John Towers
First Fleet - Escape at Tenerife - 1787
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From the diaries of the First Fleet at Tenerife : 10 June to 5 August 1787
With most of the victualling done, Major Ross held a court martial in the room of Lieutenant Sharpe where the marine Thomas Knight from Alexander was found guilty of theft and given 300 lashes. Another marine from Alexander, Richard Asky, found drunk at his post, was acquitted.
While the marines were busy completing the last of the watering and punishing members of their own company from the Alexander, a convict from that ship seized the moment and made the first Convict escape, as Chief Surgeon White recounts.
"During the night while the people were busily employed in taking in water on board the Alexander, a service in which some of the convicts assisted, one of them, of the name of John Powers, found means to drop himself unperceived into a small boat that lay alongside; and under cover of the night to cast her off without discovery.
He then drifted to a Dutch East Indiaman that had just come to an anchor, to the crew of which he told a plausible story and entreated to be taken on board; but, though they much wanted men, they would have nothing to do with him. Having committed himself again to the waves, he was driven by the wind and the current, in the course of the night, to a small island lying to leeward of the ships, where he was the next morning taken back into custody. The boat and oars, which he could not conceal, led to his discovery; otherwise he would probably have effected his escape.
When brought back by the party sent after him, Captain Phillip ordered him into irons, in which state he remained for some time; but at length, by an artful petition he got written for him, he so wrought on the governor's humanity as to procure a release from his confinement"