Australian Convict Transportation - Essay Example

CONVICT TRANSPORTATION Experiences and complaints are opportunities for further development. Although at times that it has to be at the expense of loosing lives, the aftermath is rewarding that benefits not only the few but also serves as stepping stones for incoming endeavors. Predicaments such as the experiences of convicts on board a transport before 1815 made a major role in the further development and improvement of the kind of management established and applied to convicts in the succeeding years. Accordingly, there has been a great change from the early phase to the later phase of the convict era. For which the impact of the changes has brought the mortality rate of convicts on board to a lower rating. From the embarkation of convicts for their exile to a remote or distant land, several emotional responses are encountered - swearing, cursing, wrangling, and lamenting. Included in it, is the verdict that they will be going through while on board a transport. Their predicaments initially in the hulks during their actual voyages include such as: authorities who less care about their welfare, and the unsanitary conditions, resulting them to death before, during or immediately, after the voyage, where historians attribute the initially high mortality rates to a failure in organization.1 To ensure convicts' health and welfare, standard operating procedures are conveyed with a brief summary of regulations such that: The British Government has hitherto regarded the transportation of prisoners as the chief mode of providing labor in the colonies; punishment and utility have been connected so as to render convict labor alike beneficial to the colonists and conducive to the best interests of the parent state; all convicts sent out are to be newly clad, and ample rations of wholesome food are to be apportioned to them; health is preserved by cleanliness, which is strictly attended to, and the ship owners are bounded by the terms of their charter to supply each prisoner with at least half-a-gallon of water per day; and care is also taken that they are not subjected to any oppressive or capricious treatment.2 Attempts had been made to reduce the death rates in prison hulks, including the provision of adequate space, proper nutrition, personal cleanliness, hygienic living conditions, reasonable working conditions, regular medical care, the exclusion and isolation of those with contagious diseases, and also an opportunity for secular redemption. The result was impressive. Death rate in the hulks had been reduced. However, after a period of experimentation and learning, they were repeated on the convict ships. Though, initially, improvements were achieved in the hulks.3 The evidences according to records describe and picture convict voyages with much higher mortality rating than in the later phases. Deaths were caused more by diseases than by accidents and violence. Where, most deaths that were caused by diseases are attributed to acute infectious diseases rather than to chronic diseases. The main acute infectious diseases cited are dysentery in the Atlantic slave trade; typhus, cholera, and smallpox on European voyages to North America and Australia; cholera and meningitis on Indian voyages to Fiji; and dysentery on Pacific Islander voyages to Fiji and Queensland. The occurrences of epidemics on intercontinental voyages created differentiating opinions that caused some individuals to conduct researches comparing the early and the later phase of the convict era. During the early phase (before 1815), determining factors before the embarkation of convicts aboard comprehend the high mortality rates of convicts. The lack of immunity of the populations at the ports or regions of embarkation to a range of acute infectious diseases, and the ease with which these diseases spread in the often unsanitary conditions under which passengers were housed prior to embarkation. Medical examinations prior to embarkation were perfunctory. Infectious diseases were often carried on board by sick passengers where crowding facilitated their spread. Another, stresses poor physical conditions on board linking it to the vulnerability to infectious diseases, most notably overcrowding, unsanitary living arrangements, poor medical care, and inadequate or contaminated food and water where the prevalence of scurvy and scorbutic dysentery on convict ships arise partly from the impurity of water.4 In addition to it is the foul stagnant air between decks especially during calms and sultry weather between the limits of the North East and South East Trades. Together with the high range of the thermometer and the atmosphere loaded with moisture and often deluges of rain when the hatchways are to be covered to prevent the water getting below. The effect of high ranges of temperature and moist atmosphere in a crowded prison room are a diminution of the changes affected in the blood in respiration. An increase of the secreting and excreting functions of the liver and skin, and a decrease of the urinary secretions, in addition of the molecules of animal matter in a state of decay floating in the vitiated moist heated atmosphere between decks.5 Convicts are exposed to great and sudden vicissitudes of climate - the greatest and most prejudicial found to be that which occurs in the first removal of the convicts from the hulks to the transports in cold seasons. And when dressed in much lighter clothing than that to which they have been previously accustomed. Experiences and complaints are not confined to a subtraction of the proper allowance of their provisions. Frequently, various articles or of wearing apparel furnished by friends before embarkation are put on board for the convicts, and that accordingly, it has not been punctually delivered. In some cases, it has been damaged, or the contents purloined and appropriated by the sailors.6 Most convict voyages were undertaken by private contractors, who usually appointed the surgeons of the vessels, who in turn had insufficient experiences of naval conditions and authority to ensure that convicts would be well treated and that there would be an adequate system of sanitation on board. Although medical official examined the convicts on embarkation and could recommend that sick convicts should not be transported, the advice could be overruled. Furthermore, contractors, masters, and surgeons were not paid by results, nor were they made directly accountable for their performance. Contractors were paid on a per capita basis whether the convict arrived dead or alive, and the pay of the master and surgeon is not conditional on satisfactory performance. As a result of these organizational deficiencies, convicts are sometimes transported when known to be suffering from infectious diseases; masters sometimes defraud convicts a part of their rations, ships were not kept clean, sick convicts were not isolated, and convicts are more generally mistreated.7 In terms of the intersection of race and liberty, black male convicts are reprieved to sea service. Considering the fact that there are clear reasons as to why seamen would share with transported felons the will to have personal autonomy, as the line between the two was permeable in some unexpected ways. Men could exchange their status from crewmember to convict during the course of a voyage, and a few swapped at least temporarily from felon to crewmember. A seaman's disobedience could quickly see him in irons, and sometimes down in the prison with the convicts. A convict with seafaring experience might well be temporarily let out of his shackles to take his place. In other transports, convicts were used to help man the ship.8 In the area of punishments, the superintendent and master must both concur before it can be inflicted, should a convict be deemed deserving of corporal punishment. And, particular mention must be made in the ship's log-book of the nature of the offense and the amount of punishment awarded.9 In some cases convicted women intercourse with the crew that results to the consequence of using violent and indecent language. Efforts made to correct it by the master and the officers of the ship only lead to fresh insults and to greater provocation. Thus, punishment and correction is left to the direction of the surgeon superintendent, since the confinement of women to the prison deck is not an effectual punishment. It frequently causes a greater degree of annoyance to the well-conducted prisoners than to the parties themselves10. Since administrative reforms took place by 1815, a substantial impact on the death rate on convict ships happened though there were no changes in the size of the ships, the number of convicts they carried, the duration of the voyage, the number of intermediate stops or the victual practices. The reduced death rate was the consequence of a change in the way convicts were managed. A series of administrative reforms were gradually introduced so that in the period after 1814 there were no epidemic voyages and the probability of a convict dying was, on average. From 1815, the government appointed suitably skilled persons as surgeon superintendents on government ships. These officials were directly responsible to the government and possessed sufficient authority to enforce all measures necessary for the good health and welfare of the convicts. Surgeon-superintendents brought an improved standard of health care to convict ships. They were more skilled than the ship's surgeons, had a better understanding of the management of contagious diseases, and had enhanced their skill and understanding through the experience of multiple voyages. Whereas ship's surgeons had been largely reactive, surgeon-superintendents adopted a preventive health care role and went beyond the care of the ill and the prevention of illness.11 Prior to 1815, the general supervision of convicts were the responsibility of the ship's master where ships' captains consider convicts as threats to good order and discipline that needs to be confined and kept under control. While after 1815, it was the responsibility of the surgeon-superintendent that treated convicts as objects of reform, whose health and morals were to be protected and trained; and that surgeon-superintendents offered hope of secular salvation. It was only after the appointment of surgeon-superintendents with real power to enforce their will - particularly in refusing to allow the embarkation of convicts presenting with symptoms of contagious diseases, and in isolating those who subsequently displayed such symptoms - that epidemics were completely eliminated from convict voyages. Contractors were paid by results (with about 20 percent of the per capita payment made to depend on the arrival of the convict in good health), masters were paid only on receipt by the transport authorities of a certificate completed by the governor of New South Wales that he was satisfied with the master's conduct particularly as it related to the treatment of the convicts on the voyage; and surgeons were required to keep a record of the sickness and sanitary measures taken.12 Regrets or at least to show some signs of contrition in expiate of the crimes committed are expected from convicts. However, not all experience the feeling of being sorry for former evil practices committed. As they are regarded and branded for disciplinary actions, they as well have the ultimate right for a change, for changes don't happen unless reforms take place. Since convicts are subjected to authorities, they then are under the control of whosoever manages and directs their every activity. Thus, their health and welfare is under the control and expertise in management of the one handling them - leading to either success or failure. REFERENCES Bigge, John Thomas. "Condition and treatment of convicts during the passage to New South Wales." In: Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the state of the colony of New South Wales. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1966. Christopher, Emma. "Ten Thousand Times Worse than the Convicts': rebellious sailors, convict transportation and the struggle for free, 1787 - 1800." London Dilley, Warwick. "Mortality on Convict Ships - The Importance of the Surgeon uperintendents." 2002. Evans, William. "Journal of His Majesty's Convict Ship Earl Grey." Public Records Office, London. Mitchell Library Reel PRO 3193, 1836. Harrison, Jennifer. "I beg leave to adquaint you': Irish-Australian Improvements to convict transportation." Ireland and Australia, 1798-1998: studies in culture, identity and migration. Sydney: Crossing Press, 2000. Jorgensen, J. "The Convict King." 1891, 64 - 69. Kent, David. "The men of the Eleanor, 1831: a case study of the Hulks and voyage to New South Wales." The Great Circle. 1995. McDonald, John and Shlomowitz, Ralph. "Mortality on Convict Voyages to Australia, 1788 - 1868." Social Science History. 1989. Sturma, Michael. "Contamination and Anti-transportation." In: Vice in a vicious society: crime.and convicts in mid-nineteenth-century New South Wales. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983. William Evans, "Journal of His Majesty's Convict Ship Earl Grey," Medical and Surgical Journal, 1836. Read More