Life on Board
For the most part, a voyage of six to nine months to the other side of the world was tedious, more so for the convicts than the crew. There was great anxiety among the passengers about the possibility of shipwreck, although in the 80 year history of Australian convict transportation, very few lives were lost in this way - in the period covered by this project (1787-1800), only four.
For convicts on their way to NSW in the late 18th century, the risk of dying from disease was much greater, around one in ten.
’A Disaster at Sea' (Wrecked Female Convict Ship, the Amphitrite, Women and Children Abandoned in a Gale’), by J.M.W. Turner, c. 1835, Tate Britain
This section explores daily life on a convict transport in the years up to 1800, when government officials and ships’ officers were still working out how to balance safety and salubrity, and morality rates were high.
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