• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1774 0

sweeps in pubs and prisons. Because the Navy charged enlistees for clothing, these men made their own roughly stitched tunics and tied them in place with a rope. The scraggly apprentices dressed in a motley assortment of wide trousers, which could be rolled above the knees for swabbing the deck. In contrast, the British naval officers, charged with navigation and discipline, wore tailored dark-blue uniforms sporting white collars and gold braiding. They were expected to remain above the fray but did little to restrain the crew from “a bit of fun.”

The oars were raised and the small launch bumped gently against the Westmoreland. The coxswain steadied the boat as his cargo of exiles made their way up the gangplank onto the ship’s main deck. The Officer of the Guard adjusted his brimmed wool hat and directed Agnes and the others on board. Still in manacles, making her way forward to the poop deck, Agnes was plunked down on a short three-legged stool. A shirtless sailor greeted her with a large hammer, puffing up his barrel chest to show off a tattoo. The deckhands, many mere lads themselves, watched in amusement as the sweaty smith leaned against Agnes’s belly, smiling his gap-toothed grin. Harassment of the young girls aboard ship was legendary and, for the most part, ignored by the authorities. So long as the prisoners arrived in one piece, anything the crew did was more or less forgivable. If they arrived pregnant, it was all the better. The Crown’s plan to populate Van Diemen’s Land moved forward ahead of schedule.

Agnes was young and pretty, and her good looks often made life more difficult. Undoubtedly a target of taunting by crew members, she held her shift tight against her legs as the smith put on a performance for each manacle he unfastened. Given her street scrappiness, the tiny girl faced off against a crowd of staring sailors, grasping the stool with a death grip, determined to shed not a single tear. A loud clang reverberated as her irons fell to the deck, and the raucous winking sailors let out a cheer. With a vulgar chuckle, the smith freed Agnes to go aft for inspection by the ship’s surgeon. Eyes full though not yet overflowing, she stood up straight as a bolt and willed herself not to trip over the heavy rigging, coiled like snakes all over the deck.

A Boatful of Bonnets

Surgeon Superintendent James Ellis, the man responsible for delivering Agnes to Van Diemen’s Land, leaned against the wood railing, black logbook in hand. As the first boatful of girls came alongside the Westmoreland , he shot an admonishing glance toward the leering crew. Straightening the brim on his cocked hat and squaring his shoulders under gleaming gold epaulets, the surgeon made his way toward the gangplank. He was dressed in a double-breasted blue uniform with brass buttons and a short silk necktie pinned neatly under his shirt collar.

Prior to 1814, there was no government supervision monitoring how women were treated during the average four months at sea. Transport companies received twenty to thirty pounds sterling per head and packed women and men in such close confinement that disease killed up to one-third of the human cargo. Payment was collected for the convicts whether or not they arrived alive. That practice changed in 1815 when the Royal Navy appointed a surgeon superintendent to every ship. He allocated food servings, delivered infants, and treated illnesses such as alcohol withdrawal, typhus, and syphilis.

Surgeon Superintendent Ellis opened his leather-bound ledger to begin the tedious task of recording the names, ages, and physical characteristics of the newly arrived prisoners: Agnes McMillan, age sixteen, fresh complexion, grey eyes, light brown hair, oval visage, no pockmarks or scars.14 Although still only fifteen, she must have wanted to appear more adult, and without birth records on hand, the surgeon took her word for it. Names and dates were sometimes approximated in the records. Misspellings and inconsistencies were all too common.

While being measured—five feet, one and one-quarter inches—Agnes tried