Second Fleet
The Second Fleet ( German Second Fleet ) consisted of six British ships that sailed to the convict colony of Australia in 1789/90 . This included the Lady Juliana , on which mainly female convicts were transported. Also included were the Neptune , Scarborough and Surprize , which mostly transported male and a small number of female convicts. This fleet also included the Guardian warship , which crashed into an iceberg, and the Justinian , a cargo ship that carried food and goods, not convicts.
Most of the female convicts survived on the Lady Juliana . Of the 928 male convicts on the Neptune , Scarborough and Surprize , 26 percent died. Of these surviving male convicts, nearly 40 percent died within eight months of their arrival. Because this rate, the Second Fleet was also called Death Fleet (German death Fleet ), respectively.
history
The Surprize , Neptune and Scarborough were privately chartered from Camden, Calvert & King, which was to receive a fixed price of £ 17, 7 shillings and 6 dime per capita from the British government for the transport, clothing and feeding of the convicts. no matter whether they arrive alive or dead. This company had previously been active in the transport of slaves to North America. The only representatives of the crown were the naval agent and the captain of the Guardian , the rest of the crew was provided by the company.
The fleet left England on January 19, 1790 with 1,006 convicts (928 male and 78 female) on board for Sydney. The Guardian , which had already started in September 1789, had run into an iceberg and could not continue the journey. She reached the Cape of Good Hope with difficulty . 20 male convicts were distributed between the Neptune (12) and the Scarborough (8). These two ships and the Surprize made a faster journey from here than the First Fleet . They arrived in Port Jackson in the last week of June of the year, three weeks after the Lady Juliana and a week after the Justinian , who had continued the voyage.
Despite the comparatively fast crossing, the death rate among convicts was the highest in the history of deportation to Australia. Of the 1,006 convicts embarked, 267 (256 men and 11 women) died on the voyage, more than one in four.
On the Neptune , they were deliberately starved, kept in chains, and regularly denied deck access. It came to the appearance of scurvy . While supplies were not deliberately neglected on the Scarborough , a report of a planned mutiny resulted in the convicts being locked below deck.
Captain William Hill, the watch commander, wrote a report after the voyage that sharply criticized the ship's owners. He stated:
"The more they can withhold from the unhappy wretches the more provisions they have to dispose of at a foreign market, and the earlier in the voyage they die, the longer they can draw the deceased's allowance to themselves."
"The more they save with the unfortunate fellows, the more provisions they have available for sale in a foreign market and the earlier they die on their journey, the longer they can put the sums intended for the deceased in their own pockets."
Arrival in Port Jackson
Upon arrival at Port Jackson, the half-naked convicts lay on the bare floor, too sick to move. Anyone unable to walk was hoisted off board on a rope. Everyone was lousy. At least 486 sick people (47% of those embarked) were counted on landing. The rest were described as "thin and emaciated", they were "a more terrible sight than any one has ever seen in this country".
Among the arrivals were D'Arcy Wentworth and his mistress Catherine Crowley on the Neptune and John Macarthur , then a young lieutenant in the New South Wales Corps and his wife Elizabeth on the Scarborough . Macarthur's eldest son, Edward Macarthur , accompanied his parents on the Neptune and Scarborough . It is believed that he is the only person in the Second Fleet with a photo and that he was the last survivor of the trip (see source below).
When news of the horrors of the Second Fleet reached England, the public and officials were shocked. An investigation was conducted, but no attempt was made to arrest the Neptune commander , Donald Traill , or to initiate an official prosecution against him, the other officials or the company. The company had already signed a contract with the government for the Third Fleet in 1791 to Port Jackson.
designation
The Second Fleet is often viewed as just a group of three convict ships that arrived together at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson in New South Wales , Australia late in June 1790 . These ships were the Surprize , Neptune, and the Scarborough . Today there is a tendency to include all the ships that sailed to Australia together in 1789. After that, all of the ships named below belong to the fleet:
Ships of the fleet
| ship | captain | team | Leaving England | Arrival in Sydney | Travel time | male convicts (at the start of the journey) | female convicts (at the start of the journey) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lady Juliana | Thomas Edgar | 35 | July 29, 1789 | June 3, 1790 | 309 days | ? | 222 (226) |
| Guardian | Edward Riou | September 12, 1789 | Accumulated after collision with iceberg | ? | 20 (25) - see below | ? | |
| Justinian | Benjamin Maitland | February 17, 1790 | June 20, 1790 | 121 days | |||
| Surprize | Nicholas Anstis | January 19, 1790 | June 26, 1790 | 158 days | 218 (254) | ? | |
| Neptune | Donald Traill | January 19, 1790 | June 27, 1790 | 159 days | ? (421) + 12 of the Guardian | ? (78) | |
| Scarborough | John Marshall | January 19, 1790 | June 28, 1790 | 160 days | 180 (253) + 8 the Guardian | ? |
literature
- Charles Bateson: The Convict Ships, 1787-1868. Sydney 1974, ISBN 0-85174-195-9 .
- Jenny French: Australia's Second Fleet - 1790. IFHAA, 2007.
- Robert Hughes: The Fatal Shore. Pan, London 1988, ISBN 0-394-75366-6 .
- Siân Rees: The Floating Brothel. Hodder, Sydney 2001, ISBN 0-7868-8674-9 .
- AJ Hill: Macarthur, Sir Edward (17891872). In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. Volume 5. Melbourne University Press, 1974, pp. 122-123.
- List of convicts in the 2nd Fleet The list was compiled in London so that these people do not have to actually have arrived in Sydney.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Flynn: Second Fleet . In: Dictionary of Sydney . Dictionary of Sydney Trust. 2016. Archived from the original on June 16, 2016. 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. Retrieved June 17, 2016.
