The Voyage of the Alexander

This newsletter explores the voyage of the Alexander, and the high mortality among her convicts and crew members, as a way of understanding the perils associated with the Botany Bay trade in the early years.

Death on the Alexander

Historians have made a great deal of the low convict mortality on Australia’s First Fleet (3.2%), contrasting it with that of the ill-fated Second Fleet (26%), and attributing the difference to the intervention of Arthur Phillip, captain of the Sirius, commodore of the fleet and Governor-elect of the proposed new colony.

3.2% is the mortality for the voyage itself: it leaves out those who died on board before the fleet sailed and in the weeks following their arrival. If we include those numbers, then the record is not quite so impressive – slightly better than one in ten. (We don't have comparable numbers for the Second Fleet, but the total was probably around four in ten).

One ship, however, had a death rate (for the voyage itself) five times that of the rest of the convoy. The Alexander was only three years old and rated first class by Lloyd’s when she was taken up for the First Fleet. Her convicts were treated no differently to those on the other transports. The difference lies not in the condition of the ship or the management of the men, but in the condition of the convicts when taken on board, reflecting a serious outbreak of typhus on the Woolwich hulks in the three years prior to embarkation.

We can learn more about the challenges of transportation by studying anomalies such as the Alexander, than in persisting with simplistic interpretations based solely on the commercial interests of the convict contractors. The Scarborough is another incongruity: she had a mortality rate for the First Fleet of 0.4% (voyage only), while the same ship under the same captain, a man acknowledged at the time as decent and humane, lost more than a quarter of her convicts on the Second Fleet (voyage only).

This newsletter is concerned with the voyage of the Alexander, the origins of the disease that was brought on board in January 1787, how it was managed prior to sailing and then throughout the voyage, and the impact which it had on the mariners and marines on board that ship. It also deals with the terrible mortality among her seamen on the homeward voyage, and serves as a reminder of the dangers faced by the mariners as well as the passengers on these early voyages to and from Botany Bay.

Gaol Fever

One hundred and eighty-four male convicts were embarked on the Alexander from the Woolwich hulks on the 6th of January 1787, with 25 more in late February. Several of these men were carrying typhus, resulting in an outbreak on this, the largest of the transports. By that time, an epidemic had been raging on the hulks for three years, having carried away at least 327 convicts. (We do not know the precise number because convicts who died on a hospital ship or at an infirmary on the southern shore of the Thames were not always recorded in the hulk lists, and not all of the inquest lists have survived.)

The prevailing view of medical science was that disease was spread by airborne particles, and the key to a healthy prison was thought to lie in good ventilation, regular fumigation, and allowing the convicts to spend as much time as possible in the open air.

Medical science was wrong: typhus is caused by a micro-organism known as Rickettsia Prowazekii, which is transmitted by body lice. This knowledge would be the key to preventing the spread of the disease, but it would not be discovered until 1909. Body lice multiply where people are unable to wash themselves and their clothes frequently and they spread where people are packed together in close proximity. Unsurprisingly, the greatest mortality on the hulks occurred in the winter months, when the men could not work on shore throughout the day, and they were packed down together day and night.

There had been typhus epidemics on the hulks before, which had been successfully managed after a great deal of effort. Gaol fever (as it was known when it was found in gaols) would have been brought on board from London’s Newgate prison or one of the county gaols: convicts were supposed to bring medical certificates indicating they were free from disease, but county officials had a powerful incentive to ignore the early symptoms to relieve the pressure on their own facilities.

However, typhus has an incubation period of several weeks, and the early symptoms can differ a great deal and be difficult to read by those unfamiliar with it. John Pringle, an army physician often referred to as the father of military medicine, said of ‘camp fever’ in 1752 that ‘The disease is not easily to be distinguished, in the beginning, from any common fever’.[1] Some compared the early stages to a bad case of influenza, with shivering, fever and aches throughout the body. One of the most distinctive symptoms was a rash which broke out on the abdomen, but sometimes these blotches would not appear until after the patient had already died. A modern historian has written:

'. . .the rash in the mild, isolated endemic cases – and especially among children – may be so slight and transient that often is it not noticed at all by the physician unfamiliar with the disease. For this reason, until typhus becomes epidemic, individual cases may often remain unrecognized, or may be described in such a general manner that it is impossible to differentiate them from measles, scarlet and typhoid fever, malaria, and a number of other febrile conditions that were common in ancient and medieval times.'[2]

As the disease progressed, the aches and pains would get worse, variously accompanied by delirium and seizures, loss of hearing, nose bleeds, vomiting, a thick brown expectorant off the chest, a green discharge from blisters on the skin, heart and/or liver problems. One Australian convict wrote of his encounter with gaol fever at Newgate:

'I only remember having my irons taken off, and being put to bed; for the same night I became delirious, and was so dreadfully affected, as to continue insensible for three weeks, during which time I had no knowledge of my parents, or of any other person who approached me; and the fever raged to such a degree, that I was obliged to be bound in my bed, in order to restrain me from acts of mischief.'[3]

Even today, without the use of antibiotics, the disease can be fatal in up to 30 percent of cases; among those who recover, the fever typically lasts a fortnight, with convalescence taking a further two to three months. A vaccine was not developed until 1930, which means that when a convict came down with typhus on one of the hulks or a vessel bound for the Antipodes, there was nothing that could be done except alleviate the symptoms. Recommended treatments of the day included induced vomiting, sweating and bleeding (useless and possibly harmful), the use of antimony as an emetic (useless and potentially poisonous), cinchona bark (useful against malaria but not typhus), and in the final stages, opium and wine (which at least would have eased the suffering).

Hulk Fever

As we try to comprehend the experience of the men sent out on the Alexander, it is important to understand that some of them had been living with the horror of gaol fever and the prospect of an early death for several years. Of the 12 men convicted of felonies at the Salisbury Quarter Sessions in March 1785, who were sent to the Ceres hulk (at Woolwich), six were subsequently transported on the Alexander. Five of the others had died over the previous 12 months, and the sixth would pass away before the fleet sailed.

James Richards, shipped out on the Alexander for breaking into the Customs House at New Shoreham and stealing more than 14 casks of foreign spirits, had seen five of the seven men sentenced to transportation with him at East Grinstead in March 1786 die on the Ceres within six months of being sent on board, including his 64 year old father.

James Bartlett had been convicted with his brother Samuel, of stealing large quantities of yarn from a warehouse at Portsea. He had seen five of the dozen men sentenced to death with them at Winchester in March 1785 taken out of the cells and executed. Of the nine who were respited, five were pardoned or had their sentences commuted to several months in prison, and the other four were sent to the Ceres. His brother and another man died there. Bartlett was sent to the Alexander on the 6th of January and removed three weeks later when he was granted a free pardon. The other, George Barsby, would die on the Alexander two months later.

These capture the experience of so many of the men who sailed on this ship. Another way of imagining the impact of this terrible disease lies in identifying the convicts who were listed for transportation but never embarked.

The First Fleet contractor, William Richards, signed the first of the transportation bonds on the 15th of December 1786: these legal guarantees, a hangover from the North American transportation system, were endorsed both by the contractor and the master of the ship, to ensure that the convicts would actually be taken out of the kingdom. It is unknown exactly how many bonds Richards signed that day, but it seems that he was given a list of 209 men who were to be shipped on board the Alexander from the Woolwich hulks. (She was meant to have a complement of 210, but it would seem that the bonds only contained 209 names.)

A list of the convicts in the Woolwich hulks suitable for transportation had been put together in October by Duncan Campbell, the hulks contractor. But by the time the Home Office set about to prepare the legal documentation in early December, this list was woefully out of date: acting on the assumption that the government knew what it was doing, Richards signed a financial commitment to transport around 200 men, seven of whom were already dead.

Two weeks later, when the warrant authorising the transportation of these men was prepared, seven names were omitted, and of the 202 that remained, only 184 were actually shipped on board the Alexander on the 6th of January. The others were either dead, dying or too sick to be moved. Given that one of these men died on the day when he was meant to be loaded into a lighter and taken across to the Alexander, and another three days after that, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the captains of the hulks (and their surgeons) were trying to get rid of their problems.

Duncan Campbell was suffering from a severe attack of gout and unable to personally oversee the transfer, but he was aware that some of these men were diseased. He took the view that they would recover quicker at sea. In a letter to Evan Nepean, the permanent under-secretary at the Home Office, on the 10th of January, he wrote: ‘The people which compose these lists are not all in good health and the sooner they are shipped the better’.[4]

Prior to sailing

It would have been immediately apparent to William Balmain, the naval surgeon assigned to the Alexander, that he had been charged with managing an epidemic. Those ‘in a deplorable situation’ were turned away, but amongst those received on board, Captain Phillip wrote, ‘there are. . . several unable to help themselves’. This can only have been because Balmain and the agent for transports, Lieutenant John Shortland, who was at that time stationed on the Alexander, felt that they lacked the authority to send them back.[5]

Shortland had written to Phillip, who was still in London, advising him of the outbreak. He pointed out that the men could not be allowed onto the upper deck in large numbers because of the cold and the proximity to shore, and with the prisoners packed in their quarters night and day, Balmain had warned that deaths were inevitable.

The Alexander sailed for Portsmouth in mid-February, and when she came to anchor off Deal several days later, Shortland sent a letter to the Navy Board, which was responsible for commissioning the fleet, asking that a supply of vinegar be waiting for them at Portsmouth so the convict quarters could be cleansed and fumigated. The first of the prisoners passed away while they were still in the Downs waiting for favourable winds, followed several days later by another. Then the disease surfaced amongst the marines.

Balmain was deeply concerned and wrote a memorandum for Shortland arguing that as a preventive measure, the convicts and marines should all be supplied with fresh meat and vegetables on their arrival at Portsmouth. Shortland either misunderstood what Balmain was saying or he was worried about the cost, because in passing this petition on to the Navy Board, he only asked for refreshments for the sick.

The request was quickly approved and by the time the Alexander came to anchor at the Mother Bank, William Richards had been engaged to procure fresh provisions ‘as directed by the surgeon’. As an afterthought, the Navy Board asked that if possible, the daily expense should be confined to a shilling a day for each convict.

The first of the fresh beef and vegetables were delivered the following day, and when Balmain learned that there was only enough for the sick, he wrote to Shortland again, asking that the misunderstanding be corrected. Once again, they were supported by Phillip, but Sir Charles Middleton, the executive chair of the Navy Board, explained that fresh provisions could not be extended to all of the convicts and marines without an order from the Treasury. There is nothing to suggest that this request was ever made.

Some of the sick marines were sent on shore to the barracks infirmary shortly after the ship arrived at Spithead, and others soon followed. Convicts continued to die, and by the middle of March, the disease had infected the crew. The officer commanding the marines, Major Robert Ross, arrived at Portsmouth around this time and immediately went on board to inspect his men. He had been asked by the Home Office to muster the convicts, and in his report to Nepean, Ross warned about the need for fresh meat and vegetables:

You are too well acquainted with the consequences attending the being kept too long on a diet of salt provisions to need my saying anything upon that head, being well convinced that whatever can be done for the preservation of health will be done by you.[6]

Once again, it seems the recommendation was ignored, although someone at Portsmouth was sufficiently concerned about the number of diseased sailors and marines coming ashore to send a surgeon on board. This man, whose identity is unknown, concluded that it was ‘a malignant disease of a most dangerous kind’, a reference to typhus, and recommended that all of the convicts be sent on shore so they could recuperate and the ship could be fumigated.

However, when John White, the surgeon-general to the First Fleet, arrived the next day from Plymouth, he disagreed. He would later insist that the convicts were suffering from nothing more serious than ‘slight inflammatory complaints’ brought on by the piercing cold, with some showing the effects of a long imprisonment.[7]

This was obviously wrong and given the way he responded at the time, it’s unlikely that White was confident about his diagnosis either. He immediately ordered additional clothing to be issued from the stores, and asked the ship’s master and the senior marine officer on board to allow the convicts to spend several hours on deck each day, to which they readily agreed.

A courier was dispatched to Phillip in London, asking that all of the convicts and marines be issued with fresh provisions, and seeking a supply of wine for the sick. White also proposed that lighters be ordered so that the convicts could be removed from the ship while it was fumigated and whitewashed. Phillip passed these recommendations on to his friend Nepean, along with a blistering indictment of what he saw as bureaucratic indifference to the wellbeing of men and women about to depart on a long voyage to the Antipodes.[8]

The response was immediate. A two-decked lighter was ordered and the convicts were removed from the ship while tradesmen set about dismantling the cabins, scrubbing and smoking the prison, whitewashing the timbers and painting them with oil of tar. This was repeated every couple of days for two weeks, with the convicts finally being sent back on board in early April. The Navy Board wrote to William Richards, asking him to obtain fresh meat and vegetables for all of the convicts and marines on the six transports now gathered at Portsmouth, along with wine and essence of malt (thought to be a curative for scurvy).

The outbreak had been at early stage when the convicts were brought across from the hulks – the first of the deaths did not occur until more than a month after boarding. Three prisoners died in the second month, eight in the third, two in the fourth and eight in the days before sailing and in the first few weeks at sea.

We know little about the fate of the marines, but up to the middle of April, half of the Alexander’s complement of 32 men had been sent sick on shore, and we know that some of them died. One of these was the drummer, James Daniel, who was deceased by the 13th of April and was buried at Portsea.

Captain Hunter, the second captain of the Sirius, was directed not to send any more sick to the marine infirmary at Portsmouth out of a concern that the disease might spread, and thereafter they were taken to the naval hospital at nearby Haslar. By the time the fleet sailed in mid-May, well over half of the marines had been sent ashore, although some of those recovered and were returned to the ship.

Much less is known about the crew. At least ten of them – a third of the ship’s company – were discharged or sent sick on shore, and others ran at the height of the outbreak. It is likely that some of them died too.

Outward Voyage

There were fewer deaths than before, but the mortality on the Alexander throughout the voyage was still much higher than the rest of the fleet. In the middle of July, when the fleet was mid-Atlantic, Duncan Sinclair, the master of the Alexander, reported that a number of the people were ‘bad with fever’. Phillip sent his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, across with the surgeon-general to investigate, but once again, White was reluctant to admit that the problem was typhus.

Balmain would have spent long days working amongst typhus-ridden convicts, marines and sailors. He was assiduous in attending to the sick and dying, although it was not until early October, after they had sailed from Rio de Janeiro, that Sinclair established a separate sick bay where they could isolate the ‘unhealthy’. This would have been done on Balmain’s recommendation, but it is unknown why it had taken so long.

Regrettably, no records survive which explain how he treated the sick or what role he played in managing convict hygiene. None of the surviving journals describe the daily routine on board the First Fleet transports, but based on Phillip’s practice on the Sirius, and the procedures on later convict transports, it is likely that the convicts’ beds were brought onto the upper deck every day (when the weather would permit), as the convicts came up for exercise. Phillip had ordered the men’s irons to be removed a week after sailing from Portsmouth, so unless they misbehaved, they had the freedom of the deck throughout the voyage. They would have washed and been regularly shaved by convicts assigned to work as barbers, and they would have washed their clothes at the end of each week, so they were clean and tidy for Sunday. The convict quarters would have been swept every day, and we know that sulphur was burned from time to time as a fumigant, and the timbers of the prison painted with vinegar and oil of tar, regarded at that time as antiseptics.

Several days before arriving at the Cape, one of the surgeons wrote that ‘Many of the Convicts & Marines’ on board the Alexander were ‘dangerously ill of a kind of putrid fever’, and White acknowledged that the fever which had broken out on the Charlotte was probably typhus.[9]

Another four men died on the passage across the Southern Ocean and along the coast of New South Wales, the last of them passing away several days before the ship made its way into Botany Bay. While he had not succeeded in eradicating the disease, Balmain had been able to contain it, so that it did not rage through the prison, as it would on the Second Fleet.

Nineteen convicts died in the four months after landing, three of whom (16%) had arrived on the Alexander, somewhat less than her 25% share of the fleet. It is unknown whether this was a matter of chance, or because her convicts had received much closer attention throughout the voyage because of the sickness on board.

Homeward Voyage

The convicts and marines had arrived, but the crew now faced the daunting prospect of a long voyage home. By the time the Alexander sailed for England in July 1788, her people were suffering heavily from scurvy, having had few fresh provisions since they had left the Cape in November: there were some edible greens in the bush surrounding the settlement, but they were scarce, and given the animosity of the indigenous inhabitants, it was dangerous to go out collecting.

Scurvy is caused by a severe deficiency of Vitamin C, a nutrient which was not identified until 1919. Contrary to what has often been claimed, eighteenth century mariners were well aware that fresh fruit and vegetables, citrus in particular, contributed to a rapid recovery. The problem was that they had no way of preserving these foods for long ocean voyages that did not destroy the ascorbic acid, and cooking in copper or cast iron pots probably killed what was left. The chief mate of one ship employed in the Botany Bay trade described the symptoms as follows:

...the lower part of the body and limbs is particularly affected; the entire body has the appearance of mercurial salivation; the gums are swelled; the breathing very difficult, and the thighs and legs inflated to a most enormous size, showing all the appearance of a commencing mortification; the limbs cannot move as the sinews are contracted. The individual thus affected, feels life intolerable from the excruciating pain of body and loss of spirits.[10]

Untreated, it ends in death. Governor Phillip wrote in May 1788 that scurvy was raging in the camp, ‘in a most extraordinary manner’. Most of the people were affected by it, and over the following months, a number of convicts died. Of course, the seamen were not immune: the Sirius had a number of her people down with scurvy in late June, and men were sent out into ‘the woods’ to search for an acidic berry that was recognised as having anti-scorbutic properties. Two of the Alexander’s seamen, including the ship’s carpenter, died in June and July, almost certainly of scurvy.[11]

In company with the Friendship (and two other ships which were separated by storm and made their way across the Pacific), the Alexander was to sail for home under the command of the naval agent, Lieutenant Shortland. They were to make their way north through the islands of Melanesia to the Malacca Strait and then down to the Dutch settlement at Batavia. By the time they arrived, the men would have been without fresh provisions for more than a year.

They might touch at one of the islands to trade with the locals for fresh fruit and vegetables, but this could be incredibly dangerous for the men who went ashore – as La Perouse had discovered at Maouna in 1786 (in what is now American Samoa), and as John Hunter would discover at New Ireland in 1791, and William Hill at Erub Island in the Timor Strait in 1793.

Everyone understood the risks. William Bradley, the first lieutenant on the Sirius, wrote of the transports that were about to leave: ‘these ships were all in a Distress’d state when they sailed both as to sickness, want of provisions & [ships’] furniture’.[12]

Another of the Alexander’s people passed away two weeks after sailing, and another in mid-September while they were anchored off Palau. Some of the men were sent ashore, but the islanders would not barter and the landing party came away with nothing more than a hundred green coconuts.

They sailed into the Macassar Strait on the 16th of October. The Alexander had just lost another three of her company and in the course of that day, the third mate also passed away. Half of the remaining crew were confined to their hammocks with scurvy and Captain Sinclair could only spare two men for each watch. The ship’s journal records that they overhauled the firearms, ‘being now in the track of pirates’.[13]

On the night of October the 18th, the Friendship struck a reef: she hoisted lights and repeatedly fired a gun as a warning to the Alexander and at daylight, they found themselves among sandbanks which stretched as far as the eye could see. By noon of the following day, the Friendship had freed herself from the shallows and sent the jolly boat to assist her companion. The Alexander was not finally able to get under way until the afternoon of the 20th and kept a hand at the mast head as a lookout for shoals. The last hog was killed the following day as refreshment for the Alexander’s crew who were exhausted by the hard labour. That day, one of the ship’s boys died.

They now turned to windward and found themselves battling strong currents and making no ground. On the 22nd, they were tacking every half hour, which must have been exhausting for men crippled with scurvy. Yet another of the Alexander’s seamen passed away, and finally, on the 23rd, the Alexander came to anchor in ten fathoms of water, four leagues from the shore.

Fearing the imminent arrival of the monsoon, Shortland handed a formal letter to Captain Sinclair, asking whether he was still able to navigate his ship, and suggesting that their best chance lay in scuttling the vessel of least value and concentrating their forces in one ship. Following consultation with Captain Walton, the master of the Friendship, it was decided to sink his vessel after taking out the most valuable stores.

Walton would later insist that he and his officers were capable of taking their ship into Batavia, but the crew sent a letter to Lieutenant Shortland, stating they could no longer work the vessel, having lived mostly on bread and water (they said) since leaving Port Jackson. Shortland later claimed that there were only five men on the ship who were not disabled. After spending several days in removing her stores, holes were drilled through the Friendship’s bow and she was cut adrift and allowed to sink.

Several days later, at around 8 o’clock on the morning, they saw four large boats emerge from among the islands and make after them. Each of these vessels was carrying 50 to 60 men with around 18 oars on each side: they were being chased by pirates. By 5 o’clock that evening, these boats were within gunshot, and the Alexander fired her three pounders across their bows. The pirates huddled together in consultation before hoisting sail and making away. The Alexander expected them to return that night, but ‘they happily disappointed’.

Several more of the crew passed away before the Alexander entered Batavia Roads on the 17th of November, Captain Sinclair reporting: ‘The people now being so fatigued, we had only one man that could stand the deck.’ They required assistance from on shore in order to moor the ship, and a number of the surviving crew members were immediately sent to the hospital where several more would pass away.

There were British ships in port, and the captain of the Asia, an East Indiaman, reported that he received a letter from Lieutenant Shortland, saying that he was ‘very Short of hands having buried two thirds of her Compliment on the Passage & requesting I would spare him two Seamen to assist in Navigating the Ship to England’.[14] Some of the Alexander’s crew members did return, but Sinclair was heavily reliant on men from the Asia and several other East Indiamen to take the ship home.

Half a dozen wills and administrations have survived for the crew of the Alexander. James Bones, the third mate of the Alexander, died on the 16th of October, as the ship was making her way into the Malacca Strait. He named his ‘good friend’, Barbara Bounds, as the sole beneficiary of his will. She was not his friend; she was a victualler from Wapping who had advanced Bones money so he could fit himself out for the voyage. John McGill had prepared his will several days before Bones passed away: he died the following month at Batavia, leaving all of his belongings to a fellow crew member, John Lewis. John Ellis died shortly before the ship had made its way into Batavia: he left his estate to his brother, Richard.

It was a bitter homecoming. When the surgeon of another First Fleet ship, the Lady Penrhyn, learned of the ‘melancholy fate’ of the Alexander and the other transports on their homeward voyage, he wrote in his journal:

Thus fatally and thus unexpectedly has terminated the famous Botany Bay expedition... [15]

_____________

[1] John Pringle, Observations on the Disease of the Army, 5th edition, London: A. Millar, 1765, p. 290.

[2] Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice & History: The Biography of a Bacillus [1934], London: Macmillan, 1985, p. 217.

[3] James Hardy Vaux, Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux, London: W. Clowes, 1819, Vol. 1, p. 166.

[4] Campbell to Nepean, 10 January 1787, Duncan Campbell Business Letterbooks, Volume 5, State Library of NSW (hereafter SLNSW), Safe 1/417, p. 255.

[5] William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales, 1786-1792, SLNSW Safe 1/14, p. 4; Phillip to Nepean, 11 January 1787, UK National Archives (hereafter TNA) CO201/2/105.

[6] Ross to Nepean, 14 March 1787, TNA CO201/2/231-231a.

[7] John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales [1790], Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1962, p. 48.

[8] Phillip to Nepean, 18 March 1787, TNA CO201/2/122-4.

[9] Paul G. Fidlon et al (eds.), The Journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth, Sydney: Australian Documents Library, 1979, p. 40.

[10] John Myers, The Life, Voyages and Travels of Capt. John Myers, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Co., 1817, p. 92.

[11] Phillip to Sydney, 15 May 1788, TNA CO201/3/9.

[12] William Bradley, A Voyage to New South Wales, 1786-1792, op. cit., p. 117.

[13] Journal of the Alexander, TNA ADM51/4375, 16 October 1788.

[14] Journal of the Asia, British Library, IOR L/MAR/B/24G.

[15] Paul G. Fidlon et al (eds.), The Journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth, op. cit., p. 155.

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