William Bryant (convict)

William Bryant (* 1757 in Launceston , Cornwall in England , † December 22, 1791 in Batavia ) was an English fisherman and convict. He was the leader of the first successful escape with seven other convicts and two young children from the Australian convict colony to another country by sea. This 5,200-mile (5,200-mile) escape in an open boat went down in history as a great seafaring feat, often compared to that of Captain William Bligh . After the mutiny on the Bounty, Bligh was abandoned with some crew members on the open sea and covered around 6,700 kilometers.

Early life

As a child, William Bryant grew up in Launceston. William Bryant's parents lived on the income from fishing. William, who belonged to the Cornish minority living in Cornwall , became a fisherman like his father, but he was also a smuggler and was involved in other illegal activities. In December 1783 he was charged with depriving two seamen of the Royal Navy and sentenced to death as guilty. The sentence was later overturned and he was pardoned to seven years in prison. Bryant served the first three years of his sentence on the Dunkirk prison ship in Plymouth Harbor .

Transportation

The transport of convicts was called transportion in England at the time , which in many cases meant deportation abroad, mostly without the chance of a return, because they had to pay for them. 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 . When convicts could no longer be transported to America because the English had lost their colonies there, other routes were sought. In order to accommodate the numerous convicts for whom there was no longer any room in prisons, they were also detained on prison ships in England. The British government expected that this situation would ease with the posting of convicts to the Australian continent . The convicts were supposed to colonize this continent. Due to the inhumane conditions that prevailed on the ships, numerous convicts died on the transport.

On May 13, 1787, the First Fleet sailed from England to Australia with eleven ships, including William Bryant on the convict transport ship Charlotte . The eight-month voyage led across the Canary Islands , Brazil and the Cape of Good Hope to Botany Bay . The bay was unsuitable as a harbor and the ships were moved to Port Jackson , where they anchored on February 28, 1788. On the Charlotte , Mary Broad, the future wife of William Bryant, gave birth to a daughter who she named after the ship Charlotte.

Port Jackson

Shortly after arriving in Port Jackson, Bryant married Mary Broad. Mary Broad was initially sentenced to death in England after a court ruling on May 20, 1786 for street robbery. She was later pardoned to seven years' imprisonment and was on the same prison ship Dunkirk as William Bryant. It is unclear whether Charlotte was their child who was born on the voyage. It is believed, however, that the child came from one of the Royal Marines guards who were guarding the convicts. As a fisherman, Bryant was hired by the British colonial administration to fish for the entire penal colony. He was also allowed to build a hut and a garden. Otherwise, only officers of the Royal Marines were allowed to grow vegetables and run a garden. In the convict colony, food ran out about a year after the ships arrived and there was hunger. This was due to the fact that those arriving on the First Fleet did not have adequate knowledge of agriculture, fishing and growing vegetables. William Bryant did not give up all of the colony's fishing and vegetable growing and sold some of these products on his own account. For this he was thrown into prison and punished with 100 lashes. His hut was taken away from him and he was forced to work in a brick factory. Since the yields in fishing dropped considerably without him, he was given this task again.

In 1790, Bryant's son Emmanuel was born. William Bryant would have served his sentence in March 1791 and this opened up the possibility of returning to England. However, Governor Arthur Phillip had decreed that no married convict could leave his or her spouse alone in Australia. After the arrival of the Second Fleet , William Bryant would have been able to return to England. His wife, Mary Bryant , had two more years to serve at this point.

The arrival of the Second Fleet, which had sufficient food for the colony on board, prevented the impending famine, but the Bryant family saw no more prospects for themselves in the Australian penal colony . She wanted to flee.

Escape

William Bryant was preparing to flee in 1790 when the Dutch ship Waaksamheyd anchored in Port Jackson Bay for several weeks. At first he made friends with the captain of this ship. This gave Bryant a compass and quadrants , maps, food, water and two muskets with ammunition, requirements for escape at sea.

When the Waaksamheyd Port Jackson left on March 27, 1791 and no other ship was in port, Bryant and his wife fled with the two children and the other seven convicts. It was James Martin, James Cox, and Samuel Bird who had arrived on the First Fleet. In addition to Bryant, who had seafaring experience as a fisherman in Cornwall, Samuel Bird was also an experienced seaman. Both also led the boat safely through two storms. William Allen, Nathaniel Lilly, Samuel Broom and William Morton, who had arrived with the Second Fleet, also fled with them. William Morton is said to have had some knowledge of navigation.

On the dark night of March, they stole Governor Phillip's boat, which was equipped with two sails and six oar places to move forward when there was no wind. They loaded the boat, cast off unnoticed, and sailed north. Because of the empty harbor, they were sure that no ship could follow them. It was not until the next morning that she was found to have escaped.

The fugitives made successful progress in the open and small boat between the east coast and the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait across the Arafura Sea to Timor . On the way, they supplied themselves with food and water on land. On the second day of their escape, they even discovered a coal deposit. When they went ashore, they often came into contact with Aborigines . After 69 days of sea voyage, they reached Kupang on Timor on June 5, 1791 . There they stated that they were shipwrecked.

When four more small boats arrived on September 15 from the sunken HMS Pandora carrying British marines and mutineers from the Bounty, it became apparent that they were escaped prisoners. Edward Edwards , the British captain of Pandora, had the escaped convicts arrested. They had days off. The Rembang , a ship of the Dutch East India Company , used Edwards to reach Batavia. From there he wanted to go to the Cape of Good Hope. At the Cape he was hoping for a passage with an English ship to England. They reached Batavia, but the climate and living conditions there were extremely unhealthy. William Bryant and his son Emmanuel developed a fever and they were housed in a prison ship with other sick convicts. Emmanuel died six days after their arrival on December 1st and William Bryant three weeks later on December 22nd, 1791.

Edwards reached the Cape of Good Hope on March 18, 1792, where they were picked up by the HMS Gorgon . On the journey to the Cape, one of the fugitives went overboard in the Sunda Strait . The Gorgon cast off with the surviving convicts, sailors, and mutineers of the Bounty in early April. Two refugees died at sea, as did Mary Bryant's daughter, who was born in 1887, on May 5, 1792. The Gorgon arrived in Portsmouth , England with the convicts Mary Bryant, William Allen, Samuel Broom, Nathaniel Lilly and James Martin on June 8 1792, where they served the remainder of their sentence in Newsgate Prison.

This kind of escape of convicts by sea from the penal colony of Australia remains unique. Convicts fled there quite often, but always into the impassable Australian outback .

Aftermath

The escape was filmed and written down in books, with the fate of Mary Bryant coming to the fore. In the 2005 two-part Australian mini-series The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant, William Bryant's actor Alex O'Loughlin received the Australian Logie Award for Most Outstanding Actor .

literature

• C. Blount: Memorandoms by James Martin . Cambridge 1937: The Rampant Lions Press
• FA Pottle: Boswell and the girl from Botany Bay . London 1938: William Heinemann Ltd.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mollie Gillen : The founders of Australia: a biographical dictionary of the first fleet . P. 57. Sydney 1989: Library of Australian History
2. ↑ CH 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 August 21, 2016  
3. ↑ ^{a b} Tim Causer (Ed.): Memorandoms by James Martin ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2014 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. : London, Bentham Project, UCL. 
4. ↑ James Cook: To brave every danger: the epic life of Mary Bryant of Fowey, highway woman and convicted felon, her transportation and amazing escape from Botany Bay . 144. London 1993: Macmillan
5. ↑ James Cook: To brave every danger: the epic life of Mary Bryant of Fowey, highway woman and convicted felon, her transportation and amazing escape from Botany Bay . P. 147. London 1993: Macmillan
6. ↑ James Cook: To brave every danger: the epic life of Mary Bryant of Fowey, highway woman and convicted felon, her transportation and amazing escape from Botany Bay . P. 168. London 1993: Macmillan