The English Background to Transportation

The 1700's were years of change and unrest in Britain brought about by James Watt's invention of the steam engine. 

Britain was changed first by the Agricultural Revolution, the invention of new mechanised farming equipment and methods. In country areas, people whose ancestors had lived on the land for centuries as tenants were forced to leave their ancient homes as they were progressively replaced by the new machines. 

Initially the answer seemed to lay in the Industrial Revolution, as many new factories were rapidly being established, and these offered jobs.  This combination of rural work declining and factory jobs appearing caused a vast movement of people to the cities.  

These cities rapidly became over crowded and so soon little no work was to be found there either.  Over crowding, poverty and drunkenness were widespread, and so too was crime, particularly theft.   

There was no social security safety net so the cold reality of English life was theft, prostitution of watching your children starve.  Most crime in England then were crimes of desperation and survival.  

The problem was not crime.  The problem was overcrowding in the cities.    

Transportation was a specific expression of an ancient form of punishment dating back to biblical times, that of sending someone into exile or banishing them.  In 1718, this form of punishment was seen as a way of providing trades skilled labour for Britain's American Colonies.  Those selected had committed the worst of crimes and were sent in such small numbers that they were absorbed without altering the nature of American society.  

There they were put to forced unpaid labour on an assignment system system almost identical to that latter used in Australia; except that a total lack of government supervision meant that they were bought and sold, with the bidding price being determined by the remaining length of sentence.  They were called Bond Servants.  

The American Revolution stopped all that, and this brought the idea of exile to public attention in England, where it quickly fused with the dominant social issue of the day, the overcrowded and dysfunctional state of England's cities.   

This overcrowding inevitably reflected in the English prison system first.  It reflected here first because prisoners were housed and fed at the expense of the government and therefore rising prison costs provided a prominent financial thermometer of the larger problem.  

As a temporary measure, the government put prisoners onto hulks on the River Thames in London and elsewhere.  

These were ships that were no longer seaworthy.  It is easy to see how someone might have looked at those ships, felt the ever-present pressure of overcrowding, and wished that they would all just sail away; especially if spiced with a prick of Nationalistic indignation at not being allowed to send any more Convicts to the America.

Anyway, one thing led to another and the British government searched for new places that would receive convicts, this time in large numbers.  Several places were considered, including parts of Africa, but In 1786, Botany Bay, on the southeast coast of Australia, was chosen as the best site for a new penal colony.  Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist had written a glowing account of the place, suggesting that it was essentially uninhabited and that a colony established there would quickly become self-sufficient. 

This however was the opinion of one man, after briefly visiting the place once; and this one document was the sum total of information that the English government had to use when making its decision.  Banks made two mistakes.  He underestimated the strength of the Aboriginal Custodianship and he over estimated the quality (and quantity) of our soil.  These two factors were to have a profound effect on the future history of the colony.

The London Hulks