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By Root 1722 0

They cast off in August, at the height of London’s summertime heat, and arrived in December, again at summer’s peak in the Southern Hemisphere. Chasing the ships across the tropics and down to the bottom of the world, the sun unleashed merciless, unrelenting heat, day in and day out. The atmosphere dripped with humidity. As the girls baked in the stifling heat and were suffocated by the ship’s lack of ventilation, the compounded stench of decay and disease hit them like a blunt instrument. Belowdecks, the reek of vomit followed Agnes everywhere. The ship’s privies and bilges coalesced in noxious vapors from which there was no escape. Of course, there was no actual bathing because fresh water was at a premium.

At least when the weather was fair, most everyone found relief on deck, watching the horizon rise and fall into endless shades of green and blue. Topside for a luxurious breath of fresh air, Agnes startled and nearly jumped over the rail as the sound of gunfire thundered through the ship. Sailors fired pistols belowdecks, believing that gunpowder purged infectious vapors from the air. The lower decks were also fumigated by burning brimstone (sulfur) and sprinkling everything that didn’t breathe with chloride of lime. The bleaching powder covered Agnes’s bedding, her clothing, and her light brown hair.

In order to reach Australia, the Westmoreland had to sail a long way west to round Africa’s coast. As the ship crossed the tropics, Captain Brigstock watched the sky for weather that changed in a flash. Schooners fell into the path of many a rising hurricane blowing off the Sahara and Serengeti. Like Agnes, most of the female prisoners had never been on a boat before, even under the best of conditions. During storms, the wet pitching deck turned into a rolling death trap. Everyone on board, except the most experienced crew, became violently seasick as the heaving waves rose in angry chaos. The screaming wind drowned out any sound save the most frantic orders shouted through a megaphone.

The scent of the sea air changed as a storm advanced. Agnes smelled the ozone in the atmosphere as lightning crackled in billowing thunder-heads and the sky thickened with charged electricity. Turbulent clouds off Africa’s west coast erupted like enraged hordes, blotting out the sun and swallowing the ship in their fury. The seas heaved, the crew tensed, and the captain screamed directions to keep the sailors focused and alive.

With little warning, a wall of wind and water approached the ship, poised to knock it over with a deadly strike. Barefooted sailors clung desperately to the rigging, frantically trying to reef the sails as thirty-foot waves submerged the ship’s bow. The beams of the Westmoreland sprang to life, creaking and wailing under the pounding surge. Mary Talbot, an Irish convict, recorded this account of a storm while aboard ship: “During every moment of its continuance we expected to perish, and were washed out of our beds between decks, while the sea-sickness and groans and shrieks of so many unhappy wretches made the situation we were in truly distressing. . . .”28

For the orlop girls, there was nothing to do but cling to one another and wait it out. The roar of howling winds, the explosion of thunder, and the crash of broken rigging assaulted the prisoners who shivered belowdecks. Bodies, Bibles, and everything else not secured flew about the cabin. Surgeon Superintendent Ellis lashed the sick to their beds with the coarse ropes used on deck. The insane cried out in agony while the intensity of the tempest swallowed all but the loudest screams. Two hundred three terrified women and children had no choice but to huddle together in the soaking darkness until the storm subsided or the ship broke asunder.

Force-five gales tore some convict ships to pieces. Passengers who were hit by a falling mast or spar died instantly. Most didn’t know how to swim and expired in panicked drowning amid the raging upheaval in the open sea. At least six convict ships sank in ocean storms, taking the lives of 246 women.29 The year before