Lady convicts, and anchovies cut a caper

Source: Sea Life Sixty Years Ago, by George Bayly. 1885.

Reading George Bayly should be compulsory. He's funny, humane, a great observer of people, and had some pretty amazing adventures. His book is short and easy to read for modern minds. It's not available online yet and seems only to have gone to one or two editions. If ever I make a website I'll scan the whole thing. I think the copy I have is a cheap American reprint from the early 1900s. I got it cheap. The ones on Abebooks are rather on the expensive side.

Over two chapters (this is the second of them) he describes his voyage on board the Almorah transporting female Irish convicts to Port Jackson. He records how they were berthed, how they lived, what they said. Because I can't upload all this to blogger, here is a little snapshot of what occured on the voyage from after they crossed the line until they arrived at Sydney in 1824. I've some other extracts from his book here.

The skipper of the Almorah got in a bit of trouble (Supreme Court Decsion 1 and Decision 2) in Sydney and that's how Bayly started his rather random wanderings over the Pacific.

Transportation

Source: India Government Gazette. Supplement. 03 January 1828. p4.

This extract gives a good picture of conditions on board a convict ship. The author was responsible for the general health of the prisoners and seems to have taken the responsibility seriously. I suppose some were better than others.

An intersting article, as it goes into some depth as to the living conditions, food, clothing, and general care taken of convicts for the 6-odd month long voyage.

There is also a bit of interesting social information, as to the culture of the convicts and the language they used. This stuff later appeared in "A Residence of Eleven Years in New Holland and the Caroline Islands" by James F. O'Connell, 1835.

George Bayly, whose memoirs I've mentioned in previous posts, worked his first passage to the South Seas in a convict ship in 1824, transporting Irish women convicts to Port Jackson. It's interesting to compare the two sources. Bayly makes mention of most of what is stated here. I'll post that up next.

Bad Luck Brigs 2

Here is George Bayly's account of the Calder wreck in Valparaiso in 1825. Stranded in Sydney, he needed a job. The skipper of the convict transport he was apprenticed in had been accused of smuggling tea. Bayly took discharge and shipped on the Calder, bound for Chile, as third mate. This account comes from my copy of his memoir published in 1885, "Sea Life Sixty Years Ago".

Bayly was discharged from the Calder in Chile, and was forced to sell his sextant to pay for lodgings. He found a buyer in Peter Dillon, Who later re-employed him for the St Patrick, again as third mate. I wonder if he got the sextant back, and at what price? Dillon didn't have much time for scientific navigation, letting his officers take the Latitude and did the rest by dead reckoning (he was acknowledged a master by those who left records of him).

By the time this voyage was over, Bayly had had a gutsful of Dillon and sailed back to England from Calcutta. Unable to find an officer's berth, he considered sailing before the mast. He was saved from this when he found a post shipping as sailmaker aboard the Hooghly; grateful that his father made him get a trade before he went to sea. He eventually became a trading captain himself.

I like Bayly, he takes things as they come and seems a cheerful soul. His diaries are held in the Hocken Library in NZ, and have been republished under the title "A Life on the Ocean Wave" by the Miegunyah Press. The picture of the Calder above is reproduced from that publication.