Marines on the First Fleet

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The First Fleet Victualling List

Two hundred and ten marines were assigned to the garrison intended for service at Botany Bay, 160 of them privates. They were overwhelmingly drawn from the divisions based at Portsmouth and Plymouth, but records have been lost and with many of the enlisted men, it is impossible to be certain what ship they sailed on or how they were organised.

One of the most important surviving documents is a Victualling List for the First Fleet, which records all of the men and women, convicts and marines, provided with fresh provisions in foreign ports – Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope. This was constructed from separate lists for each of the ships, and with close reading, they can tell us a great deal about how the marines were organised. It is an important resource for historians trying to make sense of the First Fleet, although it does take time and effort to make sense of it. [1]

The first issue of this newsletter, published in October 2022, broke new ground in extracting information from this list about the six-person messes to which the convicts were allocated for the duration of the voyage (particularly the men, since they were not generally moved between ships). We also learned something about how these messes were constructed – the clustering of convicts who could assist in working the ship, and the existence of class-based messes, where men who thought themselves better than their fellow convicts could socialise with others like them (as they saw it).

In responding to a biography sent by our colleague Michael Flynn, we have turned our attention to that part of the Victualling List which deals with the marines. This covers the officers and non-commissioned officers, drummers and privates shipped on five of the six convict transports. The Lady Penrhyn carried only female convicts and there were only six marines on board (three officers and their marine servants). The list also fails to include a small number of marines who embarked on HMS Sirius.

This part of the Victualling List is much more difficult to interpret – because some of the marines were moved between ships before the fleet sailed and because the marines were permitted to change their messes in the course of the voyage. This newsletter summarises what can be learnt from a close study of this document.

Embarking the Marines

For the most part, the Victualling List captures the distribution of the marines shortly after they were first embarked. It was based on six separate lists, one for each of the five ships which carried a substantial number of marines, and another which bears the names of men who were in the process of being moved between ships when the other lists were compiled.

They were created in late March 1787, shortly after the last of the ships, Charlotte and Friendship, joined the fleet at Portsmouth. With two of these vessels, Friendship and Scarborough, we know the actual day on which they were compiled – the 20th of March.

The marines were organised into three divisions, based at Plymouth, Portsmouth and Chatham, and overwhelmingly, the First Fleet privates were drawn from first two, with only three of the 160 enlisted men coming from Chatham. While the private marines and non-commissioned officers were drawn from Portsmouth and Plymouth in roughly equal numbers, the officers were almost all from Plymouth (with only two exceptions).

One Plymouth officer, Lieutenant George Johnston, was transferred to the Portsmouth division in late November 1786, and on arrival there, was given command of a detachment and sent to Woolwich (on the Thames). There, on the 13th of December, they went on board the Alexander, the largest of the convict transports. The first of the convicts were embarked three weeks later, and she sailed from the Downs for Portsmouth in mid-February. (Johnston did not accompany them, joining the Lady Penrhyn at Woolwich.)

The marine detachment sent on the Scarborough, the second largest of the transports, was drawn from a variety of Portsmouth companies: indeed, the officers in charge at Portsmouth seem to have gone out of their way to break up the groups of men from the 20 or so different companies based at that port. They embarked on the 27th of February. The rest of the Portsmouth men joined the Prince of Wales, the smallest of the ships, on the 7th of March.

Charlotte and Friendship took on their marines at Plymouth on the 9th of March, and after loading the convicts, joined the rest of the fleet at the Mother Bank a week later.

The fleet would not sail for Botany Bay until the 13th of May, and in the intervening two months, a significant number of these men were moved between ships: not all of these movements were recorded, but it possible to figure out some of them by studying the archives, and the Victualling List in particular.

The most important change was the concentration of (most of) the men with wives and children on the Prince of Wales, necessitating the movement of single marines to other vessels.

At least 14 privates from the Alexander were sent on shore sick at Portsmouth, and on the 6th of May, a week before sailing, nine of them were still there. Several more followed on the 11th of May, two days before sailing, but it is apparent from the Victualling List that they were all returned before the fleet departed.

Seven private marines from the intended NSW garrison were sent to the flagship, HMS Sirius, to avoid overcrowding on the transports. (These men are to be distinguished from the marines assigned to the crews of the two naval vessels, Sirius and Supply, some of whom would later be transferred to the shore-based garrison in NSW.)

While the marines were distributed across the various transports to assist in overseeing the prisoners, the story is somewhat more complex. Only six marines were sent to the Lady Penrhyn, which carried around 100 female convicts. From a security perspective, there was no need for any guards on that ship, since the women were not a risk.

Alexander and Scarborough were carrying the largest number of male convicts, yet they had a smaller number of marines than Charlotte and Friendship. The two Portsmouth ships had around eight convicts for every marine private, while on the Plymouth ships this ratio was only two.

We probably should think of the Charlotte and the Friendship as troop ships as much as convict transports, and the low numbers help to explain the reticence among the officers on the Friendship to implement Captain Phillip’s order, given a week after sailing, to remove the shackles from the male convicts.

Home Companies and Shipboard Detachments

Each of the marines was attached to a company based at one of the three divisions (identified by a number – 14th Portsmouth or 15th Plymouth). This classification remained with them as they were assigned to detachments on board the various transports (identified by the ship’s name), and then allocated to one of four NSW companies shortly before arriving in the settlement (identified by the names of the four captains and captain-lieutenants) – although for a variety of reasons, including promotion and demotion, men were sometimes transferred from one home company to another whilst away.

There were two types of marines – grenadiers, who were used for amphibious assaults and skirmishing, and light infantry, who were trained more as marksmen – and some home companies were specifically identified as grenadier or light. Both types were embarked on the Charlotte at Plymouth, but the distinction was not maintained in the shipboard detachments, and there is no evidence that it survived in NSW.

In some cases, a number of men drawn from a particular home company were assigned to the same ship – all five men from the 6th Plymouth and 10 of the 11 from the 15th Plymouth embarked on the Charlotte – but it was more common (particularly at Portsmouth) for men from the same company to be spread across different vessels.

While they were on board the ships, these men (drawn from around 20 different companies at each division) were part of a detachment commanded by a Captain, Captain-Lieutenant or 1st Lieutenant. We have an imperfect understanding of which marines sailed on which ships, because the Victualling List is the only complete account of First Fleet marines, and there were so many changes between the preparation of the original ship lists and the departure of the fleet.

Allocation to the NSW Companies

There is almost no correlation between the home companies or shipboard detachments and the four companies established in the colony. The one (partial) exception is the Charlotte: 14 of the 30 men in her list were assigned to Captain Campbell’s company – if the allocation had been random, the number would have been half of that. Indeed, the first 12 men in the Charlotte’s list were assigned to his company, which suggests that as the senior marine captain, Campbell had first pick. Whatever the explanation, this concentration of men from a few companies from the same division is not apparent for the rest of the list.

The marines were advised of their NSW companies on the 4th of November while the fleet was at the Cape of Good Hope. They were not relocated at that time, but on the 22nd of January, as soon as the fleet had arrived at Botany Bay, instructions were given for the men assigned to Captain Campbell’s and Captain-Lieutenant Tench’s companies to prepare to land. These orders were countermanded when Phillip returned from Port Jackson with the news that the settlement was to be relocated there.

On the 27th of January, the morning after the fleet’s arrival off Sydney Cove, orders were given that the men assigned to Tench’s company were to go on board the Charlotte, to be landed from there, which they did that afternoon. The other companies were disembarked the next day from the ships in which they had arrived, with the new companies being formed on shore. Lieutenant Ralph Clark reported that there was a great deal of confusion.

A list of the four companies survives for the period July to September 1788, although we know that some changes had already taken place in the six months since landing.

Marine Messes

As already noted, it is difficult to be confident about the shipboard marine messes, because of the changes that were made to the detachments prior to sailing, and the fact that some of the marines changed mess throughout the voyage. Private John Easty (who was on the Scarborough) wrote on 1 September 1787 their mess replaced Thomas Lucas and John Jones with John Brown and John Gannon: the reasons are not stated, but personal differences are the most likely explanation. James Scott was a non-commissioned officer, but it is interesting that Serjeant Hume, a member of his mess (on the Prince of Wales), withdrew mid-voyage because of some objection by his wife.

But for all of the challenges, the Victualling List does tell us something about the messes. Some of them seem to have brought together men with common trade skills: of the first six men in the Charlotte’s list, hypothetically a mess, three were carpenters (some of the others might have been woodworkers, but we lack information about their training); two masons and bricklayers were listed after the other on the Alexander. This did not happen by accident, and it seems likely that there was some logic to the messes as they were originally constructed, perhaps based on how these men would be used immediately after landing.

Thomas Brown and Humphrey Evans were in the same group of six on the Charlotte – they later shared a hut in the colony with Henry Clements, who was in an adjacent ‘mess’. These men had come from the same division at Plymouth but not from the same companies, and it is possible that they were sharing a mess on shore. Other examples of men who were probably sharing the same mess on board and on shore are discussed below.

Making Sense of the Marines

There is still a great deal that we do not know about the First Fleet marine detachment. Major Ross (or his widow) seems to have destroyed his records on his return to England, and other than Plymouth, most of the divisional records have disappeared.

Given that so many documents are no longer available, the Victualling List can assist us in making sense of certain relationships and tensions in the early years of the settlement. A couple of examples:

The Hunt Court Martial

Two months after coming ashore, in March 1788, Private Joseph Hunt, from the 15th Plymouth company, was court-martialled for striking William Dempsey, another marine, at the communal cooking place. Dempsey had been flirting with Jane Fitzgerald, a convict who had arrived on the Charlotte with Hunt. One of the men who was nearby and gave evidence in the trial, was Thomas Jones, also from the 15th company, who had been on the Charlotte with Hunt. Their names appear one after the other in the Victualling List, and it seems likely that they were in the same mess. Both men were assigned to Captain Campbell’s company on arrival, and it is not unreasonable to conclude that they were sharing a mess (and a tent) in the colony.

Dempsey seems to have arrived on the Prince of Wales and he had been assigned to Captain Meredith’s company. Based on the surviving records, he belonged to the 40th Chatham company, but Hunt described him as ‘a Portsmouth rascal’, suggesting he had joined the fleet at that port. This fascinating incident, and the ensuing court martial, tell us a great deal about the sense of identity which these men felt about their divisions and their shipboard associations.[2]

The Storehouse Plot

In March 1789, seven marines were caught stealing from the storehouse they had been charged with securing against convict incursions. One of their number, turned Crown witness, testified that they had been stealing, on a large scale, over some months. The other six men were tried in the criminal court and hanged.

Two of the offenders, James Brown and James Baker, were from the 54th Plymouth company who had sailed out on the Charlotte, probably in the same mess. They had both been selected by Captain Campbell for his company. Joseph Hunt and Thomas Jones were another two: as noted above, they were from the same home company, the 15th Plymouth and (probably) the same messes on board and on shore. (Jane Fitzgerald was one of the women who had helped to conceal the stolen property, and a private’s widow, Alice Harmsworth, was another witness in the case.)

Three other men, Luke Haines, Richard Askew and Richard Dukes, were from Portsmouth division, and while not from the same home company, they had sailed on the Scarborough together (probably not in the same mess) and had all been selected for Campbell’s company.[3]

We can understand the storehouse conspiracy much better when we realise that four of the seven came from two Plymouth companies, had all sailed on the same ship, had probably belonged to two messes on the outward voyage, and that they all belonged to Captain Campbell’s company in the colony.

Ongoing Relationships

It comes as no surprise that men who had served together throughout the American War of Independence and on guardships at home in the aftermath of the war, who had socialised with one another at the marine barracks at Plymouth and Portsmouth, and messed together on board a ship on the outward voyage and/or in the colony, should prepare wills leaving their property to one another, go fishing together, fight with one another and engage in criminal activity together.

But in trying to make sense of life for the marines in First Fleet society, it is helpful to know about these connections. We know that relationships formed in the 12 months on board the ships persisted for some time in the colony, and in some cases, we can only make sense of what happened if we understand those prior associations.

Many of the convicts initially chosen to work at the hospital had served the surgeons as sick bay attendants on the outward voyage. The Assistant Commissary, Zachariah Clark, employed men at the storehouse who had been with him on the Scarborough, almost certainly working as his assistants in serving out the rations. All but one of the men selected for the original nightwatch (in August 1789) had arrived on the Scarborough, the ship on which Major Robert Ross, the officer commanding the marines, had spent the last part of his voyage.

In July 1788, Captain-Lieutenant Tench testified as to the character of Joshua Peck, who had come out on the Charlotte with him. In October of that year, Captain John Shea and Lieutenants Kellow and Davey gave character evidence on behalf of Henry Abrams, who had almost certainly been a supervisor on the Scarborough with them. And in January of the following year, Tench testified again, on behalf of William Frazer, a blacksmith and locksmith who had also been on the Charlotte.

We would love to know more – if there was more information about the mess structures and shipboard relationships of the marines, we would have a better understanding of the friendships, conspiracies and conflicts in First Fleet society. And while the Victualling List does not fill all the gaps in our understanding, it is a valuable tool that is deserving of closer analysis.

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The image on the cover page is a detail from an engraving on the cover of John Hunter’s Historical Journal, published in 1793. It was made from a lost drawing by Hunter and shows a group of officers and gentlemen offering assistance to an Aboriginal woman suffering from smallpox in June 1789. The man with his back to the viewer is a marine, possibly Captain George Johnston – the only known image of a marine in the colony by someone who was present.

We acknowledge the use of Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia, Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1989 and the Biographical Database of Australia in identifying and accessing primary sources on the marines.

[1] ‘A List of the Offices and men with their Wives & Children, belonging to the Garrison, intended for the Settlement at New South Wales, that were Victualled by Order of His Excellency the Governour. . .‘, UK National Archives (hereafter TNA), T46/22.

[2] Proceedings of a Court Martial held at Port Jackson, 18 March 1788, TNA, ADM1/3824/99-100.

[3] Examinations of William Frazer, Alice Armsworth and Joseph Hunt, voluntary confessions of Luke Haines and Thomas Dukes, examination of William Roberts, William Norris & Edward Smith, 18, 19, 25, 27 & 30 March 1789, Judge Advocates Bench, Minutes of Proceedings, State Archives of NSW, COD17, SZ675, pp.155-174; R v Haynes, Askew, Baker, Brown, Dukes and Jones, 25-26 March 1789, not reported, but described in David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales [1798], Sydney: A.H. & .W. Reed, 1975, Vol. 1, pp.48-50

Detail from an engraving based on a drawing by John Hunter, June 1789, showing a marine officer in undress uniform, with other gentlemen of the settlement.