VI

FOR THE NEXT four months Mary and Charlotte could not seem to get dry. The ship flew through the choppy seas, impelled by fresh gales that bellied out the sails until they were as taut as drumskins, and a constant shower of salt spray shot over the bow, across the deck and into the hold. Squalls dumped sheets of drenching rain on the convoy, high seas washed over the decks and on the few clear days the air was so thick with dampness that green slime formed on the walls and the berths were slick with moisture. Seamen aboard the Charlotte closed the hatches to prevent more water coming in, but it was too late. The convicts were soaked to the skin, their flimsy, tattered clothes clinging to their thin bodies, their outworn shoes in pieces.

The Charlotte lumbered crazily in the troughs of the waves, constantly heeling over, in danger of overturning when she came into the wind or encountered a strong following sea. Water sloshed over every surface, soaking the light blankets allotted to the convicts, spoiling the provisions, pouring over the chests of stores and ammunition and leaving behind small fish and seaweed and the smell of salt and decay.

With the constant wet came constant cold. Although spring had come to the south latitudes, it was no mild, warm English spring but a rainy, stormy spring that gave way to an even more rainy summer. The fresh winds that drove the ships forward at high speed were chill winds, biting and raw; the convicts shivered in their light garments, especially the women, whose “nearly naked” state so disturbed Commander Phillip that while in Rio he brought aboard burlap sacks with which to make them clothes. Burlap provided little warmth, however, even when worn in layers. Whether the surgeons, who cut up sheets and blankets to make extra shirts and trousers for the male convicts, also made garments for the women is not known. The supply of clothing had been diminished when high winds blew drying laundry overboard—one of the convicts, William Brown, fell overboard and was lost while trying to retrieve his laundry from the bowsprit—and by the effects of hard wear over many months. What were needed were warm flannel shirts, flannel petticoats, woollen coats and cloaks, plus warm gloves and mittens and caps and bonnets to keep out the rain and damp. But there was no benefactor to provide these, and so day after day, as the ships drove southward, the cold became more penetrating and the seas more boisterous.

Even while anchored in Table Bay, where the convoy stayed for a month between mid-October and mid-November taking on water and provisions, there was no escape from the frigid winds, for a gale struck the ships and once the journey was resumed the sea was littered with icebergs.

Fresh challenges met the fleet as it sailed on through the cold, choppy waters, several of the ships listing badly, all heavily laden, having taken on some five hundred live animals for the long haul between the Cape and Botany Bay. Fog often shrouded the sea, reducing visibility to as little as half a mile and making the dangerous icebergs hard to avoid. They loomed up suddenly, high rocks of dirty ice, a menace to navigation for their vast submerged portions contained thrusting sharp ledges of ice that could tear out a ship’s bow within seconds and send her to the bottom within minutes. The air was raw with frost, and the seamen, their fingers stiff and all but frozen, were clumsy and slow in setting the sails, the cold making the knots in the gaskets rigid.

Toward the middle of November an epidemic of dysentery began spreading, especially on the Charlotte where at least thirty people, including Surgeon White, were ill. The sufferers were doubled over with terrible stabbing pain in the bowels, high fever and, in the worst cases, delirium. Dark, gloomy weather and heavy seas seemed to accentuate the misery of the sick as the vessels labored on, rolling uncontrollably with waves breaking over them and the ships’ pumps barely able to keep pace with the rising water below deck. Superstitious seamen cursed and crossed themselves when albatrosses, thought to be omens of delay and disaster, appeared among the petrels and gannets and Mother Carey’s chickens in the cloudy sky.

Whether or not Mary and her baby daughter were afflicted with dysentery is not recorded, but by mid-December both must have been excessively thin and pale, desperately cold and in constant misery from the severe pitching and rolling of the Charlotte. Their water ration had been reduced to three pints a day, there was no fresh food left and the sheep, hogs and chickens were dying, their piteous bleating, squealing and clucking a wrenching counterpoint to the noise of the waves beating savagely against the ships’ sides and the rattle of the rigging and the convicts’ shackles. With each day more dead livestock were thrown overboard. The sailors whispered that the albatrosses had brought bad luck and that almost immediately after the birds were sighted a Norwegian sailor aboard the Prince of Wales had fallen overboard, the convoy traveling at such high speed that he could not be rescued.

Now the disease the sailors dreaded most, scurvy, began to make its appearance, striking the convict women first. Their gums became swollen and tender, and turned black and hard and very painful. Teeth fell out, eating became impossible. In the worst cases the victims suffered from pains in the legs and chest, with a debilitating fever. Efforts were made to prevent the scurvy from spreading; decks were washed with vinegar and smoked with brimstone. But with the constant flying spray and the sloshing of water along the decks and in the hold, such attempts at improving hygiene were pitifully feeble, and soon the scurvy spread to the crew, some of whom became too weak to go aloft. Through much of December the Charlotte and her companion vessels were tossed and tumbled on the often mountainous seas, seemingly directionless, at the mercy of the winds and currents, while the fearsome albatrosses, birds of ill omen, soared above them, dark wings spread wide. Meanwhile the officers, swathed in layers of flannel waistcoats and thick wool greatcoats, calculated how long the putrid water in the casks would last and whether they would make landfall before the remaining food stores gave out.

Despite all, they were making good time. The ships were covering more than a hundred miles a day, running down the Roaring Forties, the near-arctic latitudes where, at the height of the December-January antipodean summer, high winds gusted lustily and often reached gale force.¹

Just before Christmas a fair wind blew, breaking the pattern of the extreme cold, and on Christmas Day the convicts received a slightly fuller ration than usual. “We complied, as far as was in our power, with the good old English custom,” wrote the Judge Advocate David Collins, “and partook of a better dinner this day than usual; but the weather was too rough to admit much social enjoyment.”²

There was high excitement when, through thick sheets of rain, a lookout cried “Land ho!” having sighted the outline of the coast of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).³ They had been at sea nearly eight weeks, their longest stretch without making port or even sighting land from a distance.

Clutching Charlotte, now nearly four months old, Mary felt the surge of relief and joy that swept over all the ships, and joined in the weeping, singing and shouting that rose from vessel to vessel. Guns boomed, boatswain’s whistles were piped, seamen danced crazily in celebration. No doubt Commander Phillip breathed more easily, relieved that his navigation had brought them all safely three-quarters of the way around the globe, without veering seriously off course or getting lost.

Land was in sight, but the squalls were growing blacker, and the seas higher. Spray was beginning to shoot up over the bows as the vessels dipped in steeper and steeper troughs. They were making for the land, hoping to find a safe harbor, but hour by hour the wind was rising, and the sky darkening, immense black and purple clouds piling high, some streaked with coppery-orange, until an ominous gloom lay over the sea and the air grew heavy and clammy.

The crew’s elation began to fade as, preparing for the coming storm, they closed the hatches and locked the sea chests, tied down the remaining panic-stricken animals and struggled to take in sail. Shut into the dark hold, Mary heard their running footsteps and felt the growing tension as the wind rose even higher and broken water roared over the bow. She felt the shock of each crashing wave, the Charlotte shivering, her timbers straining and creaking loudly as if in protest at the ill-treatment wrought by the storm. Thunder rolled and boomed incessantly, bringing with it the equally loud sound of torrents of rain striking the deck with great force. Every time the ship heeled over sharply as fierce gusts caught the sails, Mary and the other women shrieked in terror, imagining that she would never right herself again.

And then there was the baby, tiny Charlotte, red-faced and crying, unable to nurse or sleep. Mary did what she could to comfort her, but the wild rocking of the ship meant that comfort was not to be found, not for Charlotte, not for anyone. Wrapped in a scrap of blanket or a shred of torn canvas, or perhaps in some of Governor Phillip’s burlap sacking, Charlotte cried, then whimpered, her little hands clutching at her mother, while all around her the forces of wind and rain gathered for their ultimate assault.

Hour after hour the gale lashed at the convoy in full fury, whipping the sea into immense peaks, whistling through the rigging, tearing the topsails off the Golden Grove and wrenching the main yard off the Prince of Wales. The Charlotte wallowed on, sometimes almost broadside to the wind, taking each of the huge combers as it came, somehow enduring the violent crashing of the waves against its wooden sides again and again. With each juddering crash, Mary feared the timbers would give way. The relentless breakers struck like the blows of a battering ram, constant and unremitting. Surely the ship could not endure such incessant torment for long, surely the planks would splinter, then give way entirely, the white water rushing in to smother them all and drown them.

As bad as her fear and anxiety were, Mary’s sickness was worse. For like all the other women she was seasick, dizzy and ill and vomiting, so sick she almost wanted the ship to stave in so that she could die. Each heave and roll of the vessel made her stomach lurch, her head burst anew with pain. It was all she could do to hold on, in her wretchedness, praying for relief from the ongoing nightmare while trying to comfort her ill baby.

The convict women “were so terrified that most of them were down on their knees at prayers,” wrote Surgeon Bowes, recalling the terrible storm that struck the fleet. Retching, praying, cursing fate yet begging for deliverance, Mary spent the long day and night of January 10 and 11 waiting—waiting to die, waiting to be sick again, waiting for deliverance from the storm.

And at last, having roared and raged all night and far into the following day, the wind began to slacken slightly, the huge waves became less mountainous and the frenzy of wind and water abated to a restless heaving and churning. Exhausted, crew and convicts slept. When they awoke the wind had fallen further, the rain had finally ceased and the sun shone over rolling swells. Albatrosses, petrels and gulls swooped and dove on the air currents, and the ochre hills of Van Diemen’s Land loomed on the horizon.

Dazed, thirsty, queasy, the survivors of the storm stumbled up on the deck of the Charlotte, hardly believing themselves alive. There it was, land, solid ground, coming closer as the onshore breeze drove the vessel forward.

Their prayers had been answered. One by one the convicts, sailors and crew lifted their weary, thin faces to the southern sun and gratefully felt its warmth. Their ceaseless journeying was nearly at an end.