Company, in August, 1786, in the same month that the decision was made to settle Botany Bay with convicts, the restructured Board of Trade, so apparently willing to restrict the Company and give room to whalers, consisted of Pitt, Grenville, Dundas, Lord Sydney, the Marquis of Carmarthen, and Lord Hawkesbury. (Note 84) Lord Sydney - familiar with issues on transportable convicts since 1776, when in opposition he had attacked hulks legislation that he later had to put into effect - had been familiar with whaling issues since 1783, when he orchestrated the Treaty of Paris with the victorious Americans.
By late 1791, with Third Fleet ships working, the whalers had assessed or begun to assess Pacific waters east of Cape of Good Hope, on the American west coat from Cape Horn, north to Nootka Sound, Australasian waters including those around Norfolk Island, and waters between Sydney and Canton. (Note 85) Steven's observation concerning the unparalleled "indulgence" of the South Whale Fishery by Pitt's government seems correct, but by itself it suggests nothing specific concerning moves the whalers made to have their ships carry convicts out to New South Wales. (Note 86) What is clear is that, apart from Enderbys and their whaler associates, two men using a variety of roles and contacts acted in harmony with the government's desire to resume transportation, and the whalers' desires to expand into the Pacific. (Note 87) They were Anthony Calvert and George M. Macaulay. (Note 88)
Thus, it appears also that the whalers until late 1791 may have thought of using Sydney as a refreshment base for ships going to or coming from the Peruvian coast, but later abandoned the idea for application on a wide scale. Probably, the 1793 modifications to the Company charter gave them further relief and an ability to cruise more freely in search of whales, so they modified their tactics in respect of Botany Bay and the possibility of conflict with Spain. (Note 89)
Steven has written not quite correctly, (Note 90) "The majority of ships from Britain that entered Port Jackson before 1800 at least, were whalers." It is for one thing, chimerical to call Anthony Calvert a whaler only, as he had up to nine ships with the Second and Third Fleets to Botany Bay in his own account, his interest being eastern trade, especially in Bombay cotton.
Promoting the view that the whalers were influential in business to New South Wales, there is the oft-quoted view of George Enderby in 1875, writing to his grand-children, saying, although not quite correctly, "You will I think on consideration be of opinion that unless there had been whaling ships to carry out the first convicts to Sydney, that the Government would have been obliged to select some nearer spot for the convicts". But George Enderby had not understood all that had happened with the establishment and maintenance of the convict colony. Cabinet's decision in August, 1786 for a convict colony at Sydney remains a riddle. There is the possibility that unless forced by London's political vehemence in 1786, the government due to lack of a convict dumping ground may simply have abandoned the idea of resuming transportation and concentrated on expanding the hulks system for more desperate prisoners.
* * *
Between 1782 and 1787-1788, when the convict service was resurrected from virtually nothing and directed to Australia, linkage points with a variety of institutions and bodies had to be newly created by the Home Office. In roughly chronological order, the bodies affected were the Home Office, the African Company, and, via Anthony Calvert's activities, the Southern Whale Fishery, along with the hulks and gaols administration generally in respect of the delivery of convicts to ships masters, the judiciary, which, after the enactment of Act 24 Geo. III cap. 56, could then more properly indicate a destination for a convict sentenced to transportation; Parliament, as with Beauchamp's Committee; Cabinet, the Treasury, the Navy Board via merchants, the ship insurers, Lloyd's of London; the East India Company, which was coerced into forms of co-operation by the Home Office and Treasury, and, again, the South Whale Fishery.
Lord Sydney on 14 December, 1784 had approached the African Committee concerning carriage of convicts. The African Company disliked the proposal, but allowed about 20 convicts to be sent to Cape Coast Castle (Note 91) on a Calvert ship, Recovery, 250 tons, insured with Lloyd's. Calvert was a director of the African Company. (Note 92) Calvert with his partners Camden and King had sent ships in the fishery to about Africa and the Brazils, at the time when the Brazils was being fished out. During 1784 they had out Hunter, 235 tons, Captain J. Brown, who took her out again in 1785 only to lose her about Africa. In 1786-1787 Recovery, either slaving or whaling and sealing, was under the command of Captain Donald Trail, who later went out to Botany Bay with the Second Fleet on Neptune. St Barbe during 1786-1787 had four ships registered with Lloyd's. Calvert also had a brig Ceres to Rotterdam, Commerce Captain Robert Brown to Africa and Fortitude, Captain R. Elliston for China. Also sent to China was G. M. Macaulay's Pitt, Captain G. Couper. (Note 93) During January, 1785, Evan Nepean, under-secretary at the Home Office, became fired with the idea of sending prisoners to the Gambia River to form a "convict republic". He shortly despatched a civil servant, Richard Bradley, to negotiate purchase of the island Le Maine in the river. (Lemane). (Note 94) Calvert on 4 February, 1785, wrote to Nepean offering to contract for convict carriage to Le Maine. (Note 95) The previous day, Parliament had been asked what steps if any had been taken with regard to transportation under the new Act of 1784? Lord Sydney answered those questions on 9 February.
A suggestion had been that the prisoners could go out in slave ships, which could then go about their other business. Public knowledge of the plan, and of the destination, produced repugnance for such ideas. There was to be a House of Commons Committee of Investigation. Anticipating parliamentary attack, Nepean had managed to keep the plan under wraps. On 4 March he requested hulks overseer Campbell to provide hulks accommodation for convicts for Africa. Campbell was willing to provide this, as it was anticipated that some convicts would have to be held until September, until the African rainy season was over.
A relevant order-in-council appeared on 11 March. Next day, 25 felons including four women earlier destined for America were listed for Africa, but these matters were not publicly released until April when, as Nepean had feared, Parliamentarians attacked his plans and formed a committee of inquiry chaired by Lord Beauchamp. (Note 96) On 20 March, Campbell reported he had a hulk, Ceres, almost ready for the African convicts (Note 97) but by April, 1785 Campbell knew the prisoners were developing an ugly mood and he warned his deputy, Erskine, to beware of any violence or combination being made by the Ceres' prisoners. (Note 98) Campbell, Akerman the keeper of Newgate and Nepean met with Sydney on 2 April, Sydney expressing displeasure about prisoner misbehaviour. Harsh measures were to be used if necessary against the prisoners so that adverse publicity would be avoided.
During April Nepean and Calvert had further contact, whilst in Parliament Lord Beauchamp raised questions concerning Africa and called for a committee of investigation into the 1784 Act. Beauchamp had several frames of reference/African locations for convicts, the reports of Bunbury's two committees of inquiry into the hulks and relevant legislation, the 1784 legislation, which embraced previous legislation and the sovereignty over a place. (Note 99)
About that time, Steven has argued, Lord Henry Dundas desired "a softening up of the East India Company and limitation of its monopoly [as] an essential part of Pitt's imperial reconstruction". (Note 100) The vehicle was the Board of Trade, formed in September, 1784, guided by Dundas with hope attached of disciplining the Company, and limiting its monopoly. It was the first move in a long-term bid, not necessarily precisely designed, to turn the company into an answerable arm of his majesty's government in India.
London's frustrated aldermen meantime in early 1786 had been studying a backlog of crime statistics and calculated there must be at least 4,000 people currently requiring transportation. In March, 1786 was delivered "a strong petition from London against the hulks", or, for transportation, presented to the King by the Lord Mayor of London, the aldermen and the magistrates, who asked for the speedy resumption of transportation as the only remedy for the state of crime. The petition was delivered to the King by the London Sheriffs and their senior legal adviser, the City Remembrancer, on behalf of the city. As is well known, the King himself desired the resumption of transportation. (Note 101) Presumably amongst the King's petitioners had been aldermen Macaulay and Curtis. If genuinely concerned about the penal issues involved, aldermen could have done little more than Macaulay and Curtis actually did - offer provision of ships for the later government measure. Historians of civic London have refrained from thanking them, however.
Macaulay later met the whalers and would have known of Calvert. (Note 102) These men, and their friends, many of them associated with the fishery, were hubs in a developing awareness of how their ships could gain entry to the Pacific. Members of Cabinet, the Board of Trade and the Board of Control were aware of their ambitions. From a Company point of view, Macaulay and Calvert could only be classed as renegades. Curtis, later of the Company's City Interest, does not by 1786 seem to have been interested in Company trade, although his later political career brought him closer to the Company, and he shortly began sending out an annual ship East under Company regulation.
Such men were associated also with a newly developing financial power base for ship men, New Lloyd's Coffee shop, destined to become Lloyd's of London, ship insurers. Lloyd's, the records of which to the 1790s are fragmentary, grew quickly about 1783-1784, and became a new power in London finance. Macaulay and John St Barbe with other whalers were to be mentioned as being on Lloyd's governing body by around 1785. (Note 103) During 1787, among members of the society governing Lloyd's were George Abel, Richard Buller and Company, Alexander and Benjamin, Champion, Paul Le Mesurier, George. M. Macaulay, Thomas Newnham, Welbank Sharpe and Brown, and two firms using the name St Barbe. (Note 104) (Note 105)
Stackpole indicates from 1785 that whalers also associated with the early Lloyd's were en bloc. They included Alexander Champion Senior who had close links with George Hayley's firm, Alexander and Benjamin Champion, Thomas Dickason, and John St Barbe. "Hayley was a merchant of eminence who became president of the famous insurance firm, Lloyd's of London." (Note 106) By July, 1793 George Curling, William Bell, Alexander Champion Jnr. and J. B. Bourdieu were members of a Lloyd's committee signing a memorial concerning the bringing to justice of any ships' captains who might quit themselves of protection of a convoy. It is perhaps not surprising the East India Company would fear the appearance of a new financial bloc unfriendly to it.
By 25 April, 1786, the Court of Directors of the Company had already become suspicious about a whale fishery seeking to expand its waters, and wrote: "Besides [these reasons] the Committee also suspect that the fishing Trade proposed will not be found to answer to the Projectors for want of fish, the danger of those Seas, etc., which induces a Suspicion that there must be some other Object in view". (Note 107) The Company maintained this suspicious attitude about anything to do with the Pacific that also related to convicts or waters for whaling. The whalers meantime claimed that some of their information on potential whaling grounds had come from the Company's own captains! By May, 1786, Nepean at Pitt's request had been asking merchants to estimate the cost of carrying felons to Das Voltas. (Note 108) John Turnbull, George Macaulay and T. Gregory (Note 109) replied on 10 May, 1786. By June, just before the arrival home of Nautilus, which had sailed to survey Das Voltas as a convict dumping ground in September, 1785, Calvert had also provided Nepean with an estimate of the cost of transportation to there; he thought he could get together the ships required within ten days of notice. (Note 110) By July, Cabinet was discussing sending convicts to Canada, the West Indies, or the West Coast of Africa. No decision was reached. Then, it was decided not to send convicts to Das Voltas.
With Das Voltas scotched, intense pressure over six weeks was placed on Cabinet for a place to put transportable convicts. To say "convict", however, meant "colony", partly since matters did not just involve English people carrying their body of laws as cultural baggage. The "convict" meant not only criminal law and due process, but also, that government, having apprehended and then transported convicts, also had a duty of care toward them, and therefore a set of responsibilities that might widen unpredictably. Those in London and elsewhere who loudly demanded the resumption of transportation did not, as Cabinet did, have the responsibility for examining all the attendant implications, nor bearing the cost. Further, the 1784 legislation (Act 24 Geo III, cap, 56) had re-defined "convict" in that the Crown would always retain the property in the service of the convict, and that alone suggested a colony differing considerably in character from the North American model that officials had been used to.
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One of the first reactions to Cabinet's Botany Bay decision was an offer of shipping from Macaulay and his partners Thomas Gregory and John Turnbull, made on 21 August, before tenders for shipping had actually gone to The Morning Herald ( 1 September, 1786 for 1,500 tons of shipping), to be advertised. (Note 112) Their offer was rejected. (Note 113) Macaulay was also interested in Nootka furs. When his offer of ships to Botany Bay was rejected, Macaulay simply contacted Curtis, owner of the Lady Penrhyn, and chartered her for a voyage to Nootka after the ship had finished convict business at Botany Bay.
If Macaulay failed to get the contracts, the oddity is why Anthony Calvert never even bothered to make an offer for the First Fleet. Probably, because he had broken his leg, just before he expressed confidence in June, 1786 about being able to raise enough ships in ten days to carry 1,000 people. (Note 113) The successful tenderer for the shipping was William Richards Jnr., navy contractor, but it is notable that after the First Fleet, Richards was never again given any large contract for convict carriage. (Note 114)
Concerning the relative sway of whalers and the East India Company in "Botany Bay affairs", it has been remarked, "Though Lord Hawkesbury ... showed an interest in Britain's whale fishery ... the connection between this and the penal settlement at Botany Bay can be exaggerated". (
Note 115) Views on the Company, however, have been romantically over-rated; the views of the South Whalers have been virtually ignored, though decreasingly since the early 1980s. If there were implicit secondary gains associated with a goal of establishing a penal settlement, it is also evident that lively battles were fought between ship men for an opportunity to carry convicts, to enter the Pacific, or both. A major motive was to gain backdoor access to East India Trade. (Note 116) Patently obvious from the shipping lists is the fact that most East India Company husbands fastidiously avoided carrying convicts, and avoided Botany Bay. (Note 117)
Lyte has noted that "on top of [difficulties] ... there was a powerful lobby in Britain trying to scuttle the idea of a penal settlement... they conjured up visions of a new Alsatia, a nest of pirates preying on shipping in the South Seas and the far east". (Note 118) That lobby would have been the Company, fearful of a less-controlled country trade about India and the growing political power of the whalers. No other group of London-based merchants would have had a motive, honest or otherwise, for expressing such fears.
When the first news about Botany Bay arrived in London from 22 March , 1789, it spread quickly through London. Calvert moved swiftly. Resummoning his earlier interest he ousted Richards for the contracts for the carriage of convicts. (Note 119) More commercially pragmatic than Richards, Calvert perhaps suspected, or knew, that Irish convicts would now be sent out, for around 9-11 July, Lord Grenville was writing to his brother, Lord Buckingham, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, about such transportation. (Note 120) On 27 August, 1789, George Whitlock on behalf of Camden, Calvert and King, signed for the transportation of 1,005 convicts. His fee was £22,370/2/8d, proportionately much less than Richards' fees for the First Fleet. Calvert and Company provided for part of the Second Fleet three ships into which they brutally crowded and underfed their convicts. One of their captains was Donald Trail, who had recently been on Calvert's ship Recovery about Africa. (Note 121) Trail captained Neptune, replacing Captain Gilbert there after Gilbert had fought a duel with John Macarthur.
Scarborough and Surprise had Company charters for China tea. Neptune was refused a charter as Calvert wanted to bring home Bombay goods in her. Richards meanwhile had made government an offer, £30 per head for male or female convicts, free from all other charges to government. (Note 122) He was ignored, as was an offer from Welbank, Sharpe and Brown, who earlier had successfully tendered a ship for a Pacific voyage, Bethia, which became HMAV Bounty. Camden, Calvert and King, of 3 Crescent, London, on 18 November, 1790, were awarded to contract for the third embarkation to Botany Bay, (Note 123) for carrying 1,820 English convicts, and 200 Irish; 4,000 tons of shipping - at a saving to Government of £8,000. (Note 124)
Late in December, P. G. King, friend of Enderbys and second-in-command at New South Wales, arrived back to London with Governor Phillip's official reports and news of a starving colony. (Note 125) Richards, whose ineffectual agent, Zacariah Clark, was still in the colony, became excited about prospects and reasserted his strenuous campaign to reinstate himself in the convict service. But unable to match his competitors, Calvert and the whalers, he ended in dismay.
Following the massive Third Fleet embarkations both Macaulay and St Barbe remained interested in carrying convicts. (Note 126) On 2 March, 1791, 309 convicts at Newgate were rudely surprised at 4am by turnkeys and accompanied to the Thames, down to Macaulay's Pitt, which also took out more men of the New South Wales Corps, including Major Francis Grose. A request was made that Pitt could load home Bombay cotton. The Company, which also vetoed Calvert's offers to load home Bombay cotton, obfuscated. (Note 127) By then, patterns had been laid for the convict service: the Company had been disciplined, ships would go out when convict numbers had risen. There was seldom any real seasonality to the convict service, which made it somewhat incoherent as a trade ( and so, more difficult for historians to research).
Between 1792 and 1800, many of the captains of convict transports were small-timers, or master-owners, who could be more easily controlled in terms of the views of the East India Company. Also, larger London merchants would presumably have had their time and attention taken up with matters presented by the war with France.
As disputing historians have noted, the establishment of the penal colony in 1788 could have been the result of many motives, penal, political, commercial, the deliberately Imperial. Amid discussion of "motives" for a Cabinet decision (18 August, 1786) that still seems a genuine riddle, which has puzzled historians, research is bedevilled by a "many hats syndrome", as London's influential merchants exercised multiple commercial and administrative, sometimes conflicting, roles - such as alderman and shipping manager. (Note 128)
It seems as futile, in pursuit of academic arguments, to curtail full biographical information on merchants with views on the new convict colony, as it is to ignore the fact that they were also men highly skilled at promoting schemes and chasing profits. Practical commercial life seldom offers the kind of logical consistency so prized in academia; less so when schemes fail, as did the schemes of Matra and John Call. (Note 129) But as contexts stand at present, it seems forcefully as if the historian must "prefer" either the South Whale Fishery or the East India Company, while not stopping to realise that a handful of influential merchants kept feet in both maritime camps - and that most of them apparently suffered little personal commercial damage.
Of all the shipping mangers to be discussed, the judgement must be made, finally, that, the odd man out is the contractor for the First Fleet, Richards. He had no powerful commercial friends who come to the historian's attention, nor any powerful friends moving in political circles. In a more literary or anthropological context, it should also be said that Richards' agent in New South Wales was a failure, and he made no interesting observations on this exotic new attempt to realise an old English dream stemming from Raleigh's time, the colonisation of terra australis incognita. If Richards had sent out an intelligent, half-way literate and independent-minded man as his agent, the documentation of early New South Wales would have been considerably enriched. It seems, also, that there is no surviving information which indicates that Richards ever felt disappointed that his agent had not produced entertaining and publishable reports.
The present writer holds no brief for the "Imperial position" in the explanation for Britain's settling of Australia, and agrees with D. L. Mackay that the settlement was "a desperate step, taken in confusion; clutching at an unsuitable last resort. Once taken, the decision was implemented in a shoddy way". (Note 130) The involvement of powerful merchants who were also London aldermen, and whalers, who also had East India Company interests, in the associated British exploitation of the Pacific, seems clear.
In less than five years (1786-1792), the South whalers had broken free of the shackles imposed on them by the Company monopoly and could course a new ocean. They were the first English mariners to do so since England's long dreaming about the Pacific had activated Drake and Raleigh, the Courteen Association of the 1630s, Dampier, Anson, and then Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. It must be admitted, however, that the whalers' strategies have a peculiar and mixed air of association with, but unrelatedness to, the establishment of England's penal colony. This mixed air becomes clarified when more information becomes available on three men, Aldermen Curtis and Macaulay, and Anthony Calvert. Their biographies are too slim a brief for proving that any commercial impulses swayed Cabinet's decision to found a convict colony at Botany Bay. But what is certain is that, without mentioning their associates, such as St Barbe and Enderbys, the three pursued their interests with determination over years. Between 1787 and 1792 these three men accounted for 15 convict transport ships to Botany Bay, all with East India Company licences. They would have accounted for 24 ships if government in August, 1786 had taken up Macaulay's offer to provide enough ships for what became the First Fleet. (Note 131)
The armchair colonists, John Call, George Young and James Mario Matra, whatever were their notions about the Pacific, whatever the capital they could muster, were not closely involved in local London politics with its vehemence about the resumption of transportation, and accounted for no ships at all. That is, their ways and views of life were not involved with the issues on any daily basis, or any bases that seriously involved their view of their personal or community future. Community activism of overt and covert kinds was associated with Cabinet's decision in August 1786 to create a convict colony - little more precise can presently be said.
Much of the whaling information presented here was more common knowledge in the 1920s and 1930s, but became overburdened with newer outlooks (all collected in Martin's anthology of essays, The Founding of Australia), after the appearance in the 1950s of K. M. Dallas' provocative essays. This attempt to redress the balance of relevant information on the whalers generally may be taken as born of the author's anticipation that further research on the biographies of the merchants involved will yield further surprises proving that the "great Botany Bay debate" will remain stimulating in the future, perhaps suggesting new relationships bridging the divisions now placed between maritime and land-based history.
In world terms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Australian could be reached only by ship. Failing to fully integrate maritime information, many historians working since World War Two, unlike Eris O'Brien in the 1930s, have usually remained content to note when ships arrived in Australasian waters, as though the vessels had originally sprung from the clouds of Olympus, or some perverse "New Jerusalem" English Dreamtime inspired by the poet William Blake. In terms of methodology, this seems an ideal way to keep maritime issues confused by weather and other arbitrary factors, and to prevent the original patterns in ship deployment being observed and discussed. A simple re-listing of the ship lists in Bateson's The Convict Ships, made with reference to who owned the ships, the date of decisions to deploy ships, the ship departure dates, helps in untangling a web of apparently unrelated data on maritime activity. Thus it is no surprise to find that the Ocean, sent in 1803-1804 with HMS Calcutta, Captain Dan Woodriffe, RN, to Port Phillip Bay, and later to Hobart on the whale-rich Derwent River, was a whaler owned by the newly-operating South fishers, Thomas and Edward Hurrys, who incidentally had bankrupted by 1806. (Note 132)
In all, if merchants had not let their ships to transport convicts, government ministers would have had to use naval ships to prosecute their new penal policy. In all, had government wished to support the East India Company, it could have done so by the simple expedient of failing to give contracts for convict carriage to captains or owners annoying the Company (which would presumably have been against the spirit of accepting a cheap or reasonable tender for any transportation of given numbers of convicts). But as Bateson has written of the period 1786-1800...
"Thus, instead of hiring the East Indiamen as convict transports, the government compelled the Company to charter the vessels engaged as convict ships, a reversal of the plan as originally propounded."
This is correct as long as one trusts the sincerity of ministers in their manner of dealing with the Company. Without trust, it is even more correct. Between 1789 and 1800, many contracts to transport convicts to Australia were taken by men who although they had links to the East India Company, were willing to confront the Company about opportunities newly-arising in the Pacific. (These are named in `The Blackheath Connection', first published in 1990). The South Whalers expanded their territory of waters only by whittling away the East India Company monopoly. One tactic the whalers used was access to contracts for carrying convicts to Sydney. Australasian waters, however, were only one of several focuses they had in the Pacific. Where the "the Botany Bay debate" retains interest, what is surprising is that so few of the merchants directly involved have attracted close scrutiny in the past. (Note 133)
Finis
Dan Byrnes Tamworth, New South Wales 1988-1996-2000
Begins the ENDNOTES (133)
Note 1: See 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., here, p. 253. Jones has leant greatly on analysis of Lloyd's Register, while admitting the Register's imperfections. I have consulted Lloyd's' Register for 1786-7, published by the Gregg Press, London, in volumes. Jones notes also that relevant log books are rarely found in Britain. An especially helpful article, although unpublished, is A. G. E. Jones, 1968, 'Daniel Bennett and Co'. Copy, courtesy Ann Shirley, Assistant Keeper, Dept. of Navigation and Astronomy, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Jones in this paper presents appendices on Bennett and catalogues references to whaling logs held by the National Maritime Museum. I am grateful to Mr. Graydon Henning of the Dept. Economic History, University of New England, for informed direction to many articles on maritime matters. (I remain uncomfortable, however, at still lacking full listings 1784-1800, which are difficult to obtain, of London aldermen, East India Company directors, the governance of Lloyd's of London, and of whaling merchants.)
Note 1a: Serpent: J. C. Garran, 'William Wright Hampton and the Australian Merino', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 58, Parts 1 and 2, 1 March, 1972., pp. 1-12. Items of interest here are contained in: Burney's five-volume work, A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Seas or Pacific Ocean. London. 1803-1807., cited in D. L. Mackay, A Place of Exile: The European Settlement of New South Wales. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1985., p. 116. The present article, first published in 1988, has been updated with new information from: Dan Byrnes, 'The Blackheath Connection: London Local History and the Settlement at New South Wales, 1786-1806', The Push from the Bush, No. 28, 1990., pp. 50-98. Dan Byrnes, A Bitter Pill: as assessment of the significance of the meeting between Thomas Jefferson and Duncan Campbell of the British Creditors, April, 23, 1786. Armidale NSW, 1994-1996.
Note 2: Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767-1840. Ringwood, Victoria, Penguin, 1976; whaling, pp. 117, 189. On William Wilson, see the note below. Some appreciation of Pacific history in terms of an overview of British Imperial history is available in V. T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763-1793. Vols. 1 and 2. London, Longmans Green and Co., 1952 and 1964. It might be noted that Harlow wrote before Australians from 1965 wrote on what became known as "the Botany Bay debate", stimulated by the work of K. M. Dallas and Geoffrey Blainey. See K. M. Dallas, Trading Posts or Penal Colonies: The Commercial Significance of Cook's New Holland Route to the Pacific. Hobart, Fuller's Bookshop, Pub. Divn., 1969. A helpful later-written title is Margaret Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory: Britain in the Pacific, 1783-1823. Melbourne University Press, 1983.
Note 3: Dan Byrnes, "Emptying the Hulks": Duncan Campbell and the first three fleets to Australia', The Push from the Bush, No. 24, April, 1987., pp. 2-23. This paper on the hulks superintendent Duncan Campbell treats administrative aspects of the delivery of convicts to transports for New South Wales and lists the owners of the first three fleets of transports. Some other details on Campbell are presented in Dan Byrnes, `From Glasgow to Jamaica to London and Australia: The Elusive Duncan Campbell (1726-1803)', Cruachan, Journal of Clan Campbell Society of Australia), No. 62, December, 1993., pp. 11-16.
Note 4: A convict contractor is here regarded as any shipowner or captain taking a contract for the delivery of transportable prisoners to the Australian colony, or acting as an agent in such a transaction. The contracts from 1786 to the 1820s were usually made with the office of Shelton, Clerk of Arraign at the Old Bailey. Strictly speaking, only one genuine East Indiaman took convicts to Sydney between 1787-1800, Royal Admiral I, owned by the Larkins family of Blackheath, who were related to Alderman George Macaulay by marriage. She was later sold to William Wilson ,who is referred to in notes above. See E. W. Bovill, 'Some Chronicles of the Larkins Family: The Convict Ship, 1792', The Mariner's Mirror, Vol. 40, No. 2, 1954., pp. 120-121.
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Note 5: A/ G. E. Jones, Ships Employed, pp. 263ff.
Note 6: A. G. E Jones, Ships Employed, p. 254.
Note 7: Robert J. King, 'The Territorial Boundaries of New South Wales in 1788', The Great Circle, Vol. 3, 1981., pp. 80-87. William Wilson, A Missionary Voyage to the South Pacific Ocean, 1796-1798. London, published before 1800. (Rare) T1/809. Letters Haweis-Wilson, Misc. Ms. collection reading room, chronological index MS 4104, Australian National Library, Canberra. Some letters are also in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection, MS 4105ff., HRNSW, Vol. 3, p. 731.
Note 8: R. R. Nelson, The Home Office, 1782-1801. Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1969. John Sainty, Home Office Officials, 1782-1870. London, Athlone Press, 1975.
Note 9: Additional information on Haweis and Hardcastle of the London Missionary Society is contained in Byrnes, `The Blackheath Connection'. The few East India Company Londoners also convict contractors to New South Wales were chiefly of the Company's City or City/Shipping interest groups. C. H. Philips, The East India Company, 1784-1834. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1940. Among the City/Shipping Interest were: Sir William Curtis, Mellish, Wigram, Paul Le Mesurier. City/Shipping Interest. The Company "interest groups" were designated Indian, City and Shipping. Of London ship men prior to 1808, interested in ships to Australia, Paul Le Mesurier was of the City/Shipping interest; Sir William Curtis, Mellish, Wigram were City; John Call and Sir Arch. Campbell (Governor, Madras) were India interest men. Few East India men were interested in voyages to Australia, especially if they were of the shipping interest, partly because ship design for India and China did not suit the voyage to Australia. Multiple membership of ship men in bodies such as the South Whale Fishery, Lloyd's and the East India Company confuse issues considerably. If it can be said that any identifiable London-based group of merchants confronted the East India Company about matters Pacific, that group consisted of some Lloyd's underwriters who were interested in sealing or whaling, and some merchants who were members of the Company's City/Shipping Interest. These men could also be regarded as purely "money men from the City", or, as merchant capitalists. See Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 69-70; Harlow, p. 322.
Note 10: Nootka Crisis: Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 41-2, 68, 71; Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 36, and as indexed. See also, James R. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785-1841. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1992. Paperback edition of 1999.
Note 11: Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships 1787-1868. Sydney, Reed, 1974; J. S. Cumpston, Shipping Arrivals and Departures, Sydney 1788-1825. In three parts. Canberra. Privately printed, 1963-1964.
Note 12: "The Samuel Enderby Book", Whaling Documents 1775-90. (Originals held at the Pennsylvania Historical Society, 1300 Locust St., Philadelphia, PA, USA. Used by permission of director James E. Rooney. Original has no accession date, no provenance.) Being a list of names of merchants placing vessels in the South Whale Fishery. Ships' names, masters' names, some information on catches of whale oil, seal skins, areas fished, etc. Copies of these originals at the Australian National Library, Petherick. Collection of Manuscripts, are lodged as Ms 1701.
Note 13: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 10ff. Steven includes useful appendices on the Southern Whale Fishery from 1776-1820 which are complementary with those provided by 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. Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 65, 71. Dallas first raised the whaler-related issues treated here in the 1950s, and is published in Ged Martin (Ed.), The Founding of Australia: The Argument about Australia's Origins. Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1978, a title devoted to "the great Botany Bay debate". Mollie Gillen, 'The Botany Bay Decision, 1786: convicts, not empire', English Historical Review, Vol. 97, No. 385, October, 1982., pp. 740-766. Alan Frost, Convicts and Empire: A Naval Question 1776-1811. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1980. Mackay cited above, passim. Eris O'Brien, The Foundation of Australia 1786-1800. London, Sheed and Ward, 1937. Wilfrid Oldham, Britain's Convicts to the Colonies. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1990. Wilfrid Oldham, The Administration of the System of Transportation of British Convicts, 1762-93. Typewritten Doctoral Thesis, London University, 1933. Copy ML. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia. 1787-1868. London, Pan Books/Collins, 1987.
Note 14: Macaulay and Curtis: Byrnes, '"Emptying the Hulks"', pp. 7ff. See also, Byrnes, 'The Blackheath Connection'. Curtis: English DNB, Vol. 5, p. 348.
Note 15: Byrnes, `"Emptying the Hulks"', p. 7 and Notes 17-20.
Note 16: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 49-57. Following Enderby's ships was the whaler Astrea: Mackay, Place of Exile, p. 81.
Note 17: Rudy Bauss, 'The Importance of Rio de Janeiro to British Interests, with particular attention to Australia, 1787-1805', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 65, Part 3, December, 1979., pp. 145-172. Bauss mentions whaler Policy, Macaulay's Pitt, William Capt. Folger, etc. In A Bitter Pill, I have provided additional information on American interest in Nootka Sound after 1786, especially regarding Ledyard, who, as with William Bligh, had been on Cook's third voyage.
Note 18: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 48-51. The owners of the Third Fleet ships are listed in Byrnes, `Emptying the Hulks', cited above.
Note 19: W. J. Dakin, Whalemen Adventurers in Southern Waters. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1977., introduction. Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 40-41.
Note 20: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 38-40; Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 38ff; other writers, variously. Few merchants interested in northwest America also sent ships to Botany Bay. See also my article, A Bitter Pill.
Note 21: V. T. Harlow, Founding of the Second British Empire, Vol. 2, New Continents and Changing Values. p. 320. On Curtis: see Note 24 below.
Note 22: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 72-74. Dakin, introduction. Stackpole: South Sea Co., yielding, p. 118; broken monopoly, p. 81.
Note 23: Ruth Campbell, 'New South Wales and the Gloucester Journal, 1787-1790', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 68, Part 3, December, 1982., pp. 169-180; see p. 178, Note 14, referring to the First Fleet ship Lady Penrhyn (though she is not directly named); Gloucester Journal; 4/5/1789, by the Talbot; the newspaper said the ship was to have sailed from Botany Bay for the northwest coast of America for the fur trade - she sprang a leak "off a coast" and had to proceed to Tahiti, where she found her bottom unfit to combat ice, and then sailed to China where she met the Talbot. Due to local penal problems, officials at Gloucester had been keen on the resumption of transportation - as recorded in Mackay, Place of Exile, pp. 17, 176, 179,
Note 59 - which is probably why the paper reported such follow-up "convict colony" news.
Note 24: Dakin, introduction: it is convenient at this point to regard those also seeking seal products as whalers. A distinction will later be made between whalers and sealers. Macaulay: Byrnes,`"Emptying the Hulks"', pp. 6-7. The Macaulay offer: Watts had been midshipman under Bligh on Cook's Resolution. Capt. Sever of Lady Penrhyn named islands off the Australian coast on 1-6 June, 1788, after both Curtis and G. M. Macaulay, having left Sydney in May 1788 before his ship arrived at Tahiti in July 1788 for three weeks, preceding HMAV Bounty, Lady Penrhyn then proceeded from Tahiti to China. (Sir) William Curtis was the third son of Joseph Curtis of Wapping, born 25 January, 1752, going into the family business - sea biscuits at Wapping. Elected Alderman, guild Draper, of Tower Ward, not yet a freeman of the city. Made successful ventures in the Greenland Fishery and a friend of the South Whalers. Became associated with Robarts, Curtis, Were and Co., later Robart, Lubbock and Co., bankers. Once Lord Mayor of London and for many years civic leader of the Tories. MP, London, 1790, for 30 years. Created Baronet, Dec. 1802. The wealthy Curtis had a bakers, a brewery, a gun-powder factory, and was reputedly the inventor of sea biscuits, therefore known as "Billy Biscuits". With his brother Timothy, he had a business in victualling ships. He was later a friend of King George IV. (See John Prebble, The King's Jaunt: George IV in Scotland, 1822. (One and Twenty Daft Days). London, Fontana, 1988.) He had a mansion, Cullens Grove, at Tottenham, London, demolished in the 1830s, and another mansion at Ramsgate. He was once Lord Mayor of London, and MP for London for about 30 years. An art collector, he was lampooned by the intellectuals as "a pitiably bad speaker". After his death, an auction of his possessions included about 635 dozen bottles of fine wine. He appears from repute to have been quite an uninhibited personality, though also with a desire to "do the right thing". On his son Timothy A. Curtis, a banker and an investor in the Australian Agricultural Company (from 1824), see John F. Atchison, Port Stephens and Goonoo Goonoo: A Review of the Early Period of the Australian Agricultural Company. Ph.D thesis. Australian National University, Canberra. 1973. Pennie A. Pemberton, The London Connection: The Formation and Early Years of the Australian Agricultural Company. Ph.D thesis, Australian National University, 1991. Curtis is also noted in A. B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London. Two Vols., London, 1913. (Copy, Guildhall Library, London). Noticed also in the City Biography. Ed. 2, London, 1800.
Note 25: A. Bowes-Smith, The Journal of Arthur Bowes-Smith, Surgeon in the Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789. Sydney, Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, 1979. Byrnes, '"Emptying the Hulks"',
Note 29.
Note 26: Byrnes, `"Emptying the Hulks"' , p. 9. Harlow, p. 307, appears incorrect in indicating that Enderby provided transport for some of the first contingents to Botany Bay.
Note 27: Dakin, introduction.
Note 28: Dallas, Trading Posts, p. 71.
Note 29: Concerning other lobbying by Enderbys: Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 11, 37, 70-72, 81.
Note 30: W. R. Dawson, The Banks Letters: A Calendar of the Manuscript Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks. London, 1958., p. 308. Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 79.
Note 31: Dallas, Trading Posts, p. 67.
Note 32: Dakin, introduction.
Note 33: Dallas, Trading Posts, p. 67.
Note 34: Dallas, Trading Posts, p. 68.
Note 35: The St Barbe suggestion: HRNSW, Vol.1, ii, p. 407.
Note 36: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 58, 62.
Note 37: A deficit with Mackay's argument (Place of Exile, pp. 80-81) here is that he ignores information for 1791 on the mounting of the Third Fleet whilst he helpfully indicates a balance of whaler attention shifting to the northwest coast of America. Nootka Convention: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 53ff., 60ff. Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 41-42, 68. Stackpole, p. 114. The Nootka Convention. W. P. Morrell, Britain in the Pacific Islands. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1960., pp. 28-30. Morrell, p. 26, remarks that Sydney became capital not only of a colony but an ocean, and, indeed, one way to view Sydney's history would be as a city that failed to maintain itself as any such capital. In this context, a long-term comparison of the histories of Sydney, San Francisco and Tokyo would be enlightening. On whalers' groups in London, Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 60 (Curtis, p. 62). Dundas: HO 43/3, p. 320; I am indebted to Prof. Alan Frost for drawing Dundas' letter re Curtis to my attention. It is interesting to note that a son of (Sir) William Curtis, T. A. Curtis in 1824 made efforts to establish a flax plantation in New South Wales. Pennie A. Pemberton, a student of the Australian Agricultural Company, pers comm. On flax: see Bolton in Martin's Founding: The Hollow Conqueror: Flax and the Foundation of Australia', pp. 91ff.; and 'Broken Reeds and Smoking Flax', pp. 115ff.
Note 38: The name Calvert was known in brewing, army and mercantile circles. A Calvert MP had once taken Old Sarum, the rottenest of the old "rotten boroughs". (Old Sarum: Dorothy Marshall, Dr Johnson's London. Sydney, John Wiley and Sons, 1968.) After 1784 the name was also known in whaling circles, for Anthony Calvert, a director of the African Company with his partners Camden and King used to send ships in the South fishery to about Africa, and the Brazils. During 1784 they had out Hunter, 235 tons, Capt. J. Brown, who took her out again in 1785 only to lose her about Africa. In 1786-1787 (Lloyd's Register) Recovery either slaving or whaling/sealing was under the command of Captain Donald Trail, who later went out to Botany Bay with the Second Fleet. That Calvert's firm was seriously engaged in slaving, selling significant numbers into Jamaica, is seen in Herbert S. Klein, 'The English Slave Trade to Jamaica' , Economic History Review, Series 2, Vol. 31, No. 1, February,. 1978, pp. 25-45. Bateson, Convict Ships, pp. 19, 127ff: The oft-quoted remark from Captain Hill, "The slave trade is merciful..." - (Bateson, pp. 126-38, 145; also in, HRNSW, Vol. 2, p. 462) - may have been prompted by Trail's application of slave-ship conditions. Trail may have been slaving about Africa during 1786-1787. Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain's Grim Convict Armada of 1790. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1993.
Note 39: Dakin, Trading Posts, pp. 8ff.
Note 40: Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 42, 68.
Note 41: Steven on policy, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 82-83.
Note 42: Astrea: Mackay, Place of Exile, pp. 81, 110, Note 30; Stackpole, pp. 114, 129-139, and statistics, pp. 386-387, 398ff.
Note: 43 Third Fleet: Byrnes, 'Emptying the Hulks', pp. 13-17
Note 44: Jones, Ships Employed, table, p. 263.
Note 45: Harlow, pp. 320ff. Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 42, 60, 69-70, 68. Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 82-83. The whalers had not abandoned Africa, however, as Board of Trade records indicate; Alexander Champion contacted Lord Hawkesbury about Captain Joshua Coffin, a Nantucketeer, having returning on Champion's ship, Lord Hawkesbury, with a quantity of ambergris from a female sperm whale caught on the Guinea coast of Africa.
Note 46: Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 69-70.
Note 47: Lushington: Harlow, pp. 323ff.
Note 48: Stackpole, p. 131. Dakin, pp. 8-13.
Note 49: Macaulay/St Barbe: Here I lean heavily on the evidence re convict contracting on the seldom-cited Navy Office Accounts 1793 and for 1794: HRNSW, Vol. 3, p. 39, and elsewhere. Due to parliamentary carping over colonial costs in mid-1793, George Rose at the Treasury gathered for tabling all accounts to 1793, and again in 1794, on shipping and goods to Sydney. Steven, pp. 82-83. On Pitt, and explaining the country trade the Company objected to, an article containing important information is J. C. Garran, 'William Wright Bampton and the Australian Merino', cited above. Garran has followed up his argument convincingly in J. C. Garran and Leslie White, Merinos, Myths and Macarthurs: Australian Graziers and their Sheep, 1788-1900. Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1985. On 31 March, 1791, Enderbys, Alexander and Benjamin Champion, (William) Curtis and Co. and others wrote to the Board of Trade requesting apprentices in the fishery be protected from impressment.
Note 50: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 82-3. Harlow, pp. 323ff. Stackpole, p. 155. The matter of whalers using trading (that is, banking) facilities at Canton is vexed, and it remains difficult to be clear about opposed contemporary positions on circumstances at Canton. Historians' discussions of trade there cannot be straightforward, due to traders finding it necessary to deal in silver bullion - and questions about where such silver came from. Discussions must also necessarily refer to the opium trade. From about 1773, the East India Company, and probably some India-based country traders, had gradually set up what might be called, "the first bank at Canton", a kind of clearing house for currencies which included Spanish silver dollars, which often came from the Philippines. Little detailed information exists on this East India Company "bank" at Canton, which deserves detailed examination. However, it appears that South whalers, fur traders coming from Nootka Sound, and also some ships arriving from Botany Bay would have used its facilities. An especially useful title on this "bank" and associated matters are: Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-1842. Cambridge University Press, 1951. Greenberg has much information on English country traders who became partners in agency houses in India. And incidentally (Greenberg, p. 22) after 1782, the former fur trader to Nootka Sound, John Henry Cox, became a partner with Daniel Beale, and began a firm which became the forerunner of Jardine Matheson. See also, Tan Chung, `The British-China-India Trade Triangle, (1771-1840)', India Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 11, No. 4, December, 1974., pp. 411-431. Other titles of interest here include: W. E. Cheong, Mandarins and Merchants: Jardine, Matheson and Co, A China agency of the early nineteenth century. London, Curzon Press, 1979. T. Chung, `The Britain-China-India Trade Triangle, 1771-1840', The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 11, No. 4, December, 1974., pp. 411-431. On p. 413, Chung notes that expanding trade in India goods to China made it unnecessary to export British silver to China to foot tea costs. (But see Morse, p. 237, it was not "British silver", it was Spanish silver dollars which Britain had acquired). In 1770 the East India Company had begun to station a group of supercargoes at Canton (they stayed at Macao in the Canton off-season). In 1775 the Company issued bills worth 546,820 Spanish dollars to country traders from India. and in 1775 the Supercargoes at Canton were expecting to receive bullion from Manila, about which "foreigners" [unspecified] were glad. The sums involved were relatively modest. Foster Rhea Dulles, The Old China Trade. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1930. H. Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, c1976. By 1782-1783, John Henry Cox, who used a Portuguese flag of convenience, and Daniel Beale had begun a firm which long later became Jardine Matheson. (See Greenberg, pp. 24ff.) E. M. Gull, British Economic Interest in the Far East. London, Oxford University Press, 1943. Maggie Keswick, (Ed.), The Thistle and the Jade: A Celebration of 150 years of Jardine Matheson and Co. London, Octopus Books, 1982. Horsea Ballon Morse, 'The Provision of funds for the East India Company's trade at Canton during the Eighteenth Century', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Part 2, April, 1922., pp. 227ff. (Microfilm, 950.05/Roy at Dixson Library, UNE. Om Prakash, 'Opium Monopoly in India and Indonesia in the Eighteenth Century', Indian Economic and Social History Review, 24, 1, 1987., pp. 63-80. Earl Hamilton Pritchard, `The struggle for control of the China Trade during the Eighteenth Century', Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 3, 1934., pp. 280-295. Anthony Reid, `An "Age of Commerce" in Southeast Asian History', Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1990., pp. 1-30. (On Spanish dollars). William L. Schurz, The Manila Galleon. New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1939. S. B. Singh, European Agency Houses in Bengal, 1783-1833. Calcutta, Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1966. (Suggesting that the India agency houses took a decade from 1773 to aggregate capital enabling them to become the Indian merchant bankers they became). Jean Sutton, Lords of the East: the East India Company and its ships. Greenwich, London, Conway Maritime Press, 1981. has lists of EICo ships.
Note 51: Dallas, Trading Posts, p. 43. Harlow, pp. 325-326.
Note 52: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 81. King's friendship with Enderbys implies of course that a pro-whaler "plant" was blatantly placed with the original expedition to Botany Bay from late 1786. This often casually-mentioned matter has never received detailed attention. Jonathan King and John King, Philip Gidley King: A Biography of the Third Governor of New South Wales. North Melbourne, Methuen Australia, 1981., p. 96. King on his return voyage England-Sydney sailed on the Enderby whaler Speedy. Phillip's friend at sea, Philip Gidley King, was third governor of the colony at Sydney. In this biography of King is noted, in the face of events, untenably: "He [King, circa 1801] wanted to build up trade between Sydney and... Asia and the Pacific... and although there was a long standing East India Company monopoly, endorsed by the British Government, which prohibited incursions into the sphere of influence enjoyed by the company, King was now prepared to upset those vested interests to improve the economic lot of the colony. He was also very keen to establish Sydney as the regional headquarters for the fast-developing whaling and sealing industries in which he had had a vested interest for some time. In an effort to stimulate local whaling activities the governor teamed up with the Enderby family's whaling company and put some of his own money into the venture ... He had known the Enderby brothers, Charles, George and Samuel, for many years and had borrowed a small sum of money from the family in 1794. The Enderbys had pressured the British Government to ease the monopoly restrictions on whaling in the region because of the abundance of good quality whales in the waters ... He was criticised for this involvement just as he was reprimanded for challenging the East India Company monopoly over both whaling and trade in the region."
Note 53: Bateson, The Convict Ships, pp. 139ff.
Note 54: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 81. D. R. Hainsworth, Builders and Adventurers: The Traders and the Emergence of the Colony 1788-1821. Melbourne, Cassell, 1968., p. 104. Gov. King: HRNSW, I, ii, p. 529. D. R. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders: Simeon Lord and his Contemporaries, 1788-1821. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press. 1972. J. C. Garran has followed up matters arising after Atlantic's trip, relating to maritime transactions, especially noting Macaulay's captain on Pitt, Edward Manning, and the origins of Australia's most influential sheep flocks, in J. C. Garran and Leslie White, Merinos, Myths and Macarthurs, cited above.
Note 55: Dallas, Trading Posts, p. 75. Dakin, introduction, pp. 9-12. Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 87. Richard Hodgkinson, 'Eber Bunker - A New Look', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 64, Part 2, March, 1979., pp. 252ff. Richard Hodgkinson, Eber Bunker. Canberra, Roebuck, 1975.
Note 56: Indicating the number of whale ships then active in the Pacific - March 26, 1792 - a small vessel, Prince William Mary, touched at Tahiti and took some of the crew of the wrecked Third Fleet whaler Matilda's crew, thence northwest coast of America, Nootka Sound. During 1792, the whalers Jenny and Britannia called at Tahiti, also picking up some of Matilda's crew.
Note 57: T1/698. Navy Office Accounts. R. Langdon, (Ed.), American Whalers and Traders in the Pacific. A Guide to Records on Microfilm. Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1978. Langdon lists mostly American whalers - about 50 - visiting Norfolk Island between 1792-1858; Norfolk being visited no more frequently than other islands. Fishery wharves in London were Paul's wharf, Mr Lucas' wharf at Rotherhithe, Mr Mather at Blackwall.
Note 58: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 81. Thomas Dunbabin, 'William Raven, RN and his Britannia, 1792-95', The Mariner's Mirror, Vol. 46, No. 4, Nov. 1960., pp. 297-303. New work on the New South Wales Corps has been published by Pamela Statham, and after examining it, I have found no reason to believe that officers of the New South Wales Corps had priorly made any arrangements with London merchants that historians might not have known about previously: Pamela Statham, (Ed.), A Colonial Regiment: New Sources relating to the New South Wales Corps, 1789-1810. Canberra, Australian National University, 1992. Pamela Statham, `A New Look at the New South Wales Corps, 1790-1810', Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 30, No. 1, March, 1990., pp. 43-63.
Note 59: Dallas, Trading Posts, pp. 56, 80.
Note 60: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 77.
Note 61: Navy Office Accounts, J. S. Cumpston, Shipping Arrivals and Departures, Sydney 1788-1825. St Barbe was involved with the following ships: Speedy Captain Thomas Melville left England with beef, pork, etc., "in a leaky and weak condition" [See John Cobley, Sydney Cove, 1793-1795: The Spread of Settlement. Vol. 4. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1983.]. She carried prisoners, freight, accounts taken with St Barbe, Green and Bignell. £1,653. 8 July, 1794: [Cumpston]; Indispensable Captain Wilkinson to Bengal - St Barbe, Green and Bignell. 10 Sept., 1794; Resolution Captain John and Matthew Locke to Sydney, storeship, later whaling for St Barbe, Green and Bignell. 11-12 Sept., 1794; Salamander storeship, Captain William Irish, leaves England stores and provision later to Norfolk Island whaling, India. St Barbe connection. 16 Sept. 1794. [Cobley, Sydney Cove, 1793-1795, p. 191.] Mentions food lost or bad and good deal of slops clothing was irreparable or severely damaged. The two ships that came in last, Resolution and Salamander, are going to the South Fishery, "very little private trade on board either and what there is we that live here (at Parramatta) have little change of..." 25 October, 1794; Surprize arrives Sydney at 8 p.m. Grose received a letter from Alderman Macaulay, as noted in Frank Clune, The Scottish Martyrs. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1969., p. 72. [See Helen Heney, Australia's Founding Mothers. Melbourne, Thomas Nelson, 1978., p. 113.] In the evening, two ships arrive, William, whaler, Captain William Folger (?), arrives Sydney (with Rev. Samuel Marsden) and a ship from Bengal, 7-8 June, 1794: Arrives Sydney Speedy, Captain Thomas Melville, from England loaded with every kind of provisions. [Bateson, The Convict Ships; A. T. Yarwood, Samuel Marsden; The Great Survivor. Melbourne University Press, 1977. Yarwood's early chapters record Marsden's arguments with Captain Folger.] T1/746 filed circa March 1795, a bill from St Barbe, Green and Bignell for vittling of Samuel and Mrs Marsden plus servant on voyage. Goods per Alexander Davison: HRNSW, Vol. 2, p. 53.
Note 62: Dunbabin, ibid.
Note 63: Jones, Ships Employed, pp. 258-259.
Note 64: On Bishop, see Michael Roe, `Charles Bishop, Pioneer of Pacific Commerce', Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 10, No. 1, July, 1962., p. 11.
Note 65: Dakin, p. 14.
Note 66: Dakin, p. 16. Jones, Ships Employed, p. 253.
Note 67: Dakin, p. 18. Dallas, Trading Posts, p. 81.
Note 68: R. A. Swan, To Botany Bay - If Policy Warrants the Measure - A Re-appraisal. Canberra, Roebuck Society, 1973., p. 168.
Note 69: Cumpston; Saunders Newsletter, in HRNSW, Vol. 3, p. 741, 8-9 Nov., 1799. Dunbabin, p. 22.
Note 70: Capt. William Hingston: Frank Clune, Bound for Botany Bay: Narrative of a Voyage in 1798 Aboard the Death Ship Hillsborough. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1964. See also, 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. Rhys Richards, (a three-part series), 'The Easternmost Route to China and the Robertson Aikman Charts', The Great Circle, Vol. 8, No. 2, April, 1986., pp. 54-66; Vol. 8, No. 2, 1986., pp. 104-116; Vol. 9, No. 1, April, 1987., pp. 48-59. Stackpole, p. 303. Cumpston, p. 34.
Note 71: Dakin, pp. 17-19.
Note 72: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 102. Jones, Ships Employed, pp. 253ff.
Note 73: Hayley and St Barbe, in Stackpole. Frank Worsley, The Romance of Lloyd's. London, Hutchinson, 1932. Wright and Fayle, A History of Lloyd's. London, Macmillan, 1957. Mr Anthony Twist of Cambridge, England, is now completing a biography of John Julius Angerstein (1735-1823), a major organiser of more responsible elements working at the insurance market known as Lloyd's.
Note 74: This view of fishery history is extracted variously from Stackpole - on George Hayley and Lloyd's - and D. E. W. Gibb, Lloyd's of London, A Study in Individualism. London, Macmillan, 1957. Given Hayley's work with Lloyds, it seems no accident that the whalers had some voice in Lloyd's' affairs: John St Barbe was apparently eminent in Lloyd's' affairs by 1790. However, present information on Lloyd's does not enable a decision to be made on how much influence East India Company men wielded in Lloyd's' affairs. One suspects they and the whalers clashed. (This matter is followed up in my article, `The Blackheath Connection', 1990, by way of discussing the battle at Lloyd's between the Red Book and the Green Book).
Note 75: Byrnes, '"Emptying the Hulks"', p. 12, Note 43; Campbell: Dallas, Trading Posts, p. 59, refers to Duncan Campbell's April 1786 meeting with Jefferson which I have followed up in my article, A Bitter Pill. Campbell later filed his merchants' grievances in their memorial to Carmarthen: Julian P. Boyd, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 9. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1954., pp. 402-405. Jefferson sent his impression on meeting Campbell to John Jay. Stackpole, pp. 18-24. East India Company response, V. T. Harlow, p. 304. Points in Campbell's information were that (1) the merchants had been deprived of their property for ten years, (2) they were deprived of eight years' interest, equal to 40 per cent. More information on Mary Wilkes, widow of George Hayley, is in my article, A Bitter Pill, in appendices.
Note 76: As found in Stackpole.
Note 77: Adams: remarks discovered in Stackpole. Mackay, Place of Exile, pp. 13ff. On the correctness of Adams' remarks on London's crime wave, see recent research on contemporary sentencings, cited in Mackay, Chapter 2.
Note 78: British policy: Morrell, pp. 28-30. In his introduction, p. vii, Morrell questions whether there existed a British policy at all for the Pacific: rather, there was colonial resentment that there was no policy.
Note 79: Stackpole, variously.
Note 80: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 73-4. Following moves earlier in 1786.
Note 81: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 73-74.
Note 82: As found from Stackpole.
Note 83: Stackpole, pp. 81, 118. On Acts whittling East India Company waters for whalers, see Ivan T. Sanderson, Follow the Whale. London, Cassell and Co., 1956., p. xix.
Note 84: On Cabinet personnel and experience with convict problems: Leila Thomas as cited in Byrnes, 'Emptying the Hulks', Note 13. Sydney with typical Whig language in 1776 had attacked the new Hulks Act as too abruptly advancing the power of the Crown.
Note 85: Some areas sailed by whalers can be found in "The Samuel Enderby Book", a register kept by the Enderbys in London, a copy of which is held at the Australian National Library, MS 1701, cited in Byrnes, `"Emptying the Hulks"', Note 23.
Note 86: "Unparalleled": Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 67.
Note 87: Macaulay's origins: On an original PRO document, T1/632 (XC/A/3016), to Evan Nepean, May 10, 1786, "Turnbull Macaulay and T. Gregory" (sic), with no comma (hence usual misreadings of their firm's title): offering to carry 500 convicts for 15 guineas per head to Africa, victualled the same as men in HM forces. Government had dealt some years before with a partnership Gregory and Turnbull, that was later injected with capital by Macaulay, as the volume of the new partnership's business rose substantially. House of Commons Journal, Vol. 40, pp. 1104; Vol. 42, p. 590; Vol. 43, pp. 337-338. The trio were reimbursed more than £13,000 for providing to troops elsewhere. Mark and George Gregory with John Turnbull were issued £3,644 by a warrant in June, 1785. Messrs. Turnbull and G. M. Macaulay were issued £108,149 for providing troops in Canada, and loyalists there as well some years later. Macaulay's relative by marriage, Theed, fever-stricken, is mentioned by Captain Edward Manning, Pitt, in a letter from Rio De Janeiro, HRNSW, Vol. 1, ii, p. 526. Theed, if he lived, would have gone to India with the ship. Manning's letter was published 9 February, 1792, in London Public Advertiser. See Garran and Leslie, cited above on Pitt's Indian connection and the origins of the foundations of Australia's most influential sheep flocks.
Note 88: The present Curtis family had remained unaware of his Pacific adventures until contacted by historians in the 1980s, although Curtis' London political career is more well known. Macaulay's diaries 1796-1797 are quoted in Charles William Heckethorn, Lincoln's Inn Fields and the Localities Adjacent: Their Historical and Topographical Associations. London, Eliot Stock, 1896., p. 81. Macaulay's surviving journal is noted further in my article, "The Blackheath Connection". I remain grateful to a London researcher, Gillian Hughes, for locating Macaulay's remaining journal.
Note 89: Dakin, p. 12. The usual explanation - that does not explain everything - is that a lapse with whaler activity about Sydney from 1792 was due to war with France.
Note 90: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 84.
Note 91: Sydney to African Committee: courtesy PRO, HO 43/1 4370. Gillen, `Botany Bay decision', pp. 749ff.
Note 92: Calvert as director of African Company: T/70/145 4349, courtesy PRO. Africa Office, London, 3 July, 1782.
Note 93: Lloyd's Register. For "Lo Botany Bay" in 1786-1787 were Scarborough Captain J. Marshall owned by Thos. Hopper, and Prince of Wales, Captain J. Mason, owned by South whaler J[ames] Mather.
Note 94: Le Maine Scheme: Gillen, `Botany Bay decision', pp. 748ff. Alan Atkinson, `The Convict Republic', The Push from the Bush, No.18, October, 1974., pp. 66-84.
Note 95: Calvert to Nepean: cited Atkinson, `Convict Republic', pp. 72-73.
Note 96: Beauchamp's committee: Atkinson, `Convict Republic', pp. 79ff.
Note 97: Ceres hulk: Duncan Campbell to Commissioners Navy, 19 March, 1785, ML A3228-A3229.
Note 98: Duncan Campbell to Steward Erskine, 4 April, 1785. ML A3228-A3229.
Note 99: Beauchamp's frames of reference: other writers may differ with my views here.
Note 100: Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, p. 11.
Note 101: The March 1786 "felons petition" from London aldermen: Geoffrey C. Ingleton, True Patriots All, or News from Early Australia as Told in a Collection of Broadsides. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1952., p. 1.
Note 102: Information on the whalers and Lloyd's is still unclear and needs further research. (Many matters have been followed up in my 'Blackheath Connection').
Note 103: Lloyd's anomalies: Stackpole, p. 100, records George Hayley as dying in 1777, though Gibb, p. 67, reports him as being chairman of Lloyd's in 1779. There is for December 1771 (in Wright and Fayle, p. 100) a list of subscribers to Lloyd's from the foundation in 1771, to 1 June, 1800. The first committee as at January 1772 included Martin K. Van Mierop (first chairman), John Wilkinson, John Townson, Joshua Readshaw, James Black, John Ewer, James Bourdieu, John Whitmore, Brook Watson (1753-1807). (Watson (p. 201, born in 1753) was a one-time commissary general for Canada. In 1798 he was commissary-general to the forces, "one of the most honourable men ever known" said Secretary of War, Lord Liverpool; director of the Bank of England, Member for the City, 1784-1793, Lord Mayor of London in 1796 and also in that year chairman of Lloyd's. Watson had lost a leg by the bite of a shark as a boy. In January, 1778 (Wright and Fayle) after Mierop's death, there was elected as chairman Alderman George Hayley, a well-known underwriter, who presided over the next great step in the history of Lloyd's, the development of Lloyd's' policy proper, which appeared in 1779. Lloyd's was still organised with extreme casualness; although, this might become disputed in Anthony Twist's forthcoming biography of John Julius Angerstein.
Note 104: Gibb; Stackpole, pp. 16-17.
Note 105: Some sections in my `Blackheath Connection' have been devoted to providing fresh information on misleading statements that ships owned by the whalers Enderby were involved in the Boston Tea Party. A list of South Whalers, 1775-90 drawn from the Samuel Enderby Book is: Enderby; Alexander and Benjamin Champion; Mather and Co., Mr Mather's wharf at Blackwall - Thomas and John Mather, Rotherhithe in 1805; Montgomery; Joseph Lucas (October, 1805); Bennett; Smith at Hull; Sanders at Southampton Parr(?) Southampton; Wrangham (Canton,1792 brig Hope); Curtino(?); Mellish; Dudman; King; Bill; with Enderbys 1775, March 1790, St Barbe, London, Southampton; Curling; Yorke; Metcalfe; Paul, Simon of Tottenham Court Rd and his own wharf; Le Mesurier (Guernsey); Samuel Teast and Son, Bristol; Hurry and Co., Yarmouth; Ogle; Oliver; Mount; Hall (or Hull); Hattersley; Wardell; Thornton (See 28 October, 1786); Mills; Bell; Calvert; Mangles; Stainforth; Hayley, very early in fishery history; De Bond; Harrison; Harford; George Hayley; Daniel Coffin; Benjamin Rotch; Barclay; Powell; Brantingham; Williams; Price; Meader; Peter Evet Mestairs, who also owned a dock on Thames opposite Shadwells.
Note 106: Stackpole, pp. 16-17.
Note 107: Harlow, pp. 304ff.
Note 108: Merchants interested in Das Voltas: Gillen, `Botany Bay decision', p. 751.
Note 109: It appears circumstantially that Bateson, p.11, before publishing in 1959 had misconceived this trio as a duo. The firm has only been mentioned concerning Le Maine in the 1980s by Frost and Gillen.
Note 110: Calvert's mid-1786 tender: Frost, Convicts and Empire, pp. 110-111.
Note 111: Bateson, Convict Ships, p. 11. Byrnes, `"Emptying the Hulks"', pp. 6-7. Newspaper political leanings are discussed in Martin's anthology, Founding, in Martin, 'A London Newspaper on the Founding of Botany Bay, August 1786-May 1787', pp. 170ff.
Note 112: Macaulay apparently did not try again for Nootka.
Note 113: Calvert original per Mollie Gillen. Shipowners Hoppers are listed in Treasury Board Papers as petitioners with others letting ships to the Transport Board, seeking greater profit, T1/695. Oldham lists Richards' ships. Captain William Richards, son of the First Fleet contractor later commanded the convict transports Prince Regent I (3) in 1827; Roslin Castle, in 1833-34-35 to New South Wales. (Bateson, Convict Ships, pp. 234ff.). J. Oppenheimer, 'William Richards of Winterbourne - Sea Captain and Squatter', in Connah, Rowland and Oppenheimer, Captain Richard's House at Winterbourne - A Study in Historical Archaeology. Dept. of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 1978., Chapter 5.
Note 114: Byrnes, '"Emptying the Hulks"', pp. 11-15.
Note 115: A. G. L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies: A Study of Penal Transportation from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia and other Parts of the British Empire. Faber, London, 1966. Anti-whaler position, p. 54.
Note 116: Without mention of conflict with Spain, Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, pp. 49, 61.
Note 117: A notable exception being G. M. Macaulay.
Note: Charles Lyte, Sir Joseph Banks, 18th Century Explorer, Botanist and Entrepreneur. Sydney, A. H. and A. W. Reed, 1980.
Note 119: Byrnes, `"Emptying the Hulks"'', p. 11.
Note 120: Richards by way of demotion was relegated to carrying Irish convicts before he departed the convict service. That involvement however raises another knotty question, since to date I have been unable to locate the whereabouts of any contracts made out for the transportation of Irish convicts in either the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.
Note 121: Lloyd's Register.
Note 122: T1/671.
Note 123: Bateson, The Convict Ships, pp. 131ff.
Note 124: Some details on the embarkation are in my `"Emptying the Hulks"'.
Note 125: Gov. King: King and King, pp. 53ff. See Notes 51-52 above.
Note 126: Macaulay-St Barbe contract: Navy Office Accounts, 1793, HRNSW, Vol. 2, p. 39.
Note 127: T1/701. Macaulay to Commissioners Navy was willing to load either sugar or cotton at his own option, and viewing earlier East India Company stipulations that an owner had to sell at a company sale, was willing to accede to that stipulation. Thomas Morton, secretary, East India Company 29 February, 1792, allowed Macaulay to take cargo from China but not proceed from India on his own account. Macaulay had in 1786 sent Pitt to China.
Note 128: Puzzling: Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History. Melbourne, Sun Books, 1966, p. 16: later noting Britain seemed more interested in controlling Australian seas than Australian land. Many aspects of the arguments about motives are found in Martin's Founding. Some American (US) historians have commented on England's treatment of the American Loyalists from 1783-1786, but they do not appear to have read Australian views on the Loyalists. James Matra wished to settle Loyalists in Australasia. An irony exists, where an American historian might suggest that the British Creditors as a lobby group influenced the destiny of Loyalists, since it has been apparent to no-one that Duncan Campbell was a sometime chairman of the British Creditors, who himself had a niece who was a Loyalist refugee. I have followed this matter up in my 1994 treatment, A Bitter Pill.
Note 129: Various references to Matra are found in Martin's Founding.
Note 130: Shoddy: Mackay, Place of Exile, p. 100.
Note 131: These matters have been followed up in my article, `The Blackheath Connection'. It is not known why Macaulay's offer was originally rejected nor if he repeated his offer once tenders were advertised. Perhaps he was simply too blatant, too early in the piece?
Note 132: Ocean: 401 tons, Captain John Mertho, 300 convicts and 16 free settlers arriving 7-16 October, 1803, thence for China, but called to Sydney and was then chartered by government: Historical Records of Australia, III, Vol. 1, pp. 134ff; see also the Rev. Knopwood Diary. Hurrys then had out another active whaler, Alexander, Captain Robert Rhodes, off New South Wales. Bankruptcy: Tony Barrow, 'The Newcastle Whaling Trade, 1752-1849', The Mariner's Mirror, Vol. 75, 1989., pp. 231ff. On ships' captains about Tasmania, see Mary Nicholls, (Ed.), Diary of the Rev. Robert Knopwood, 1803-1838. Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1977.
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Note 133: Nance Irvine, Mary Reibey: Molly Incognita: A Biography of Mary Reibey, 1775-1855, and Her World. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1982. Nance Irvine, (Ed.), Dear Cousin: The Reibey Letters. Sydney, Janet Press, 1992. As a case history in confusion over shipping matters, it has been thought for many years that Thomas Reibey, husband of the early Sydney trader Mary Reibey, who was connected with the establishment of the Bank of New South Wales, had arrived in the colony on an East Indiaman, but in fact he arrived with sealer Raven on Britannia, and was therefore obliquely connected with St Barbe's involvements. Raven was Reibey's guardian, but examination of Raven's genealogy does not so far suggest anything useful on Reibey's origins. Had researchers earlier noted Raven's guardianship of Reibey, and similar angles on individual biographies, the "Botany Bay debate" may have taken different turnings. In The Bulletin, Special Bicentennial Edition, 26 January, 1988., pp. 149ff - an article by Trevor Sykes, 'A rum lot, our first entrepreneurs', there is reference to Pitt's voyage; a typical error refers to Raven as an East India Company man, which of course only distracts attention from men who were associated with the East India Company.
Ends the Endnotes
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