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From: "Victor King" <>
Subject: Bateson - The Convict Ships
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 11:58:21 +1100


As a book quoted regularly as a reference I find this work full of contradictions and with some hasty conclusions.
Does anyone agree? Most works dealing with convict transportation quote Bateson as a primary source but I question at least some parts of his book.
I have been researching the Third Fleet and in particular the Britannia.
Apart from Bateson I have used "The Blackheath Connection", a letter writen by the master of Britannia to the owners reporting on the voyage dated 22.11.1791, and "The Third Fleet".
I have also referred to "A Voyage to New South Wales &c." by George Barrington.
Although not believed to be written by him and debunked as self serving fiction for the most part, it does tally pretty closely with other sources' timeline on the voyage and the weather conditions that prevailed.

To give some examples of Bateson's inaccuracies he states :-

"The Active, the Queen and the Britannia, in charge of Lieutenant Blow, left the Cape together, and about a week later the Albemarle and the Admiral Barrington sailed in company under Lieutenant Young's command..."
and
"The Active and the Queen both entered Port Jackson on September 26............. the Active made a passage of 183 days from Portsmouth. She evidently struck very bad weather after leaving the Cape, as she took 91 days from that port to Sydney a particularly long passage."
and when discussing the deaths on board Albemarle and Britannia
".... Lt Young's return from the Cape shows that each ship had lost nine men between March 27, the date of sailing, and August 9, so that in each the majority of deaths occurred after leaving the Cape."

For the Active to have taken 91 days from the Cape to Port Jackson and arrived September 26 she would have left the Cape on June 28. But she left the Cape in company with the Britannia and she didn't arrive at the Cape until August 9.
The master of Britannia, Thomas Melville, in his letter to the owners, stated :- "I have the pleasure to inform you of our safe arrival in Port Jackson in New South Wales, October 13th after a passage of 55 days from the Cape of Good Hope." meaning they left the Cape August 20.

I have a number of instances but what annoys me is the conclusions on causes of death and the condition of landed convicts without consideration of things such as the weather conditions on the southern oceans in late winter early spring and the storms that split up the fleet straight after leaving England, Rio and the Cape.

This posting is getting rather long so I won't go on for now. I hope the subject becomes a thread but if it doesn't the anyone interested can contact me off list at
note: I have compiled a rough guess timeline of what I think Britannia's voyage was and have considerable information on the Lincolnshire convicts aboard.

Vic King

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