always under arms on the quarter deck of each transport in order to prevent any improper behaviour of the convicts, as well as to guard against any surprise.” Below, to contain the prison deck, thick bulkheads had to be positioned, “fitted with nails and run across from side to side [port to starboard] in the between decks above the main mast, with loop holes to fire … in case of irregularities.” Forward of the prison space was the prison hospital, and the equally dark areas aft of the prison were often reserved for the marines, privates, non-commissioned officers, and their families. The hatches which gave onto the deck were “well secured down by cross bars, bolts and locks and are likewise nailed down from deck to deck with oak stanchions.”
The barricaded section on the open deck gave the authorities an area where even the most unruly convicts could be exercised, but many knew that in such close quarters the barriers might break down, and that there would be contact of various kinds, including sexual contact. For the transports were all very intimate in their dimensions. The largest of them was
Alexander,
114 feet in length and 31 feet in breadth, barely more than the width of a decent parlour, and a mere 450 tons burthen. The lower decks had limited head room—the prison deck of
Scarborough,
for example, was only 4 feet 5 inches high. That meant that in prison and in the seamen's and soldiers' quarters, no one but a child could stand upright.
Phillip's flag ship, a naval vessel part-victualler, part-frigate,
Sirius,
540 ton, named after “the bright star in the southern constellation of the Great Dog,” and with a crew of 160 men, was also at the Deptford dockyards, where an inadequate job was being done of fitting her up with what some called the “refuse of the yards.” She would prove a bad sailer. Twenty guns were being hoisted aboard to give her the appurtenances and force of a warship. Her armed tender, the
Supply,
was a mere sloop of 170 tons.
Refusing to be hustled, Arthur Phillip would not budge from his small London office, unless it was to visit the expedition's ships in the Thames, until he was satisfied that the fleet was reasonably equipped in everything from scythes to undergarments. He had many requirements which he presented in letters to Nepean, Sydney, Sir George Rose, the Navy Board, and Richards, the contracted broker. Phillip typically wrote to Undersecretary Nepean on 4 January 1787: “I likewise beg leave to observe that the number of scythes (only 6), or razors (only 5 dozen), and the quantity of buck and small shot (only 200 pounds) now ordered is very insufficient.”
Already, in Whitehall in dismal winter, nameless clerks had begun work on the issue of who would be Botany Bay's first British inhabitants. Since there were no selection criteria for transportees based on health, suitability, trade, or sturdiness, a convict of whatever age, strength, and skill could go to Botany Bay. Time already served meant nothing, so convicts who had served five years of a seven-year sentence were included in the clerks' lists.
The first convicts were rowed down the river to the
Alexander
and
Lady Penrhyn
on 6 January 1787, by which time the basic fitting-out of the transports was finished. Many were sick and clothed in rags when received on board, and on the lower decks the cold and damp were intense. In the dimness of the prison decks, the convicts were often secured in place by chains which ran through an ankle shackle on each convict, and some masters wanted the prisoners wristleted as well. Sometimes groups of convicts were shackled thus in lots of four or six, though sometimes it was more. As yet the convict decks had empty spaces, but the allotted area per felon once a ship was fully loaded was eighteen inches in width by six feet in length. Questions of elbow room would create many unrecorded conflicts. So did the waste arrangements—a series of buckets aft, topped by a plank with
The barricaded section on the open deck gave the authorities an area where even the most unruly convicts could be exercised, but many knew that in such close quarters the barriers might break down, and that there would be contact of various kinds, including sexual contact. For the transports were all very intimate in their dimensions. The largest of them was
Alexander,
114 feet in length and 31 feet in breadth, barely more than the width of a decent parlour, and a mere 450 tons burthen. The lower decks had limited head room—the prison deck of
Scarborough,
for example, was only 4 feet 5 inches high. That meant that in prison and in the seamen's and soldiers' quarters, no one but a child could stand upright.
Phillip's flag ship, a naval vessel part-victualler, part-frigate,
Sirius,
540 ton, named after “the bright star in the southern constellation of the Great Dog,” and with a crew of 160 men, was also at the Deptford dockyards, where an inadequate job was being done of fitting her up with what some called the “refuse of the yards.” She would prove a bad sailer. Twenty guns were being hoisted aboard to give her the appurtenances and force of a warship. Her armed tender, the
Supply,
was a mere sloop of 170 tons.
Refusing to be hustled, Arthur Phillip would not budge from his small London office, unless it was to visit the expedition's ships in the Thames, until he was satisfied that the fleet was reasonably equipped in everything from scythes to undergarments. He had many requirements which he presented in letters to Nepean, Sydney, Sir George Rose, the Navy Board, and Richards, the contracted broker. Phillip typically wrote to Undersecretary Nepean on 4 January 1787: “I likewise beg leave to observe that the number of scythes (only 6), or razors (only 5 dozen), and the quantity of buck and small shot (only 200 pounds) now ordered is very insufficient.”
Already, in Whitehall in dismal winter, nameless clerks had begun work on the issue of who would be Botany Bay's first British inhabitants. Since there were no selection criteria for transportees based on health, suitability, trade, or sturdiness, a convict of whatever age, strength, and skill could go to Botany Bay. Time already served meant nothing, so convicts who had served five years of a seven-year sentence were included in the clerks' lists.
The first convicts were rowed down the river to the
Alexander
and
Lady Penrhyn
on 6 January 1787, by which time the basic fitting-out of the transports was finished. Many were sick and clothed in rags when received on board, and on the lower decks the cold and damp were intense. In the dimness of the prison decks, the convicts were often secured in place by chains which ran through an ankle shackle on each convict, and some masters wanted the prisoners wristleted as well. Sometimes groups of convicts were shackled thus in lots of four or six, though sometimes it was more. As yet the convict decks had empty spaces, but the allotted area per felon once a ship was fully loaded was eighteen inches in width by six feet in length. Questions of elbow room would create many unrecorded conflicts. So did the waste arrangements—a series of buckets aft, topped by a plank with
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