Mary Bryant

Mary Bryant (* 1765 in Fowey , Cornwall , England , † after 1794 in England ) was an English prisoner who was deported to the convict colony of Australia . She was the only woman in a group of convicts who managed to flee from Australia to Timor on March 28, 1791 in a small boat .

prehistory

In England, prisons were overcrowded at the time, as offenders were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment or death, even for minor offenses such as mouth robbery . Convicts from England could no longer be transported to America because the English had lost their colonies there with the Peace of Paris (1783) . In order to accommodate the numerous convicts for whom there was no longer any room in prisons, they were also detained on ships in England. The UK government expected that this problem could ease with the posting of convicts to the Australian continent . The convicts were supposed to colonize this continent. Every fifth convict who was transported there was a woman. Due to the inhumane conditions that prevailed on the ships, numerous convicts died on the transport. The initial life in the convict colony was marked by starvation and deprivation, and numerous convicts died.

deportation

Mary was the daughter of the fisherman Broad (or Braud). On May 20, 1786, she was sentenced to death in England for stealing a women's silk bonnet . As was quite common at the time, this death sentence was commuted to a seven-year sentence. This sentence was far from England, with little chance of return to serve. First Mary was imprisoned on the prison ship Dunkirk near Plymouth and she was then to be deported to Australia. This measure was called Transportation in England .

Mary was transported to Port Jackson on the Charlotte , a convict transport ship of the First Fleet , from 1787 to 1788 . On this ship she gave birth to a daughter who she named Charlotte. Shortly after her arrival of the First Fleet in Port Jackson, which took place on January 26, 1788, she married on February 10, 1788 the convict William Bryant , a 31-year-old fisherman. Like them, he belonged to the Cornish minority in Cornwall .

On the shores of Port Jackson, William Bryant built a hut and laid out a garden with permission from the colonial administration. Since the supply situation of the colony was extremely precarious at the time, because a lot of the food that the ships had transported had spoiled on the voyage, self-sufficiency should help to alleviate the need. Bryant was entrusted with the fishing by colonial administration. All caught fish had to be turned over to the colonial administration, which distributed them. In February 1789 he was punished with 100 lashes for diverting fish past the administration. In April 1790, Emmanuel was born, Mary Bryant's second child.

Escape

There was famine in the colony and many people died. Because of these circumstances, William Bryant planned to flee with his family. On a Dutch ship anchored at Port Jackson, William Bryant acquired a nautical chart, compass and quadrant , ammunition, food and two muskets . When the convict transport ship Supply Port Jackson left for Norfolk Island and the Dutch ship had cast off, there was no longer a ship in the port that could have pursued the fugitives. Thereupon William Bryant stole the ship of the governor Arthur Phillip on March 28, 1791 together with seven other convicts . Eleven convicts fled the colony, including Mary Bryant with her two children.

It was a risky undertaking to flee to Timor, more than 5,200 kilometers away . This sailing performance is often compared to William Bligh's performance, which was suspended by his crew on the bounty in the open sea. When the fugitives arrived at the Dutch base in Kupang in Timor after 69 days , they said they were survivors of a ship that sank off the coast of Australia. But the lie was exposed when the English captain Edward Edwards arrived there with four small boats in which the surviving marines of the HMS Pandora , which sank off Tahiti, and the captured mutineers of the Bounty were. Edwards arrested the convicts and transported them to Batavia in November on the Rembang , an East India Company ship . Mary Bryan's son Emmanuel, born in 1790, died there shortly after arriving on December 1, and her husband died of a fever on December 22, 1791. Mary and Charlotte left Batavia. Edwards reached the Cape of Good Hope on March 18, 1792, where they were picked up by the HMS Gorgon . The Gorgon cast off with the surviving convicts, sailors, and mutineers of the Bounty in early April. On this ship, one of the fugitives went overboard in the Sunda Strait , two died at sea, as did Mary Bryant's daughter, who was born in 1787, on May 5, 1792.

Once in Portsmouth , Mary Bryant came to London and from there to Newgate Prison . The lives and fate of the escaped convicts were published in newspapers and public opinion was in favor of an immediate release from prison. The courts refused, and only with good conduct did they offer those who had fled the prospect that they could expect to be released after the end of seven years. The escape, which otherwise exacerbated the penalties, had no legal consequences.

Mary Bryant was not released until May 2, 1793, the four other convicts in November 1793. She went back to her family in Fowey. Scottish writer James Boswell supported Mary Bryant with £ 10 a year for as long as she needed it. The last recorded message about Mary Bryant comes from November 1794, after which nothing is known about her further life.

Fugitive convicts

All the convicts arrived in Kupang in good health. Of the refugee group, however, only five people reached England alive. It was Mary Bryant, William Allen, Samuel Broom, Nathaniel Lilly, and Jamest Martin.

At that time, William Bryant, Mary, his future wife and their child Charlotte (Emmanuel was born in Australia), James Martin, James Cox and Samuel Bird came to Australia with the First Fleet in 1788. With the Second Fleet , William Allen, Samuel Broom, Nathaniel Lilly and William Morton reached the convict colony in 1790.

Aftermath

Mary Bryant's life has been the subject of several books and a topic in English and Australian TV films, such as in the miniseries The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant . It also appeared in songs.

literature

• Judith Cook (1993): To Brave Every Danger: the epic life of Mary Bryant of Fowey, highwaywoman and convicted felon, her transportation and amazing escape from Botany Bay . London: Macmillan ISBN 0-333-57438-9
• CH Currey (1963): The Transportation, Escape and Pardoning of Mary Bryant (née Broad) . Sydney: Angus and Robertson
• John Durand (2005): "The Odyssey of Mary B" Elkhorn WI ISBN 0-9743783-1-3
• Carolly Erickson (2005): The Girl From Botany Bay . Hoboken, NJ .: John Wiley ISBN 0-471-27140-3
• Gerald & Loretta Hausman (2003): Escape from Botany Bay: the true story of Mary Bryant . New York: Orchard Books ISBN 0-439-40327-8
• Robert Hughes (1987): The Fatal Shore: a history of the transportation of convicts to Australia , 1787-1868. New York: button ISBN 1-86046-150-6
• Anthony van Kampen (1968 :) Het leven van Mary Bryant . 3 vols. Bussum: Unieboek NV (in Dutch)
• Jonathan King (2004): Mary Bryant: her life and escape from Botany Bay . Pymble, NSW: Simon & Schuster Australia
• Lesley Pearse (2003): Remember Me . London: Michael Joseph (London: Penguin Books, 2004 ISBN 0-14-100649-8 )
• Frederick A. Pottle (1938): Boswell and the Girl from Botany Bay . London: Heinemann
• Craig Scutt (2007): Mary Bryant: The Impossible Escape . Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia; Black Dog Books ISBN 978-1-921167-61-4
• Anthony Scott Veitch (1980): Spindrift, The Mary Bryant Story: a colonial saga . Australia: Angus & Robertson Publishers ISBN 0-207-14409-5
• Mike Walker (2005): A Long Way Home . Chichester; Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} C. H. Currey: Bryant, Mary (1765–1794)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on adb.anu.edu.au. Retrieved June 21, 2016  
2. ↑ Convict Woman in Port Jackson ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on australia.gov.au. Retrieved June 21, 2016 
3. ↑ Mary Braund: William Bryant , November 12, 2012, at firstfleetfellowship.org.au. Retrieved June 21, 2016
4. ↑ David Collins : An Account of the English Colony of NSW , aufutenberg.net.au. Retrieved June 21, 2016
5. ↑ Mary Bryant - Escape from Hell , on moviepilot.de. Retrieved June 21, 2016