The Best Australian Sea Stories by Jim Haynes

Author:Jim Haynes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: LCO000000, book
ISBN: 9781743432426
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2012-10-14T21:00:00+00:00

The amazing Mr Swallow

The runaways who actually did make it to China did so aboard a 110-ton, two-masted brig called the Cyprus.

During August 1829, Cyprus was anchored up in Recherche Bay, on the very southern tip of Van Diemen’s Land, taking shelter from a late winter storm.

About sixty people were crammed on board the 70-foot ship. Thirty-three were convicts being transferred in chains from Hobart to the harsher prison settlement on Sarah Island, at Macquarie Harbour, on the island’s wild west coast.

Lieutenant Carew, a native of Cork and newly arrived from Britain, was in charge of the transfer. Also on board were Captain Harrison and his crew; Dr Wilson, who was in charge of the prisoners’ welfare; twelve soldiers of the 63rd Regiment; Carew’s young wife and two children; and the wife and child of one of the soldiers. In her hold, the Cyprus carried three months supply of food and other goods for the convict settlement at Macquarie Harbour.

While the vessel sheltered in the safe waters of the bay, Lieutenant Carew, in command of the guard but not the ship, allowed the convicts to exercise on deck five at a time without their chains. He also allowed several of them, who were experienced sailors, to work as part of the crew.

Two of those he allowed to work as crewmen became the main players in what occurred next.

Cockney John Pobjoy was aged 29—the same age as Carew— when the Cyprus was seized. At seventeen, he was sentenced to death, commuted to fourteen years transportation, for stealing a horse worth five pounds. In Sydney he was accused of robbery, for which he received 200 lashes and was sent to Van Diemen’s Land.

William Walker—alias Swallow; alias Brown; alias Shields; alias Captain Waldron—was a 40-year-old seaman from North Shields, near Sunderland, who was married with two children. The year before, as William Swallow, he was convicted of house-breaking in Surrey and sentenced to transportation for life to Van Diemen’s Land on the Georgiana. He was actually William Walker, a convict who had escaped from the same colony six years earlier.

William Walker/Swallow/Brown/Shields had a remarkable life. Born in 1792, he worked on coal boats from the age of fifteen and was press-ganged into the navy at eighteen. He served two years and then fell victim to the depression and unemployment that followed the Napoleonic Wars. In 1820 he was sentenced at Durham Assizes to seven years transportation for stealing a quilt and goods valued at eight pence.

On the way to London to be put aboard the hulks, he evidently convinced another prisoner to jump overboard. The poor fellow did so and drowned, while Walker used the diversion to slip over the other side himself and stay afloat using some cork he had found on board. He was picked up by a passing ship and put ashore in London, claiming he was a sailor who had fallen from the rigging.

After earning some money as a rigger he grew a beard, called himself Brown and returned to Sunderland as a crewman on a collier.

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