Sunday Tasmanian
Sunday 1 August 2004
Whaling industry takes hold
August 1, 1804
Early that morning the master of the Alexander, Captain Rhodes, paid an early morning courtesy call on Governor Collins who asked him to join him for breakfast.
Rhodes said they had just come back from a successful whaling expedition in the South Sea after which they called in at Sydney, and that at present his ship was anchored in Adventure Bay.
He also held on board the two deserters from the Ocean whom they came across on Maria Island and from whom they had heard of the intended settlement here on the Derwent.
On an anxious question from Collins, Capt Rhodes almost casually answered that, yes, he did indeed have despatches for Collins on board his ship but didn't have them with him, using the excuse that he did not know what to expect here.
Leaving a frustrated Governor, Rhodes then went next door to see Knopwood and told him that he also had some mail for him on board.
The stories of Capt Rhodes reminded Gov. Collins once again of the potentially very profitable whaling industry that could be opened up here in Tasmania.
With this in mind he later called in William Collins, who in his job as harbour master had had ample opportunity to assess the prospects of the Derwent and the adjacent bays for “Fishery”, and asked him to prepare a report on the advantages of establishing a whaling industry here.
In his report, William Collins envisaged the need for two or three ships to hunt what he called the South Sea Sperma Whale, and that they should be processed at a factory in the Derwent. (Soon after he would indeed establish such a factory near Trywork Point in Ralphs Bay, of which some remnants are still there to this day).
His recommendations were detailed, while he envisaged that in due time enough oil could be produced to fill one ship each month for the English home market (whale oil being the up and coming new fuel used for lighting purposes).
The Mercury
Monday 2 August 2004, page 13
Flurry of despatches
August 2, 1804
Early in the morning Lieutenant Lord, Knopwood and Harris joined Captain Mertho for breakfast on board the Ocean. The ship in the meantime had been moved from the protection of the cove to more open water in the Derwent, from where in the distance they could still see Captain Rhodes' boat making his way back to his ship in Adventure Bay.
In view of the fact that Collins was in the process of writing important despatches to Sydney and to his superiors in London he was very keen to read the incoming mail destined for him on the Alexander before he closed off his own correspondence, and therefore sent pilot Hacking in the white cutter to Adventure Bay to collect this mail from the Alexander.
That day, the last two Risdon convicts (Cole and Harris) arrived in Hobart Town, they being among the 13 or so convicts who Collins, for one reason or another, wanted to stay.
(A month later Collins would visit Risdon Cove for the first time since he first arrived there from Port Phillip seven months ago. Collins, Knopwood and some other officers inspecting the site soon discovered that there were still a few huts left that could be demounted to help overcome the shortage of housing at Hobart Town. Instructions to that effect were promptly given, after which Collins and Knopwood went home again for dinner, both men no doubt recalling over a glass of wine all the problems which this ill-fated settlement had created for them over the past six months or so.)
The Mercury
Tuesday 3 August 2004, page 19
Special deal for Hayes clan
August 3, 1804
Knopwood walks to the farmhouse of Martha Hayes, where he and Wilson had been invited for a final dinner with Lieutenant Bowen and his Martha.
During this visit a mutual sympathy seems to have developed between Knopwood and his bright hostess, as a result of which this first visit would later be repeated many more times.
The story of the Hayes family went back several years to the time when Henry and Martha Hayes ran a drinking house in the East End of London and became involved in shady dealings with stolen goods in which John Pascoe's father also was mixed up.
During the subsequent court case Henry got off free but his wife Maria and Fawkner Snr were found guilty.
Maria, accompanied by her (free) teenage daughter Martha was transported on the Glatton to Port Jackson, where they arrived early in 1803.
Also on board was a young naval lieutenant, John Bowen, who during the journey began an attachment with the young Martha and in 1803 took her with him when he was appointed by Governor King to create a settlement at Risdon Cove.
Maria's husband Henry, now on his own, decided to follow his wife and used the opportunity of passage offered by the Collins expedition to travel to Port Phillip.
His older brother Thomas also decided to join him with his wife and children, and as a result both Henry and Thomas received permission from Lord Hobart to travel with Collins to Port Phillip, while Thomas received permission to travel from there in the Calcutta to Sydney.
Thomas and his family seem to have decided to stay with the Collins expedition, and in the end it was Henry (but officially under the name of Thomas Hayes) who travelled on to Port Jackson in the Calcutta.
Here, he not only found his wife Maria living very much like a free woman (she even advertised her services as a needlewoman and hat maker), but via her also met up with Bowen, who told the couple that their daughter Martha was with him in Van Diemens Land and because of her pregnancy wanted her mother Maria to come back with him to the Derwent -- most probably the real reason why Bowen left his post at Risdon Cove early in January to travel to Sydney.
Having arranged the necessary co-operation from Governor King both Henry Hayes and his wife Martha (probably in order to remain on the safe side, King recorded them as travelling under the names of Thomas and Elizabeth Hayes, two names being on the books as free settlers) then joined Bowen and the other passengers on the Integrity for their journey to the Derwent.
How much King knew about this charade is not clear; all he wrote in a letter to Collins was that Thomas Hayes and (Anthony) Fletcher with their families wish to return to you as Settlers, although in a later letter to Bowen he speaks about the latter's private affairs.
Having thus rejoined the Collins expedition, Henry Hayes was once more added to the list of the free settlers (13 March 1804), while his convict wife Maria seems to have moved to Risdon Cove where her daughter Martha was about to give birth to her first child.
Henrietta Hayes was born on March 29, and Maria stayed at Risdon until July when this settlement was closed down.
Martha and her baby daughter then moved to the cottage which Bowen had built for her across the river near the shore of the Prince of Wales Bay, while her mother Maria once more joined her husband Henry.
How that was officially managed is again unclear, although in a letter signed by Collins it is on record that once more she was formally transferred from the Integrity to the Collins settlement as Elizabeth Hayes, settlers' wife, again a blatant administrative error enabling Maria to freely join her husband Henry.
(To cover the presence of the real Elizabeth Hayes -- then living with her husband Thomas Hayes and their children on the banks of the New Town Rivulet -- the name of Maria Hayes was coyly entered on the list of those receiving Government rations under the heading of Females as Hayes, settler's wife, again clearly implying a knowledge at a high level of what went on.)
Meanwhile, Thomas Hayes had been present during the late days of February and the first few days of March when Surveyor Meehan surveyed several allotments for the settlers then living along the banks of the New Town Creek, and thus obtained a 100-acre allotment in New Town, an area which ran from Pedder St to the village of New Town and from there to the present Douglas Parker Rehabilitation Centre and the New Town Creek.
Shortly after his arrival in Hobart Town, Henry obtained a similar grant alongside that of his brother, roughly the area between Pedder St, the present Ogilvie High School and the New Town High School.
While within the overall scheme of things the story of these people would not have had any significance in relation to the settlement of Hobart Town, it does throw an interesting light on the flexibility of the authorities of the times if genuine efforts were made to establish (or re-establish) family ties, and that in such circumstances the official status of those who made these efforts -- convict or free -- was often looked upon as a secondary matter only to be ignored where convenient.
In fact, such efforts (especially if they involved marriages) were very much encouraged by the authorities because they were perceived as having a stabilising influence on the fabric of this new, raw -- and initially very fragmented -- society.
Of course, in this particular case the influence of Bowen and Collins in covering the necessary associated administrative entries (such as described above) may be taken for granted.
The Mercury
Wednesday 4 August 2004, page 15
Knopwood gets a dog, the famous Spot
August 4, 1804, Saturday
Having picked up the despatches for the Governor from the whaler Alexander, Hacking returned from Adventure Bay and reported that he had seen a ship far out at sea approaching Storm Bay, the general expectation being that it would be the long-awaited Lady Barlow.
He also had with him a dog for Knopwood, sent to him as a gift from his old friend Lt Houston (this dog became the famous “Spot”, a very good hunting dog and thus a very valuable asset in a community greatly dependent on successful hunting), and also returned the two deserters from the Ocean back to the tender care of Capt Mertho.
Meanwhile, the Lady Barlow had worked its way to near the mouth of the Derwent, and its logbook recorded that during that afternoon they: “Sent the 2nd Officer up to Hobart Town in the Pinnace for a Pilot”.
That day's census of all the livestock kept at the Derwent (including New Town) paints an interesting picture of what the settlers had been able to salvage from the effects of the long sea voyage out, the abortive settlement at Port Phillip, and the subsequent two sea journeys from there to the Derwent.
The government farm at Cornelian Bay possessed 21 cattle, 25 sheep and 15 swine.
Beyond that, the private ownership of livestock varies somewhat but concentrated on goats, swine and poultry -- all welcome suppliers of milk, meat and eggs, the latter being a particularly welcome regular addition to the diet of those who
either had them, or could afford to buy them from others.
Lt Bowen was, at that time, the only person in the settlement to have a horse -- a mare which he had brought out with him in September 1803.
When he left again in the Ocean, he sold the animal to the authorities in Hobart, where it was soon joined by the other horses that reached Hobart on the Lady Barlow a few days later.
The Mercury
Thursday 5 August 2004, page 23
Deserters feel sting of the lash
August 5, 1804
Probably because the desertion occurred while Governor Collins was in overall command of the Ocean, Captain Mertho took his two deserters from Maria Island ashore to face an impromptu court presided over by Knopwood and Harris.
The two men appeared to have nothing to argue in their defence and were sentenced to 100 lashes each, to be executed for greater effect before the ships Company a 1 PM, with Knopwood using the opportunity to sound a stern warning to any other sailors playing with the idea of deserting their ship.
With regards to the punishing of crew members, ship captains faced the very same dilemma as Collins did when prisoners had to be sentenced. Punish them not enough, and they would soon cause trouble again. But heavy lashing penalties, although a much better deterrent, also made the recipient unfit for work for a very long period -- if not forever.
On a ship where the input of every member of the crew was important, if not essential, this would be a major consideration in deciding the punishment.
In this case, one of them (perhaps the instigator) received 100 lashes, while the other sailor received 78 on the back with a cat of nine tales.
(NOTE: The cat o' nine tales was three lengths of rope held together in a wooden handle. Towards the end of these ropes, about a metre long, they were split into three strands, each having a hard knot in the middle. The impact of this whip on the skin was severe, probably the reason why the use of this whip was abolished in 1806 by an order of the Admiralty.)
And with this distraction out of the way, the Ocean hoisted a signal indicating its readiness to sail, and emphasised the point by firing one of its cannons. In reply they received a message that the despatches from the Governor still were not ready, a matter not helped by the late arrival of more correspondence from the Alexander.
In the afternoon the pinnace (an eight-oared rowing boat, usually provided with sails) from the Lady Barlow arrived with its 2nd officer, who reported that his ship was under anchor near Betsey Island with cargo and cattle on board for the settlement, a message which caused the harbour pilot to leave immediately to guide the ship (500 tons, with 14 guns and a crew of 50 on board) safely into the Derwent and Sullivans Cove.
Actually, the Lady Barlow had already been in Storm Bay for some days, but failing to make the Derwent because of the fierce winds, had anchored on the eastern side of Betsey Island. Then the wild weather had picked up again and the ship had been driven out to sea very much like the Ocean a few weeks ago.
Reported Captain MacAskill later: the Wind almost invariably Blows from the NW to the SW with sudden Gusts, Severe Squalls and Heavy Gales, so that at times a Ship cannot show a stitch of Canvas, and may be driven out to sea from the very Anchorage off Betsey Island -- which was in fact the case with the Lady Barlow, being twice driven out to sea after having been well up to the head of the Bay.
We can be sure that MacAskill would have had plenty of yarns to exchange with Captain Mertho of the Ocean.
With all this commotion going on, again nothing is being said about holding a divine service that day.