Australian History For Dummies. Alex McDermott
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott страница 23
![Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott](/cover_pre1083347.jpg)
In summer, these career criminals tramped around the countryside, haunting fairs, market days and race meetings, stealing chickens from gardens and sleeping under hedges. They were often drunk, and would have been prime candidates for any Gamblers Anonymous meeting. Although the line ‘honour among thieves’ was regularly trotted out, they tended to show little mutual trust, thieving from each other, dobbing each other in with the authorities after a fight or an argument, and frequently turning witness for the Crown in a trial and giving evidence against associates. If you think they probably weren’t ideal material to start a colony with, after the first couple of months Phillip would have emphatically agreed.
Holding Out at Sydney
Once the First Fleet had arrived in what would become Sydney, Captain Phillip tried to get the convicts to work, which didn’t go too well. Taken out of 18th-century London criminal subculture, dumped down in an alien wilderness, and expected to toil each day to establish crops and a settlement wasn’t their idea of smart living. They wandered off whenever they could, threw away tools into the bush, and generally behaved like grumpy contestants on an episode of Big Brother.
The assumption on the part of Lord Sydney in the Colonial Office in London had been that the convicts’ main punishment was exile — that once they’d been transported and had arrived in NSW, they’d be ‘free on the ground’. ‘Not on your life!’ said Arthur Phillip (or something similar). ‘You can see how little they do as servants of the Crown. Can you imagine what a disaster it would be if they were left to their own devices?’ So he insisted that the convicts should work on public farms under guard, and he continued to coerce, cajole and browbeat them. Neither of these two moves met with much success.
Using convicts as guards
Phillip had his problems getting convicts to work in the new settlement at Sydney, but the convicts weren’t the only troublesome bunch. Phillip’s other big problem was the officers and soldier marines.
So Phillip was forced to appoint convicts as overseers, which made for a strange situation (prisoners guarding prisoners), but was nothing compared to when Phillip was forced by necessity to make convicts nightwatchmen and constables. This meant, of course, that soon enough you had convict constables arresting marines doing wrong. The officers flipped, but Phillip’s sympathy was, shall I say, not greatly discernible.
Issuing ultimatums (and being ignored)
With no free settlers forthcoming from Britain, Phillip had to try to make the most of the convicts and marines he was stuck with in NSW. To do this, he tried threats, issuing the convicts with an ultimatum: No work, no eat. Rations would be given only to those who put in. The convicts called his bluff. ‘What?’ they said (or something similar). ‘You’re going to just let us all starve, are you? The government is just going to send us out here, to the other side of the world, and leave us to die?’
Soldiering on regardless
In addition to the difficulties with the criminals and the marines, the ground Phillip was trying to grow crops on proved to be largely barren and infertile. But Phillip showed his mettle, and his genius for combining real fairness with great toughness. A man who’d been living on and commanding ships for much of his life, he was used to the world of rough equality that prevailed on ships. This world was often brutal, but on the ship everyone knew they had no-one else to rely on outside their fellow crew, whatever their rank may be. This same logic applied now and Phillip followed it ruthlessly.
Phillip declared that all rations would be divided equally, no matter if you were free or felon. The officers, again, were outraged, but Phillip, again, ignored them. Then he showed the same impartiality with executions. Stealing provisions was made a capital offence. In the year of their arrival, he’d shown this by hanging convicts who stole supplies. He then followed it up in 1789 by hanging soldiers who were caught running a scam of pilfering the main store. No-one could be under any illusions now as to how things stood.
New