Lady Juliana (ship)
Encyclopedia
Convict
A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison", sometimes referred to in slang as simply a "con". Convicts are often called prisoners or inmates. Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences often are not termed...
ship dispatched in 1789 from Britain to Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. She was the first convict ship to arrive at Port Jackson
Port Jackson
Port Jackson, containing Sydney Harbour, is the natural harbour of Sydney, Australia. It is known for its beauty, and in particular, as the location of the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge...
in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
after the First Fleet
First Fleet
The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships which sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787 with about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts , to establish the first European colony in Australia, in the region which Captain Cook had named New South Wales. The fleet was led by Captain ...
. She is therefore sometimes considered as part of the Second Fleet
Second Fleet (Australia)
The Second Fleet is the name of the second fleet of ships sent with settlers, convicts and supplies to colony at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, Australia. The fleet comprised six ships: one Royal Navy escort, four convict ships, and a supply ship....
and sometimes not. A transportation register can be seen at The UK National Archives.
A ship of 401 tons she was chartered to transport female convicts. Her master was Thomas Edgar who had sailed with James Cook
James Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
on his last voyage. The surgeon was Richard Alley who was apparently competent by the standards of the day, but made little attempt to maintain discipline. After a delay of six months the Lady Juliana left Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
on 29 July 1789 with 226 female convicts, and took 309 days to reach Port Jackson, one of the slowest journeys made by a convict ship. She called at Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
and St Jago, and spent forty five days at Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, and nineteen days at the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
.
An account of the voyage was written by her steward John Nicol. He gives a fascinating account of the voyage and the convicts. Most of these were London prostitutes, but there were some hardened criminals - thieves, receivers of stolen goods, shoplifters - among them.
The vessel gained the reputation for being a floating brothel. Nicol recalled that "when we were fairly out to sea, every man on board took a wife from among the convicts, they nothing loath." At the ports of call seamen from other ships were freely entertained, and the officers made no attempt to suppress this licentious activity. The convicts were reported to be noisy and unruly, with a fondness for liquor, and they frequently fought amongst themselves.
During the voyage only five convicts died. Rations were properly issued, the vessel kept clean and fumigated, the women were given free access to the deck, and supplies of fresh food were obtained at the ports of call. This treatment was in sharp contrast to that meted out on the infamous Second Fleet
Second Fleet (Australia)
The Second Fleet is the name of the second fleet of ships sent with settlers, convicts and supplies to colony at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, Australia. The fleet comprised six ships: one Royal Navy escort, four convict ships, and a supply ship....
.
Lady Juliana arrived at Port Jackson on 6 June 1790, the first vessel to be seen by the members of the first settlement since their own arrival almost two and a half years before. In the grip of starvation, with HMS Sirius
HMS Sirius (1786)
HMS Sirius was the flagship of the First Fleet, which set out from Portsmouth, England, in 1787 to establish the first European colony in New South Wales, Australia. Sirius was wrecked off the coast of Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean in 1790....
wrecked at Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island is a small island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. The island is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, but it enjoys a large degree of self-governance...
Judge Advocate David Collins
David Collins (governor)
Colonel David Collins was the first Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Van Diemens Land, founded in 1804, which in 1901 became the state of Tasmania in the Commonwealth of Australia.-Early life and military career:...
was mortified at the arrival of "a cargo so unnecessary and so unprofitable as 222 females, instead of a cargo of provisions". Lieutenant Ralph Clark was more blunt, lamenting the arrival of still more "damned whores". The ship carried letters bringing the first news of events in Europe to the settlement since the First Fleet had sailed in May 1787. Two weeks later the storeship Justinian
Justinian (ship)
The Justinian was a storeship that carried provisions to the convict settlement at New South Wales. She left Falmouth in England on 20 January 1790 and, after calling at Madeira and Saint Jago, she arrived at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson on 20 June, having been driven off from the harbour heads on...
arrived, followed a week later by the three ships of the Second Fleet with their shameful cargo of starved and maltreated convicts.
After repairs to her strained timbers, the Lady Juliana sailed for China on 25 July 1790 to take on a cargo of tea for the East India Company.
Notable convicts aboard Lady Juliana
- Mary WadeMary WadeMary Ann Wade was only 11 years old when transported to Australia as the youngest convict aboard the Lady Juliana as part of the Second Fleet...
- Mary was transported as the youngest convict at 11 years of age, and at the time of her death at age 82, had over 300 living descendants. - Elizabeth SteelElizabeth SteelElizabeth Steel arrived in Sydney Cove as a convict on board the Lady Juliana on 3 June 1790, as part of the Second Fleet, aged 23 or 24. At the time of her sentencing authorities described her as being ‘mute by visitation of God’, which is the earliest record of a deaf Australian, but there is no...
- Elizabeth is historically recorded as the first deaf Australian. Her headstone was discovered in 1991. - Mary Pardeaux - Mary gave birth to Ann (fathered to Edward Scott, sailor aboard Lady Juliana) in March 1790 while making the journey to Australia. This child was the youngest person on board the Lady Juliana at the time of the arrival in Port Jackson.
Further reading
- Bateson, Charles, The Convict Ships, 1787-1868, Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1983. ISBN 0908120516
- Nicol, John, John Nicol, Mariner: Life and Adventures 1776-1801, Melbourne, Text Publishing, 1997. ISBN 0871137550
- Rees, Sian, The Floating Brothel, Sydney, Hodder, 2001. ISBN 0733624636
External links
- "Voyage of the Courtesans" - Secrets of the Dead, PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
- "Convicts to Australia - Lady Juliana 1790"
- The Lady Julian
- ABC Television Documentary ' The Floating Brothel'
- The Lady Julian Poem
- The Second Fleet Transports - Lady Juliana