Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [51]
Most of the fleet had got there before the Charlotte, and a party of officers and Marines had already gone ashore to try to find a suitable site for their camp. But the prisoners were not allowed to stay on deck to watch the proceedings; once again they were made to return to the holds where they were locked in.
It was weeks later that Mary heard what had happened during the long days when she and her companions were incarcerated below decks in the suffocating heat. One story that would have amused them was that the natives hadn’t known which gender the white officers were, and one of the group was asked to drop his breeches to show them.
It seemed that Captain Arthur Phillip had managed to divert the natives’ hostility with gifts of beads and trinkets, but he’d been alarmed to find Botany Bay could not support over a thousand people and all the animals. The soil wasn’t fertile, and the water supply was in the wrong place. So, with a small party, he set out in the ship’s boats to try to find a more agreeable place further down the coast, leaving the rest of the company to clear trees in case he couldn’t find anywhere better.
He came to a place called Port Jackson which he understood from Captain Cook’s report to be a mere cove. As it was late afternoon he ordered his men to row in through the two giant headlands to check it, and once inside discovered it was not a cove at all, but a huge natural harbour, the best he’d ever seen anywhere in the world.
Delighted to find such a jewel with many sheltered bays, trees and fresh water, he pressed on and came to a place where the water was deep enough for the ships to come close to shore. He named it Sydney Cove after Lord Sydney, Secretary of State, to whom he sent his despatches. It even appeared that the natives were more friendly there too. So Sydney Cove was where the first settlement in New South Wales would be.
Mary and the other prisoners knew nothing of all this. Sweating and gasping in the heat of the holds, all they knew was that they’d been landed in a hellish, barren place peopled by fearsome savages. It was no wonder that many of them believed their long voyage had been for nothing and now they were going to die.
It was only on 26 January, when the prisoners heard the weighing of the anchor and the sound of sails being hoisted, that they felt a renewal of hope for their future.
By the time the Charlotte reached Sydney Cove it was night-time and too dark to see anything. The prisoners were not told that the flag-ship Sirius had arrived much earlier in the day, and that its officers had gone ashore, raised the English flag and held a simple ceremony where they fired a volley and toasted the royal family and the success of the new colony. But it was obvious to all the prisoners from the joyous shouts coming from the ships’ companies anchored out in the bay, that this was where they would be settling.
Down in the steamy, fetid darkness of the holds they couldn’t share in the excitement. They felt relief that they would soon be walking on solid ground and sleeping in tents, but they were fearful too, for this new prison which they had yet to build was so remote that they knew it was unlikely they would see England and their loved ones there again.
At first light the following morning the sound of axes felling trees filled the air and the women rushed to the hatches to look out.
‘Looks better than that other place,’ Bessie said cheerfully.
‘It does too,’ Mary agreed. The early-morning sun was glinting on the turquoise sea, and on land there were many trees, some quite large ones growing on the hills behind the bay. While there wasn’t what could be called pasture anywhere that she could see, this place certainly didn’t have the same desolate appearance as Botany Bay.
As they watched, they saw boats being lowered