This book described the situation which drove the transport of convicts to Australia, the actual transport, and the first few years of settlement. The convicts’ situations were pitiful to begin with; imprisoned due to petty crimes (which merited hanging to begin with but was reduced to transportation), cramped in hulks lacking in food and hygiene. They were then transported in cramped conditions and as they were mostly weak in health, many of them will not make it anyway. For those who did make it, Botany Bay was not the promised land overflowing of milk and honey. Life in Australia was harsh and without regular assistance, they will perish. Nonetheless, some who settled in Australia persisted and was rewarded for their effort.Here’s an extract to show how terrible things were:…the convict quarters as being seventy-five feet long by thirty-five feet at the widest point (22.8 by 10.6 metres) and the height five feet seven inches (1.7 metres) at the lowest point. Within this space were the ‘miserable apartments for confining, boarding and lodging’ four hundred and twenty-four male convicts. Each cabin was six feet square, giving each man only thirty-seven cubic feet of airspace – about the size of two coffins… all convicts ‘except those of good character or ill health’ to be put in irons. Many died before the ship had even left the port, only to be ‘thrown overboard unhamocked and unweighted’. During the voyage fifty or sixty convicts at a time were allowed up on deck for two hours but were never released from their chains…
