Transportation 1788-1868

Transportation 1788-1868

The process of transporting convicted criminals to Australia came about as a result of Britain's defeat in the American War of Independence. With the loss of this colony, Britain also lost its primary depository for its surplus criminal population; and, for a time, these excess numbers were housed in floating jails - 'hulks' - moored on the Thames. This proved an unpopular policy and so, in 1787, a British fleet set sail to build a penal colony at Botany Bay in New South Wales - seventeen years after James Cook had landed there. Robert Hughes, in his study The Fatal Shore, describes this undertaking as 'a new colonial experiment, never tried before, not repeated since. An unexplored continent would become a jail.'

The choice of New South Wales was an unusual one, for Cook had described it as barren, and A.G.L. Shaw notes in Convicts and the Colonies that 'it seemed wholly useless for trade'. It would appear that all the British government required was a place to dispose of its criminal classes and subsequently forget about them, ignoring commercial considerations. The inhospitable nature of the place seemed ideal for ne'er-do-wells, and its distant location meant that few were likely to return.

Many crimes, from petty theft to murder, were deemed worthy of transportation, and there seems to have been little distinction made between types of criminal, which concerned social reformers of the time. Household Words expressed concern that 'hardened ruffians of the deepest dye were chained hand to hand, during a six month voyage, with simple country poachers, pickpockets of tender age, and sailor smugglers.' All prisoners were treated alike, and conditions were harsh; appalling living conditions, disease, hunger, floggings and general neglect were prevalent and many convicts died en route or upon arrival.

However there was hope on the horizon for some prisoners; those who behaved well were hired out to emigrant farmers to become, like Dickens' Magwitch, 'sheep farmer(s), stock breeder(s) and other trades besides.' Thus convicts could make some sort of return to respectability. Not only that: those who had completed their terms were granted small plots of land, with the aim of boosting the local economy and ensuring that these undesirable - regardless of whether their crimes were 'worked out and paid for' - did not return to British shores.

The response from the metropolitan centre to these emancipist settlers who flourished was one of outrage; they feared that transportation would be perceived as a great blessing by the criminal classes, rather than as a deterrent.