Escape From Botany Bay

  Escape From Botany Bay

  by Gerald and Loretta Hausman

  ©2011 Irie Books

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

  Irie Books

  12699 Cristi Way

  Bokeelia, Florida 33922

  ISBN 10:1-61720-203-7

  ISBN 13: 978-1-61720-203-2

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book was originally published by Orchard Books, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc., 2003.

  Cover design by NRK Designs, Bokeelia, Florida.

  Cover image adapted from a painting by Thomas Watling,

  British Museum of Natural History.

  Author’s Note

  Mary Broad Bryant was an eighteenth-century teenager whose theft of a bonnet sent her to jail in Plymouth, England. There her story might have ended, but she was transported to New Holland as part of the First Fleet. This was England’s way of colonizing the country that would become Australia – with dying prisoners, forced labor, and insufferable conditions.

  Amazingly, Mary survived it all, and her saga of Botany Bay and her escape of three thousand miles in an open boat with husband, two children, and seven other convicts is the stuff that movies are made of. Even in her day, the Mary Bryant story reached a large number of readers through the earliest London broadsheets, precursor to our present-day newspapers.

  Mary was the most famous survivor of her time. More surprisingly, her open-boat voyage has never been bested by a woman under those prevailing circumstances of bad weather, unknown geography and hostile native population. In her day it was done by Captain Bligh, but he was a seasoned navigator whereas Mary was an unskilled woman who knew more about skinning pilchards than raising sails.

  What drew us to Mary and her unbelievable odyssey was not just her great courage and spirit. We saw in Mary and her world a paradigm for many of the ills that plague our present society.

  Mary, however, was not about to be silenced – not by time, history or any other thing. Her words ring true. Although she was illiterate, she spoke to the famous lawyer James Boswell who defended her in an eloquent fashion. He also commented on her ability to speak well herself. The record of Mary’s trial – and trials – on this earth are found in journals, histories and interviews. We studied all of them, and this book grew out of our admiration for this plucky, impassioned humanist who, for many years remained largely unknown.

  By casting Mary’s spoken tale in the first-person, as if she were reeling it off to James Boswell, as in fact she did, we sought to recapture the immediacy of Mary’s plight. To the extent that we may have succeeded, we thank her, yes, Mary herself, for, many times, we felt her presence.

  Writers of biographies often swear they see the stalking figure of their obsession as a ghost looming in the shadows. In our case, Mary Bryant was always bravely in the light

  –Gerald & Loretta Hausman

  Contents

  The Theft

  The Prison

  The Hulk

  The Charlotte

  The Landing

  The Colony

  The Plan

  The Escape

  The Sea Run

  Timor

  Captured

  London Town

  Leaves of Tea

  Epilogue

  Escape From Botany Bay

  The Theft

  January 1786

  I always wondered why the unjust went unprosecuted. When I was but nineteen years of age, I’d seen my share of executions. Not one, I can tell you, was a person of means. All were, without exception, poor people, like myself.

  Consider, if you will, that the cost of a candle in Cornwall was too great to bear. The common salt with which we cured our pilchards was also too dear. Wet summers, bad harvests, high taxes, and the theft of our land by the privileged drove many an honest man and woman to thievery.

  I myself looked hunger in the face and decided that, as there was no need for food on the gallows, I would throw my lot in with those who stole to stay alive.

  They said I was comely, tall for a Cornish girl, with long dark hair and gray eyes. My face was clear and without scars or pox. You might ask why I couldn’t find employment as a barmaid or as a servant. Well, I tried both with little success. The wages wouldn’t support a cat, let alone a family of four.

  My sister Dolly worked at Solcombe as a ladies maid. Solcombe was an estate way off on the Isle of Wight. I saw her petty wages often enough and supplemented them by snaring a rabbit or two from the local crofts. One day Dolly brought home a silver spoon wrapped in a silk handkerchief. This crime wasn’t the same as treason, mutiny, or murder. Yet, believe it or not, a spoon and a handkerchief would see you swinging.

  I knew a man who stole a lemon. John Tout, by name. He rotted, billeted to a post, on the road to Bodmin Gaol. Carrion’s meat is the end of many a thief. But better to be killed, I say, than to shiver your life away in the dank, dark gaol. Imagine a four-foot-high cell, the only light coming through a slit in the wall. And the rats!

  Well, I made my decision to come quickly to a good, or a bad, end. We Cornwall folk were always a bit mad and given to our own ways. We never saw anything wrong in taking what we needed thereby to live. For hundreds of years we slipped the noose, plying the smuggler’s trade as we saw fit.

  Thus I took to the woods and became a highway woman.

  I knew enough of woodland ways to survive in the fresh air of Fowey. My accomplices were Catherine Fryer and Mary Haydon, both of them friends from days of old.

  So, this is how we did our secret and dangerous deed. This is my story as I have remembered it; a true tale, spoken not written by me, as you will understand that I had no schooling, and wanted none.

  Of a midnight clear we girls waited for a farmer’s cart. Catherine and Mary Haydon pretended to be in distress. So, the cart stopped. Then, from behind a tree, came I, and with no weapon other than a paring knife, held the driver at bay. Meanwhile, my companions searched the man and his cart for anything of value.

  If you think me wearing full skirt and bodice, you’re wrong, for I’d dressed in breeches and a leather gherkin. I’d tied my hair back like a man’s and over this I wore a floppy hat.

  Did I look like a woman?

  Not hardly.

  So, as I say, we did the robbery as clean as clean could be. Then, instead of taking to the woods, we headed for high headland hills of slippery granite. And went down to the sea, and hid in a cave. There, as the breakers smote the limestone ledges, we counted coin.

  I must say, this first theft was a bit too easy ... and what a paltry take, too.

  For some time after, we lay low. Make no mistake, though: My portion of the robbery appeared in a covered breadbasket at my mother’s door. My father was upon the sea and wouldn’t return for some time yet, which left Mother, Dolly, .and me at wit’s end for food. But now, Mother would be taken care of. I, for my part, ate cockles, mussels, and limpets scraped from the rocks. In addition, we had the odd, snared rabbit, and the occasional dove brought down by a stone.

  Our wood’s house was made of sod and covered over with leaves. We excavated the side of a small hill and took our comfort as we could. The natural cave where we’d counted our booty was too cold to live in. Nor was it as secure as the woodland retreat. We had one blanket and
a worn-out robe between the three of us. Fire, we knew naught, unless in the foggy nights. Then no one could see the flames and we cooked little wood pigeons over charcoal, which gave no smoke but some warmth.

  The damp cold, I want to tell you, would’ve made me into an old crone before my time. But fate had a different plan. Our highway efforts ended before they could scarce begin.

  One sunny morn, I told Catherine and Mary Haydon, “If we continue this way, we’ll surely starve.”

  “Or worse,” Catherine muttered.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a hot cup of tea,” said Mary Haydon, coughing.

  “Who among us hasn’t lice and fleas?” I asked.

  Bent and cold, we shivered in the weak sun.

  “Tonight, then,” I told them.

  Catherine wiped the soot from her face.

  “Come hell, or high tide, we’ll hold someone up who has the means to provide!”

  “It’s that, or wither up like summer snails,” cried Mary Haydon.

  Silently, we three nodded and, putting our hands together, avowed to rob a rich person on the road that very night.

  The moon proved thin and the fog thick as bunting come nightfall. We journeyed through the dewy grass to Plymouth, where we held up a woman on the main road to Plymouth Dock.

  There our fate was sealed.

  For the high-toned woman we robbed put up a terrible fight. Rather than serving up her purse, she struck us repeatedly with her walking stick. Worse, she began to scream. Catherine took a blow to the skull and fell all in a heap, at our would-be victim’s feet. Then, Mary Haydon stepped in quick and pinned the lady’s arms while I pummeled her with my fists.

  Down she went on top of Catherine, who was just waking up.

  I grabbed the lady’s silk bonnet and her purse.

  Mary Haydon got Catherine to her feet. We struggled off into the Plymouth fog. However, in our confusion, we went straight into town rather than off to our woodland hiding place. The moment I felt my feet striking cobbles instead of soft leaves, I knew that all was lost. We were quickly captured by townspeople, who heard our lady’s screams.

  So for the sake of a silk bonnet and a few shillings, we were gaoled. Over and over in my head, my chains clinking at my feet, I heard the judge’s iron decree.

  “Hanged by the neck until dead.”

  And although he added, “May God have mercy on your soul,” I knew he didn’t mean a word of it.

  The Prison

  March 1786

  Night after night in Exeter Castle, I wondered at what might be my fate. Would I go to the gallows in my soiled and ragged clothes? Would the crowd of onlookers cheer, or scold? Would the hangman, though masked, be someone who once knew me? Most dreadful, would my disgraced parents, William and Grace, be somewhere at the very back of the rabble, hiding their faces in sorrow?

  I must confess, I had no hope.

  My life seemed no more, and no less, than the dirty straw I slept upon. My sentence was set for the end of March, but some days before, a gaoler called my name. He was a gap-toothed, coal-eyed man, and he pressed his face to my cell door.

  “Mary Broad, is that you?”

  Rousing, I raised my head. However, I could not get up, as there were irons at my ankle, with a chain attached to an iron belt at my waist. Walking was difficult; so was standing. I found it best to sit. I’d not fully learned to trust my feet with these heavy irons. Besides, I knew, or thought I did, what he was going to say.

  Forthwith, I looked him full in the eye. “If it’s bad news you bring, get on with it.”

  He rolled his eyes and stroked his blue-stubbled chin.

  “Twas not in the orders that one so pretty was under my care.” He dropped his eyes and shook his head solemnly. He meant me no harm, I could see that.

  “Be of good cheer, Mary,” he said softly.

  I felt my heart begin to pound.

  “On what news?” I murmured.

  “Well, first off, you’re not to hang. Your sentence’s been commuted to seven years’ transportation. Do you know what that is, Mary?”

  In the adjoining cells there came the ringing of chains, which could only mean that Catherine and Mary Haydon were getting to their feet.

  “What’s transportation?” Catherine asked.

  Mary Haydon asked, “Are we to get the same?”

  “Hold on, ladies. One at a time,” said the gaoler.

  I tried to stand, using the cold stone against my back to steady myself. My head started to swim.

  When next I spoke, my voice quavered.

  “Am I not to die before I reach twenty?”

  “You’re all going to be transported, Mary. You and your friends are going to leave England for seven long years. But you’ll live to see your twentieth.”

  The gaoler then wheeled around. He walked potbellied down the dark corridor, and disappeared.

  I stood up and turned around. The chain that connected my shackled feet to the iron belt at my waist was heavy, but I was still able to draw my face up to the window slit.

  “We are free, then!” I said.

  Catherine and Mary Haydon were too stunned to speak.

  When my hard crust of bread, my bit of cheese, and the sour small beer came in two separate pails later that day, I discovered the appetite I’d given up for death. The skin rubbed raw by my irons burned, but I was alive – and would stay so, at least for a time.

  When the nightly visitations of rats came a-pattering, I thought of them for the first time, not as strangers, but as friends. Creatures, too, I supposed, could have death sentences commuted.

  Before I shivered myself to sleep in my wad of straw, told Mary Haydon and Catherine we’d live to see the morrow.

  “And the one after that?” Catherine said.

  “And after that?” said Mary Haydon.

  “For what reason we don’t know, we’ve been excused the death sentence.”

  Elizabeth Cole, whose cell was to the right of mine, said, “For stealing pottery-ware, I got seven years’ transportation, like the rest of you. One month in the hulks and we’ll all wish we had the hemp tight about our throats.”

  “The hulks?” said I.

  “Them’s prison ships,” answered Elizabeth.

  Only Elizabeth Cole seemed to know what the things called hulks really were. But she was of no mind to tell us more. She said, “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  And so we did. Next morning, bright and early, and to the crying of the gulls, we were carried by cart to Devonport. There in the waterway lay the ship called Dunkirk.

  “There she is,” said Elizabeth Cole, her mouth drawn.

  “It’s a ship,” I said hopefully.

  “It ain’t a movin’ ship,” Elizabeth Cole said.

  “Then what kind is it?”

  I drew my breath, as did Catherine and Mary Haydon.

  “It’s full of rats and holes and will sooner sink than sail.”

  After that, Elizabeth Cole spoke no more.

  Presently, we were rowed out into the harbor. There we boarded the crusty, seaweed-sided, slimy old Dunkirk. With stumps for masts and decks littered with woeful shacks, the Dunkirk was more a wooden island than a seagoing vessel And her smell was enough to make you quake. Below decks we heard men and women cackling, cursing, and crying.

  Such was our introduction to the Dunkirk, which would be our permanent home, so far as we knew.

  And thus it was that we exchanged a damp and dingy gaol cell for a damper and dingier one. Our quarters, tween decks, were dark as a dungeon; nine feet long, twenty inches wide for each prisoner.

  Fortunately, for us women, the men were just going out to dredge the dockyards.
This was their daily work, and highly prized it was.

  I heard one man say, as he clanked up the stair, “A day out of the hulks is a day of birth.”

  Old men with white beards down to their bellies were among the line of convicts. Boys of tender years were close-clanked right in among them. Above the chiming chains there were the thin wails of lunatics begging to be flogged. In this terrible clamor we came into our narrow confines with trembling hands and dampened eyes.

  I knew I’d never see my mother and father again. Nor my sister, nor any of the good green trees that were just now coming into leaf. I wept, as did the others, all of us hanging our heads and sobbing softly to the soughing of the waves against the hulk-ship.

  I am loathe to describe my surroundings. Had I the skill of a poet, I still wouldn’t waste a word on such as this. Yet how else can I make you see the awfulness we lived in, day by day? No one bathed; everyone smelled. The odor of urine, sweat, and rottenness lay heavy in the air.

  We’d now been afloat in this prison hulk for three months. The stink of the buckets of filth would kill an average person. But we were average no more. We of the West Country were made tough, and though we grew thin and pale, we had our will.

  I woke one night in the mild May air that came off the coast. For a moment I thought I was dreaming. I smelled the gorse, all a-bloom. I smelled the wet wool of rain-soft fleece, the aroma of a flock.