Louis Becke

“ Although the General and the Governor of that island inform me that the troops and the people who are there are very unconcerned, and that they hope to offer a vigorous defence, I do not consider that the island is strong enough to support itself and resist; and this chiefly because the Enemy has no fear of our Fleet, since the Chief, the moment he saw the Spaniards entering, gave orders to all the ships to go as speedily as they could to Rio de Janeiro. Any stroke of good fortune which may befall us will be, to my mind, miraculous. ”

“ The departure of Governor Phillip from the colony was soon followed by a surprising change in the management of civil affairs: for the security of good order and public peace were in a moment almost annihilated, and a torrent of licentiousness bore everything civil and sacred before it. Whatever was injurious or disgraceful to human nature might have been reasonably expected from general drunkenness ”

“ The disaster to the Sirius again served to show Phillip's resourcefulness. He assembled his civil and military officers without delay, and the desperate situation of the colony was thoroughly considered. It was decided to reduce still further a ration that was already too low for proper human subsistence. To fish for a living, instead of being a mere expression, became a literal fact, for all private boats were to be surrendered for the general benefit. ”

“ The man who, one hundred and ten years ago, founded New South Wales is almost forgotten, yet the country now in such vigorous manhood was for the first half-dozen years of its existence a miserable starveling, and but for Phillip's tender nursing, its life would have ended in the year of its birth. ”

“ The Spanish Captain struck without losing more than four men, and when his vessel had received no damage that he could not have repaired while the fight was going on.
The disorderly way in which the Spaniards fought, the state of confusion in which their vessel was, and the fright they were in, appears to have been incredible. I think myself that they were in as abject fear of our Fleet as were the wretches of the Island of St Catherine. I hear that the men of our Fleet behaved in a most praiseworthy manner. Of our people only one ordinary seaman received a wound of any importance. ”

“ What the name of Columbus is to America, that should the name of Cook be to Australia, and although Phillip and his transports can scarcely be compared with the Pilgrim Fathers and the Mayflower, yet, as the pioneers of settlement in Australia, the officers of the First Fleet ought to be remembered as colonisers, with something of the same admiration we have for those sturdy Puritan adventurers. ”

“ His officers suffered from the same anxiety as to the welfare of those they had left behind them, and that was doubtless enough for Phillip. If his subordinates liked to complain to their friends and relatives in England of the apathy of the Government in not sending even a mail to the new settlement, they could do so; he was too proud and self-contained a man to make domestic anxieties a peg on which to hang even a just grievance, and thus set an example which would have been contagious, and might have led to the disintegration and even the decay of the community. ”

“ My duty as a clergyman fully takes up all my time. Neither will my constitution admit of it—this is much impaired since I came into this country, and at this very time I feel such rheumatic pains and weakness that I can scarcely go through the duties of my office. This brings me to mention another circumstance. I have to perform divine service at three different places, vizt., at Sydney, Parramatta, and at a settlement about three miles to the westward of Parramatta, and at never a one of these three places is there to this day any place of worship erected, nor so much as talked of. ”

“ It is a fact that a woman, for the crime of coining, was strangled and afterwards burnt in public in front of Newgate gaol in the very year that Phillip landed in Sydney, and about a hundred executions was the annual average for England at this time. Of course, twelve 'good men and true' did not in Sydney try their fellow-citizens when they 'got into trouble,' but then the country was at this time a gaol, and the most sanguine philanthropist has scarcely ventured to argue that gaol discipline can be maintained by trial by jury. ”

“ Phillip, writing to Grenville in July 1790, says, in illustration of the class of men he had to deal with:—
'Experience, Sir, has taught me how difficult it is to make men industrious who have passed their lives in habits of vice and indolence. In some cases it has been found impossible; neither kindness nor severity have had any effect; and tho' I can say that the convicts in general behave well, there are many who dread punishment less than they fear labour; and those who have not been brought up to hard work, which are by far the greatest part, bear it badly. ”

“ And the worthy people who do not consider the exigencies of empire-building and the laws of nature, will be shocked to learn that Phillip, a man of the most stringent morality, mentioned the fact that at the Friendly Islands 'women could be procured.' In the same letter he asked that the Secretary of State should empower him, in case the Sirius should return to England, to take command of any other ships that might remain on the coast, by hoisting a distinguishing pendant on such ships, so that he might retain the command at sea and be able to explore the coast. ”

“ That the modern voyager may the better understand why Collins rejoices at the successful conduct of this sea journey, here is an extract from a letter from Port Jackson on the voyage of the Second Fleet of transports:—
'Oh! if you had but seen the shocking sight of the poor creatures that came out in the three ships it would make your heart bleed. They were almost dead. Very few could stand, and they were obliged to sling them like goods and hoist them out of the ships, they were so feeble, and they died ten or twelve a day when first landed. ”

“ Upon Phillip lay the task of conducting, in a fleet of transports on a six months' voyage to a country practically unknown, about a thousand passengers, of whom more than seven hundred were probably in every respect the worst that could have been selected in the gaols of England. Many of them were desperate wretches whose presence on board the ships was a more constant and greater menace to their safety than all the dangers known and unknown of the sea. ”

“ I now, sir, beg leave to assure you that I shall ever retain a due sense of the obligation, and trust that my hope of having the pension fixed, so as not to cease on my attaining any one of those places to which officers look up as rewards of past services, or to which in the course of service a commanding officer might find it expedient to appoint me, will meet with your approbation. ”

“ This agricultural settlement in the neighbourhood of what is now the old town of Parramatta was planned by Phillip, and from the success of its first settler dates the beginning of the young colony's self-dependence.
At headquarters an heroic attempt was made, in spite of the rocky soil, to grow something. A farm was cleared in the cove next to Sydney, and about nine acres of corn planted. The place is now the site of the Botanic Gardens, and the bay formed by its shores, like many another of the inlets of Port Jackson, commemorates by its name—Farm Cove—the earliest times of settlement. ”

“ The condition of affairs at the island when the Sirius went on shore is, of course, some justification for Ross's 'panic legislation,' although Mr Barton, the ablest Australian historian, has arrived at an opposite conclusion. Mr Barton quotes authorities to show that the only justification recognised by English law for proclaiming martial law 'is necessity, a necessity demonstrated by facts, not an imaginary one.' But Ross was in the position of a captain of a ship with his vessel in the breakers, who loads his revolvers in readiness to shoot the first man who attempts to rush the boats. ”

“ In a colony which contains only a few hundred hovels, built of twigs and mud, we feel consequential enough already to talk of a treasury, an admiralty, a public library, and many other similar edifices, which are to form part of a magnificent square. ”

“ Sydney, nevertheless, continued to be the place of the Governor's residence, and consequently the headquarters of the colony. No public building of note, except a storehouse, had been erected since my last statement. The barracks, so long talked of, so long promised, for the accommodation and discipline of the troops were not even begun when I left the country; and instead of a new hospital, the old one was patched up, and with the assistance of one brought ready framed from England, served to contain the sick. The employment of the male convicts here, as at Rose Hill, was the public labour. ”

“ In the famine time, Collins says, the little society that was in the place was broken up, and every man seemed left to brood in solitary silence over the dreary prospect before him.
With the exception of the Johnsons, the only free women and children in the settlement were the families of the marines, and it was not until the arrival of the New South Wales Corps, in the ships of the Second and Third Fleets, that a 'Government House set' began to loom on the social horizon. ”

“ On his way to Norfolk Island, Lieutenant Ball, the commander of the Supply, discovered and named Lord Howe Island, and on the return trip surveyed and annexed it to Phillip's territory. The little island is distant from Sydney about 440 miles, and is now occupied by some seventy or eighty settlers, mostly old whaling seamen and people with a taste for a secluded life, which, as there is little communication with the mainland, their lonely retreat (notwithstanding that it is, for election purposes, within one of the metropolitan electorates) enables them to gratify. ”

“ Ross's crew were of a kind very likely to rush the boats, and if he was a little hasty in getting his revolvers ready, small blame to him on that account: but it is a pity that when acting under Phillip he should have shown such extreme regard for red-tape formalities in the matter of the court-martial.
All this time the people on the mainland are left nearly starving, and so Norfolk Island must take care of itself as best it can for a while. No news of it can reach Port Jackson, for the Sirius is slowly breaking up on the reef, and the Supply has gone to Batavia for help. ”

“ On Sunday morning early I now ride up to the new settlement; preach in the open air about seven o'clock to about 600 convicts; at ten and at four in the afternoon I preach at Parramatta. I fear, however, I shall not be able to continue this much longer, especially as the winter is now approaching, unless some places be erected for the purpose. Besides my public duty I have to visit the sick, which at present both at Sydney and Parramatta are a great many; numbers dying every day. ”

“ Indeed, I may say that nothing short of absolute necessity could induce men to use it. What makes this the more severely felt by many of us is our not having known what we were to be supplied with till it was much too late to make any other provision for ourselves.'
Fortunately for the future prosperity of the colony, the other officers did not whine about their hardships, though Ross no doubt gave them every encouragement to do so. Phillip sometimes came near to losing his temper with the Major, who seemed to miss no chance of harassing the Governor in every possible way. ”

“ If three frigates are kept constantly in this district, one to remain in the Colony, another in the port of St Catherine's, and the third in the port of this the capital city, in order to go to the assistance of either of the others when necessary, and to guard the coast, not only of that island, but of Rio Grande, as well as to exchange every now and again with the one which is at the Colony, that will, I think, be the only way to make ourselves respected and ensure quiet. ”

“ The Spaniards who, as regards Rio Grande, are reported to be quiet, the Governor of the Colony continues to inform me are, in those parts, more in evidence, not only as regards their squabbling and their arrogant and defiant language, but because they have got ready the three frigates and the ship of the line which they have in the port, are sending more troops to Montevideo, are working with great activity upon the barracks for fresh troops, and are, at the same time, adding to the works of defence of their ports. ”

“ The dread of perishing by famine stares us in the face; on the day I write we have but eight weeks' provision in the public stores, and all chance of a reinforcement under seven months is cut off, unless ships from England should yet, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, come in upon us. ”

“ A youngster named Southwell, a master's mate on the Sirius, from whose letters much of interest can be extracted, has a word of praise for Phillip's care of the people in his charge. He says:—
'The Commodore's conduct has endeared him to most of them, and, indeed, I believe few could have been found better calculated for the occasion than our commander. He is a man who has seen much of the Service and much of the world, and has studied it. He is possessed of great good sense, well informed, indefatigable upon service, is humane and at the same time spirited and resolute ”