New South Wales Corps

New South Wales Corps 102nd Regiment of Foot
The New South Wales Corps at the Battle of Vinegar Hill by Unidentified Artist about 1804
active	1789 to 1811
Country	United Kingdom
Armed forces	United Kingdom Armed Forces
Armed forces	Royal Marines Royal Navy
Branch of service	Light infantry
Type	Line infantry
Nickname	Rum Corps, Botany Bay rangers, Rum Puncheon Corps, The Condemned
Skirmishes	Battle of Vinegar Hill

The New South Wales Corps (also known as The Rum Corps ) was a standing regiment of the Royal Marines founded in England in 1789 and mainly used in Australia .

history

The regiment had the task of relieving the marines who had accompanied the First Fleet to Australia. The regiment led by Major Francis Grose consisted of three companies and due to the remoteness and great distance from the motherland and the general unpopularity of this post, this regiment was mainly recruited from officers on half pay, troublemakers, inmates of military prisons and a few who found their fortune in wanted to try the new colony. The first members of the regiment arrived in 1790 to protect the Second Fleet . Major Grose arrived in 1792 to take command of the regiment and the post of governor of New South Wales . A fourth company was later added, made up of Marines eager to serve in New South Wales under Captain George Johnston , Governor Phillips' right-hand man.

Governance in New South Wales

When Governor Phillip returned to England to recover in December 1792, Major Grose was in sole responsibility of the colony. He immediately changed the management strategy of the colony. He introduced military law and jurisdiction while strengthening the powers of the Corps. Grose abolished the self-government of the colony introduced under Phillip. After the crop failure of 1793, he cut the convicts 'food rations but not the corps' rations, overriding another fundamental rule by Phillips who had asked for equal rations for all.

In order to promote agriculture and make the colony less dependent on food supplies from England, Grose ended collective farming and instead generously distributed the land to officers of the Corps, whom he also provided with convicts who worked on the farms. The food and clothing of these workers was provided from government supplies and the proceeds were sold by the officers to the government.

Due to health problems, Grose returned to England in December 1794 and Captain William Paterson temporarily took over his post until the arrival of Governor Hunter in September 1795. Paterson had received this post with the help of Sir Joseph Banks , as he was interested in science and should lead expeditions on Banks behalf and collect exhibits for Banks and the Royal Society . Paterson was an honest man but with little assertiveness, and while he tried to introduce some reforms, he was still unable to keep the officers of the corps from becoming more powerful and richer.

The Rum Corps and the Illicit Trade

The ban on trade in rum introduced by Phillips was relaxed by Grose. The colony, like many others, did not have its own currency and so it turned out that rum was becoming increasingly popular as an unofficial means of payment. The officers of the corps used their position and their wealth and bought the rum , which mostly came from Bengal , without further ado, in order to then exchange it for haberdashery and other everyday items. This earned the New South Wales Corps the nickname Rum Corps . In 1793, stills were imported and the rum distillation that began worsened the shortage of grain.

Governor John Hunter made several attempts to have the imported rum guarded by troops and thus prevent the officers from buying it up, but this failed for the reasons already mentioned. Attempts to stop all imports failed due to the lack of cooperation from other governments and because the officers chartered a Danish ship and thus organized their own imports from India. Hunter opened a public shop selling goods from England to maintain competition and stabilize prices, but Hunter was not a good businessman and deliveries were irregular. He urged the authorities in England to exercise more control and wanted to introduce a rum tax. He issued an ordinance according to which the number of convicts employed by the officers was limited, but here too he lacked the means to enforce it. Hunter was heavily criticized by the officers and all kinds of leaflets and pamphlets were circulating that were supposed to discredit him. John Macarthur , the Rum Corps paymaster , was part of that corrupt system. He wrote a letter in which he accused Hunter of being ineffective and of trading rum himself. Before these allegations, Hunter had to defend himself before the colonial office and was removed from office shortly afterwards for incapacity. Back in England, he fought for reform and the recall of the New South Wales Corps. However, this was unsuccessful. Already in 1799 the distribution of economic goods in the colony in favor of the officers was significant. They owned 32 percent of the livestock, 40 percent of the goats, 59 percent of the horses and 77 percent of the sheep.

In 1799 Paterson, now a lieutenant colonel , returned from England with the task of ending the machinations of the corps officers. In 1800 he accused Major Johnston, another former Deputy Hunter, of having paid a sergeant part of his pay in rum. Johnston denied these allegations and requested that the trial take place in England. The English courts ruled that colonial affairs were not part of their duties and that the case should be heard in Sydney , as all witnesses were there. They also decided that a regular court martial could not be convened there and that no further action should be taken against Johnston for this reason. Governor King, realizing that every officer, except Paterson, was involved in the rum trade, subsequently let Johnston go.

Governor Phillip King continued Hunter's efforts to weaken the rum trade through the officers. He passed an alcohol tax and allowed only 500 gallons of rum to be imported ; the transit board demanded all existing ships as a penalty for disregarding the regulation.

By opening a brewery in 1804, King made private trade attractive. At the same time he set the value of Indian copper and equated it with a Spanish eight coin, which he introduced as currency. This currency was not received positively by everyone and it took great efforts to establish these coins in the colony on the one hand and to maintain the value of the coins adequately on the other. King did not always act effectively, but was a serious opponent of the Corps, which is why he, like his predecessor Hunter, was the target of defamatory pamphlets and attacks. As a result, King requested his transfer from May 1803. However, his successor William Bligh did not arrive until 1806.

Even if the economy was doing a little better now and it had also spread, Bligh had received a clear mandate to stop the rum trade of the Corps and especially of John Macarthur. This led to the Rum Rebellion and ultimately to the recall of the New South Wales Corps.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie was better able to control the rum trade. He succeeded because of the introduction and maintenance of a licensing system. Nevertheless, he was also forced to pay for public projects in rum, as there was still no accepted currency. The construction of the hospital in Sydney could only be financed because the donors in return had been given the monopoly on the import of rum. This public-private cooperation led to a drastic increase in rum prices and was extremely unpopular among the population, so that similar cooperations were not carried out for several years.

In 1813 Macquarie succeeded in introducing a permanent currency in the colony; he bought Spanish pesos from South America and had the center punched out. This is how the holey dollar worth 5s was created. The middle piece, however, was used as a 15p coin. In 1819 the British government legalized the commercial distillation of spirits and illicit trafficking became a criminal offense.

The Battle of Vinegar Hill

The military conduct of the majority of the New South Wales Corps was better than expected. In 1802, Governor King praised them with the words: “The utmost order and regularity has uniformly prevailed amongst the non-commissioned officers and privates.” ( German: “There was great order and discipline among the non-commissioned officers and crew ranks” ).

The corps was only involved in combat once in New South Wales and that was at the Battle of Vinegar Hill (so called after an Irish uprising). On the evening of March 4, 1804, about 250 rebels armed with pikes and muskets began a revolt in the Castle Hill settlement. Major Georg Johnston led soldiers of the New South Wales Corps on a night march to Parramatta and pursued the rebels. When they caught up with the rebels, Major Johnston and his troops quickly put down the uprising, killing numerous rebels. The rebels were later severely punished, nine were hanged, many were whipped and 30 of them were transferred to a distant outpost. For his work, Johnston was then highly praised by Governor King.

102nd regiment

In 1809, after the Rum Rebellion, the New South Wales Corps was renamed the 102nd Regiment and recalled. Some of the officers and long-serving soldiers were incorporated into Macquarie's 73rd Regiment ; about 100 veterans and invalids were assigned to garrison service (despite little use, the unit still existed until 1823); some of the officers were allowed to retire and work the land; the majority of the troops were sent back to England. Colonel Paterson, formerly Captain Paterson, died while traveling home in South Africa.

In England the majority of the troops were assigned to veteran or garrison battalions , with most of the officers assigned to the 8th Royal Veteran Battalion . The regiment was reorganized and recruited , and then served in various locations outside the United Kingdom (such as during the War of 1812 , when they took the city of Maine , among others ). On March 24, 1818, a large part of the regiment was disbanded and only a small force of 150 men received the opportunity to reform the NSW Corps as a garrison unit in July 1826. They were placed under the command of Colonel Dumaresq. The corps was finally dissolved on April 1, 1833.

During its existence, the Corps received various nicknames related to its stationing in New South Wales: Botany Bay Rangers , Rum Puncheon Corps , Condemned Regiment and Rum Corps .

Commanding officers

New South Wales Corps

• 1789–1794 Major Francis Grose
• 1794–1809 Lieutenant Colonel William Paterson

102nd Regiment of Foot

• 1809–1810 Lieutenant Colonel William Paterson
• 1810–1811 Major George Johnston

literature

• Rudolf Bader (Ed.): Australia: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. 2nd, revised edition. WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2002, ISBN 3-88476-440-3 .
• Robert Hughes: Australia: the early days of the fifth continent . Translated from the English by Karl A. Klewer. Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1987, ISBN 3-430-14892-8 .
• Johannes H. Voigt: History of Australia . Alfred Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-520-48801-9 .

credentials

• Archive NSW State Records (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert Hughes: The Fatal Shore, the Epic of Australia's founding . P. 111. Button. New York 1987. ISBN 0-394-50668-5