The Tin Ticket_ The Heroic Journey of Australia's Convict Women - Deborah J. Swiss [62]
It was Tuesday the sixth of December, and Captain Brigstock awaited the arrival of Josiah Spode, Principal Superintendent of Convicts. He arrived accompanied by Muster Master William Thomas Napier Champ, a British soldier previously charged with the government mission to hunt down Aborigines. The two stern men were rowed from Hobart Town to the Westmoreland by male convicts who’d been conscripted into the police force because of a shortage of both funding and able men.
Spode, now a naval officer, had once worked in his grandfather’s famous pottery business in England. He had little tolerance for the women, deeming them “worse in every respect to manage than male convicts. . . . They all feel they are working under compulsion which renders it almost a continual warfare between their employers and themselves.”4 Champ, who later became the first premier of Tasmania, was the record keeper for all convicts and also served as assistant police magistrate in Hobart Town.
Called in numerical order, Agnes and Janet were hurried on deck for inspection. Eyeing the grey-eyed lass up and down, Muster Master Champ compared the surgeon superintendent’s descriptions against the sixteen-year-old standing before him. As he evaluated Agnes’s health and ability to work, Champ considered her skills for assignment to a local colonist. Agnes confirmed that she could neither read nor write. According to indent records, when Muster Master Champ asked, “What is your trade?” she responded, “House servant.”5 Janet gave the same answer when it was her turn.
It took nearly two days to examine and interview the prisoners. Neither Mr. Spode nor Mr. Champ wanted to be blamed for disembarking contagiously ill transports. The whole colony had recently suffered from an outbreak of influenza, probably carried by a ship’s passenger from London.6 After consulting with Surgeon Superintendent Ellis, the two bureaucrats finally cleared his charges for landing. The women and their children were rowed ashore to Hunter Island and walked over a muddy convict-built causeway, connecting the isle to Hobart Town. The girls from Glasgow finally heard the annoying toll of the Westmoreland bells for the last time. Catcalls from the wharf soon replaced the harsh clanging from the ship. A crowd of scruffy-looking creatures raced toward the waterfront to inspect the Crown’s latest chattel.
While the Westmoreland lay at anchor, Agnes had taken a good look at where she was headed. The busy little port of fourteen thousand sat on the river below soft green hills that lay dominated by the cliffs of an enormous mountain. The strangest creatures Agnes had ever seen bounced over the slopes on their huge hind legs and disappeared into the lush countryside. Black swans with bright red beaks floated at river’s edge. Seagulls flying overhead appeared like the ones seen in the British Isles, but their calls were sharply different.7 Everything, even the scavenger birds, seemed topsy-turvy.
Journalist Minister John West offers a clue about how Agnes felt on the day she set foot on the other side of the earth. Eleven years her senior, he lived in Tasmania in 1836 and wrote about the convicts who were among the first transported: “The letters they addressed to their friends . . . were filled with lamentations. They deeply deplored that the distance of their exile cut off the hope of return . . . they expected to be destroyed by savages, or to pine away in want. The females seemed least to fear their banishment; and while several of the men were deeply moved, a spectator, who curiously remarked the mental