5

The Tempestuous Southern Ocean

Our passage to the South [could] truly be called a tempestuous one.

ELIZABETH MACARTHUR’S SHIPBOARD JOURNAL, UNDATED

Elizabeth was much happier aboard the Scarborough. The master, John Marshall, she described as ‘a plain, honest man, and disposed to make things as comfortable to me as was in his power’.¹ Marshall, like Gilbert, had commanded one of the First Fleet transports and he amused Elizabeth with his flattering accounts of the colony. He further endeared himself to her by speaking ‘in the tenderest terms’ of his wife and three children in England.² The convicts aboard the Scarborough were not so enamoured of the master. Only days before Elizabeth’s transfer a scheme to mutiny was discovered, and the convict ringleaders were flogged and chained to the open deck. The rest of the Scarborough convicts were being kept in the same conditions as those aboard the Neptune—tightly ironed, poorly fed, inadequately exercised—and they were dying at a similar rate. For eight weeks, the three transports—Neptune, Scarborough and Surprize—sailed down the African coast. The weather turned nasty and it was with relief that, on 14 April 1790, they anchored in False Bay, some twenty miles from Cape Town, on the southern, more protected side of the peninsula. As keen as the voyagers were for fresh food and water, it’s most likely they received fresh news first.

With dismay, they learned of the wreck of HMS Guardian, the forty-four-gun ship laden with provisions and valuable stores for the New South Wales colony. Holed by Antarctic ice in the Southern Ocean on Christmas Eve and struggling to keep the pumps operating at capacity, the ship’s captain was forced to throw overboard most of the livestock, plants and stores in order to stay afloat. Two days later the Guardian’s captain, Edward Riou, allowed more than sixty men, about half of those on board, to flee in the ship’s boats. At that stage no one was clear as to who was abandoning whom. However a valiant (and extraordinarily lucky) Riou managed to nurse the damaged Guardian back to Cape Town, arriving in February 1790. Of the men in the boats only fifteen were ever seen again, rescued after nine days by a French ship.3 The Guardian was beyond repair and was eventually beached and abandoned.

News just as interesting, although of less immediate concern to the Macarthurs, was the miraculous escape of Lieutenant Bligh after losing his ship, HMS Bounty, to Fletcher Christian’s mutineers. No one could possibly then have guessed how John Macarthur would one day himself engineer another mutinous uprising against Bligh. The mutiny on the Bounty had occurred near Tahiti a year earlier—on 28 April 1789—and Bligh had endured forty-seven days and 3618 nautical miles in an overcrowded open boat before he was able to land at Timor, in June 1789.4 From there it took him nine months to get back to England and report the matter to Admiralty. Bligh spent Christmas at the Cape and had left for London in January, only a few months before Elizabeth and John arrived. He left letters for Governor Phillip (who at Sydney Cove was nearest the scene of the crime) appraising him of the mutiny, and describing each of the ‘pirates’. Conscientious and expert mariner that he was, Bligh’s dispatches to Phillip also included detailed descriptions of the best sea roads through the Endeavour Straits to Timor—sea roads that Bligh had traversed in that leaking, open boat. Bounty’s Master, John Fryer, had accompanied Bligh in the open boat and was still in Cape Town with a handful of other survivors, helping Riou with the Guardian’s salvage operation.⁵

The Macarthurs’ ship Scarborough and the other transports remained at False Bay for only sixteen days. The longer the fleet tarried in port, the longer the voyage overall and the more the contractors’ profit dwindled. The other reason to make haste lay in the weather. Due to the delays in leaving England, the three transports now faced crossing the dangerous Southern Ocean on the brink of winter. The sooner they got going, the better.

Captain Riou, forced to pay exorbitant storage fees for what remained of HMS Guardian’s cargo, was keen to transfer as much of it as he could to the Scarborough and the other Second Fleet transports. Much had already been transferred into the Lady Juliana when she had anchored at the Cape in March.⁶ However, the masters of the Second Fleet transports complained: the large quantity of additional stores was not covered by contract and they were not permitted to impose freight charges. Naval agent Shapcote, as usual, sided with the masters and was adamant that their sailing date was fixed, effectively precluding the loading of stores beyond that day. Captain Riou, who had sailed as a teenage midshipman under Cook, was considered by his peers to be an outstanding seaman and he would rise to become one of Nelson’s captains at the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen.7 In a private letter dispatched during the month following the Second Fleet’s departure, Riou was exasperated and scathing: ‘If ever the navy make another contract like that of the last three ships they ought to be shot and as for their agent Mr Shapcote he behaved here just as foolishly as a man could well do.’⁸ Riou would never encounter Shapcote again—within a few weeks of leaving the Cape colony Shapcote would die of natural causes.

Throughout their stay at the Cape, the convicts remained on board and securely ironed. Trail much later argued that ‘the ship lay so near the Shore that it was necessary to take every precaution’ to prevent an escape. As a result, the lower decks were not properly cleaned out. Trail and his employers would later state that the convicts’ deck was ‘daily scraped, swabbed or mopped, and Twice a week sprinkled with Oil of Tar or Vinegar’.⁹ But by this stage the male convicts had endured six or more months below decks (the women had greater freedom of movement). The men were suffering from scurvy, covered in lice, and prone to vomiting and diarrhoea.¹⁰ The orlop deck was far beyond being cleaned by a sprinkle of vinegar and the wave of a swab.

The surgeons on each of the three transports used their time in port to write to naval agent Shapcote. None queried the below-decks living conditions but each articulated the seriousness of the scurvy situation. ‘I am sorry to inform you’, wrote Surgeon Beyer of the Scarborough, ‘that the scurvy is making a rapid progress, both amongst the soldiers and the convicts.’11 Crucially missing from the convicts’ stipulated ration was any source of vitamin C. Scurvy was the inevitable result, with symptoms manifesting within about four weeks and continuing worse. The early symptoms are flu-like and include nausea, diarrhoea, fever and painful joints and muscles. Later symptoms include swollen and abscessed gums leading to loose teeth (and foul-smelling breath), severe and easy bruising, bulging eyes, the opening of previously healed scars, bleeding into the joints and muscles and, eventually, fatal internal haemorrhages. In babies and children, scurvy stunts bone growth. Royal Navy surgeon James Lind had proved that scurvy could be treated with citrus fruit and published his findings in 1753, but his suggestions were not widely implemented until the early nineteenth century. Across the three ships, about a third of the soldiers and convicts were afflicted. At the surgeons’ urging, Shapcote authorised the daily provision of fresh beef and vegetables while they lay at anchor—whether his orders were carried out is not known.

Elizabeth remained aboard Scarborough for the first eight days in port. In a letter sent from the Cape to her mother, her first words express her deep concerns for her ‘poor little Boy…He has been very sickly throughout the Passage, & unless a very speedy change take place I am well convinced he will shortly cease to be an inhabitant of this world’.¹² Elizabeth goes on to detail Edward’s size, providing further evidence of his malnourishment. ‘He is not near so large as children generally are at four months old, altho’ he is now upwards of twelve.’ There is also a hint that Elizabeth was not finding motherhood easy. ‘He is very sensible, very lively, & affords us much pleasure; but the trouble we have had with so delicate a little creature is indescribable, & I wonder my own health hath not suffered more from the attention I have been obliged to pay him.’ Elizabeth then seems to think of the effect of her letter on its reader and hastens to reassure her mother that she is now very well. ‘I was nearly tired with the length of the Passage before we got into Port, & stood in need of refreshments very much; but now with the benefit of fresh meat, plenty of fruits & vegetables, I am quite recovered; & assure my beloved Mother that I never was in better health, & am in very good Spirits which are only dampened by poor Edward’s illness.’13

Elizabeth continues the letter in this happier vein, claiming to ‘have but little spare time, being busy in seeing all our Linen washed & got up, & laying in stock & refreshment to take with us to Botany Bay’. Clearly Elizabeth was determined not to have to rely solely on the ship’s steward for her family’s rations. She did manage, though, to squeeze in a visit to the governor, where she was ‘met by his Daughter, who was dressed after our mode; but as she could not speak English, nor I Dutch, we could only exchange dumb civilities’. Presumably language continued to be a problem as Elizabeth found the locals to be ‘unfriendly & Rude’. She conceded, though, that the ‘Dutch live very well at their own tables—I like their houses, they are spacious & airy & their Slaves keep them remarkably clean. A Man’s riches are here determined by the number of his Slaves. If you go to a genteel House you will see a dozen of them attending in the Hall.’ Elizabeth offers no opinion about slavery, but appears to accept it—she presents it merely as an item of interest. Public interest in Britain about the issue was growing, and abolitionist William Wilberforce’s campaign had formally begun just before Elizabeth left England, but the British slave trade would not be abolished until the passing of The Slave Trade Act 1807. Elizabeth does, however, make a passing comment on the local indigenous people. ‘I have not yet seen any of the original inhabitants of this Coast—the Hottentots. There are some, I am told, who reside in the Mountains; they are a harmless set of Beings & hurt no one.’14

Elizabeth focuses on the local plants and produce, noting that ‘every shrub & flower I saw, being new, was interesting…the face of the Country is very romantic’ and ‘these works of nature at the foot of the mountains represent a beautiful Shrubbery, where innumerable beautiful flowers & plants delight the eye or regale the senses’. She notes that ‘fruit is to be had in great abundance. The grapes are fine, beyond what I can describe to you; you have no idea to what a pitch of luxuriance they arrive. It is here the season of Autumn & apples, pears & such fruits are now just in perfection—We get Wine for about one shilling the Bottle.’¹⁵

The letter Elizabeth sent to her mother from Cape Town is about 1500 words long, half the length of her entire shipboard journal. It was dispatched midway through her sojourn at the Cape. In it she also records that Surgeon Beyer advised her to spend ‘as much time as possible on Shore, in order to get very strong & prepared for the remainder of the voyage’. It is the closest Elizabeth comes to mentioning her pregnancy, which was by then about five or six months advanced. Heeding the surgeon’s advice, Elizabeth arranged to spend her final eight days boarding with ‘a genteel private family’. John remained aboard the Scarborough, supervising the convicts and the transfer of goods from HMS Guardian, and visited her daily. ‘Mr Macarthur has enjoyed a remarkably good share of health, ever since we left England’ wrote Elizabeth to her mother, ‘& I trust will continue to do so’.16 She was, of course, tempting fate.

Elizabeth would record in her journal that a ‘few days before we quitted False Bay Mr Macarthur was attack’d with a violent, & very alarming Fever; it continued to rage until every sense was lost, & every faculty but life destroyed, and my little Boy at that time was so very ill, that I could scarcely expect him to survive a day.’ She received some assistance from a Captain Reid ‘who commanded an Imperial East Indiaman that then lay in the Bay with us he visited Mr M. frequently, & supplied me with a few comforts that afterwards were of the greatest service’.¹⁷ Captain Reid—who was previously unknown to Elizabeth—provides an early example of John Macarthur’s ability to spontaneously make firm friends. Unfortunately, John would demonstrate the same skill at making even firmer enemies. Once the Scarborough was at sea again, Captain Marshall did what he could to help, but Elizabeth complains that none of the other officers made the slightest offer of assistance. The end of Elizabeth’s journal, describing this last leg of her voyage, is torn but the remaining fragments and subsequent letters home give some inkling of Elizabeth’s predicament.

Leaving the Cape, the Scarborough travelled south and east into the maw of the Southern Ocean. Ships travelling beyond the Cape of Good Hope generally maintained a latitude of about 40 degrees south, then moved gradually northwards towards India or the Spice Islands (Indonesia). Those bound for New South Wales, however, were forced further south, often as far as 50 degrees, in order to clear the southernmost tip of New Holland (Tasmania). At such latitudes, the rigging grew icy and the cold seeped into the holds and the cabins. Icebergs were another hazard, as Captain Riou of HMS Guardian had discovered.

The huge stretch of open ocean east of the Cape, lacking any protective landmasses, results in consistent and often gale-force westerly winds, known as the Roaring Forties. A ship could travel here for days at speeds unheard of in the northern hemisphere. And the dangerous combination of high winds and landless sea produces enormous waves that could lift a ship up high before passing ahead and leaving it to sink into the trough where the lower sails could sag in the calm, rendering it vulnerable to swamping from the next wave. Sailing in these conditions involved running straight down the face of a wave with enough speed to cross the trough and rise back up again, up into the gale and over the crest once more.

Even in fine weather the constant pitching motion of the ship in the Southern Ocean was wearying. But Elizabeth saw little if any fine weather. The Neptune’s log recorded that the weather was very stormy for the Second Fleet’s crossing between the Cape and New South Wales.18 Every activity and movement, however small, required enormous effort, and throughout the crossing, Elizabeth’s husband and her child ‘continued intermittent for a long time’. For five weeks after they left the Cape, she had ‘one, & sometimes two Soldiers sit up every night’, presumably to watch over and tend to John. Elizabeth snatched rest when she could by ‘laying my head on a Locker’ until eventually someone gave up his cabin for her use.19 She could not retire to bed in her own cabin while a soldier was there with her husband.

Stormy weather meant no exercise for the convicts or passengers and no cooking fires—for anyone. The inadequate rations, now served cold, continued to wreak havoc among the below-decks population, with scurvy and starvation now taking an even grimmer toll. A sailor would later allege that some convicts deliberately concealed their colleagues’ deaths, so that the dead man’s rations could continue to be claimed by his bunk mates. The same sailor claimed that the convicts ‘were reduced to such extremities that they have eaten the [oaten] poultices taken from their sores’.²⁰

The convicts were now also subject to exposure and hypothermia. Despite the sealed hatches, the orlop deck was at best damp and very often waterlogged. In any wooden ship a good deal of water normally leaked through the sides, let alone that which made its way down from the upper decks. Captain William Hill, John Macarthur’s fellow officer aboard the Surprize, claimed the vessel was unseaworthy and shipped so much water that the convicts were often waist-deep in it.²¹ Weeks later at Sydney Cove, the Reverend Johnson concurred, noting that ‘sometimes for days, nay, for a considerable time together, [the convicts] have been to the middle in water chained together, hand and leg, even the sick not exempted—nay, many died with the chains upon them. Promises, entreaties, were all in vain and it was not till a very few days before they made harbour that they were released out of irons.’²²

Sydney Parkinson, one of the two official artists who some twenty years before had sailed with Cook in the Endeavour wrote of his own experience of the Southern Ocean. ‘The sea ran mountain-high, and tossed the ship upon the waves: she rolled so much, that we could get no rest, or scarcely lie in bed and almost every moveable on board was thrown down, and rolled about from place to place. In brief, a person, who has not been in a storm at sea, cannot form an adequate idea of the situation we were in.’23

Elizabeth knew. It was in such a storm, in such a sea, that Elizabeth Macarthur lost her baby girl.