Abstract
For the student of oceanic voyaging in the great age of European exploration and expansion, the most valued documents are invariably the accounts and recollections of those voyages written by those who undertook them. There is always the desire to hear of first-hand experience rather than the musings of interpreters who have rarely stirred from the comfort of a fire lit study. The example of John Hawkesworth’s imaginative version of James Cook’s first voyage account comes to mind in the latter case, but in the former case some deeply valuable accounts exist, such as William Dampier’s A New Voyage Around the World (1697). Historian Granville Mawer has presented in this small but intriguing work an example of the latter, which he assembled by unearthing and filling out – in the best sense of the word – a manuscript from the National Library of Australia, which he carefully enhanced with other material from the Public Record Office. It is a first-person account by Captain James Colnett, RN, of a convict delivery voyage from Britain to New South Wales in 1802–1803, in the converted East Indiaman HMS Glatton (50), and its return voyage laden with shipbuilding timber. Glatton’s voyage was part of a short-lived experiment by which Royal Navy vessels transported convicts to the Australian penal colonies as a means of countering abuses of the convicts perpetrated by contracted merchant shippers. The experiment ended with the resumption of war with France.
Colnett was one of those storied and capable men who had sailed with Cook on a Pacific voyage, and had been involved in other adventures including the so-called Nootka Crisis of 1790, when Colnett, temporarily employed in the sea otter fur trade, almost was the cause – or excuse – of war with Spain. A competent and efficient seaman, he demonstrated great ability by successfully completing his voyage to and from New South Wales. Equally evident was a proud and somewhat argumentative personality which made difficult his stay in the Australian colony.
Mawer has chosen to provide a clean and uncluttered copy of Colnett’s narrative, although he admits to editing out or simplifying the minutiae of seamanship, and gives preference to Colnett’s relations with, and provisions for, the convicts. For the age, Colnett was extraordinarily humane and considerate in their treatment, although quite able to order punishment of both men and women if necessary, including the lash. The other salient feature of the book is Colnett’s prickly relationship with Governor King of the colony. These two concerns of Colnett are the principal focus of the book rather than the seamanship problems of the voyage, and they are enlivened by Colnett’s reactions to Australia, which were decidedly uncomplimentary.
Colnett also spends a good deal of time extolling the greater virtues of New Zealand for a penal colony, citing climate, soil, vegetation and the social and physical qualities of the Maori, whom he clearly admired. But for students of early Australian history, the nature of its founders, and the social atmosphere in which the country began to find its feet, Colnett’s account is invaluable. For students of more focused maritime history, the provisions and arrangements he made for the safe and healthy transport of the convicts, and the effort he made to retain discipline aboard his former warship – each seaman was ‘assigned’ a female convict, and that may have included Colnett as well – even with the complement of marines which William Bligh lacked, are the most interesting elements of the book, even with its all-too-limited technical discussions on getting the ship safely through such a monumental voyage. The difficulties Colnett faced in New South Wales and the society he found there fall more in the area of social history rather than maritime, but they offer a fascinating glimpse of Georgian society grappling with the intersection of a cruel system of penal banishment and a harsh, unforgiving, and utterly alien land. For that reason, Mawer’s crisp and well-edited version of Colnett’s account is worthy of examination, renewing as it does a certain awe at the physical and societal hardships faced by those who took part – willingly or otherwise – in the growth of Empire.