H.M.S.
LADY NELSON
AND THE PART SHE PLAYED
IN THE COLONY OF NEW SOUTH WALES NORFOLK ISLAND AND VAN DIEMEN’S LAND
1800-1824
Three weeks after the arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay in January 1788 Lieutenant King and a party of 23 were dispatched by Governor Phillip to Norfolk Island to take possession and establish a settlement there.
From this small beginning the population grew
slowly until the Sirius was wrecked in March 1790 swelling the
number overnight to 497. This caused many problems, as there was not a ship
available to take the soldiers and sailors back to Port Jackson.
Over the next 20 years the population rose and
fell depending on the number of convicts that were sent there. The numbers of
free people on the island also grew as a large number of the convicts became
free, married and reared families.
The H.M.S. Lady Nelson was to
play a large roll in the lives of the Norfolk Islanders over the coming years.
This small 60ton brig had sailed from England in 1800 and was the first vessel
to pass through Bass Straight from west to east, reducing the sailing time to
Sydney by many days, and dispensing of having to sail around the south coast of
Van Diemen’s Land.
For the next few years the Lady Nelson
was kept busy sailing as a tender under the British flag. After her arrival at
Port Jackson in December 1800 she sailed again in 1801 and 1802 with
instructions to explore Port Phillip Bay.
The following year she was sent to Risdon Cove
in the River Derwent with Lt. John Bowen, and assisted him in the first
settlement in Van Diemen’s Land. Later in 1803 she was ordered to sail to
Sorrento in Port Phillip Bay to assist Lt. Col. Collins with his departure to
the River Derwent.
From 1803 the Lady Nelson
continued her voyages to many places. She delivered dispatches, military personal and convicts back and forth to
Norfolk Island as well as her many trips to Port Macquarie and Newcastle.
Again in 1804 the Lady Nelson
recorded another first, when she sailed with the Buffalo, Francis
and the Integrity to the Tamar River in the north of Van Diemen’s
Land to establish another new settlement under the British Government.
Evacuees from Norfolk Island began to leave as early as 1805, when five men arrived at Port Dalrymple. It would be another two years before there was any further movement from the island.
One of the Lady Nelson’s longest voyages
during this time was when she went to New Zealand in 1806, returning the Maori
Chief Te-Pahi to his homeland.
The Lady
Nelson was commissioned to bring the first shipment of passengers from
Norfolk Island to Hobart Town, arriving there on 29 November 1807 with 34 men,
women and children. The next ship to arrive was the Porpoise on
17 January 1808 with 180 passengers also to Hobart Town. Their profiles can be
found in Exiled Three Times Over.[1]
The Lady Nelson made her second
voyage with a further 50 passengers in March 1808, She was followed by the Estramina
who arrived in June 1808 with 62 passengers again all to Hobart Town. The last evacuees to arrive at Hobart Town
came on the City of Edinburgh, they numbered 242 and theirs was
the longest and most difficult voyage of all. It took them nearly a month to
reach Hobart Town and most of them with only rags on their backs and very
little food on board.
In total there were 568 men, women and children (most of them free by this time) who arrived in the River Derwent during the twelve months, making life in the four year old settlement very difficult. Lt Colonial Collins in Hobart Town was having an extremely difficult time feeding those that had arrived in 1804 and well as those who arrived in the Colony after that time. He had been told to expect 100 souls from Norfolk Island and now he to feed and cloth nearly 600.
By 1813 the remainder of those still on Norfolk
Island were ordered to sail on the Lady Nelson and the Minstrel
to the Tamar River where they then walked to Muddy Plains (now
Longford) and settled there on their grants of land.
The profiles in the Exiled Three Times Over book gives an example of what life was like for them before and after they arrived in Hobart Town. Some did very well, while a few fell by the wayside. For the majority it was hard work, the land they were granted was difficult to farm due to flooding of the Esk River, yielding hardly enough for them to live on. This resulted in most of having to live off government stores for the first two years.
If the coming of the evacuees made Lt. Governor
Collin’s life difficult it did do one good thing. There were over 261 young
people on board the 5 ships. This added to the very small number of 38 that had
arrived with Collins (allowing that a small amount had been born in the 4 years
since Collins had arrived) Some of those who arrived from Norfolk Island
married members of Collin’s party who had arrived on the Ocean
in 1804, swelling the populating and giving it new blood to tackle the
future of the island within the first year of their arrival. Without this new
blood the Colony may have not survived.
Certainly it would have taken many more years
for those who arrived in 1804 to multiply with only their few couples to
provide more children. The convicts men would have had no hope of finding
partners amongst the free arrivals who came with Collins as it was a few years
before any marriageable female convicts arrived. When they did it was the worst
sent from Sydney to rid that town of their company.
The following generations of the Norfolk
Islanders were to struggle for many years but in time most of them were to
become valued citizens and their descendants now number in the thousands. Many
of these descendants live in Tasmania while others can be found all over the
world, many still carrying their convict ancestor’s names.
This brave little ship’s life nearly came to an
end when at Port Macquarie she holed on some rocks in 1821 and was left to her
fate. That was until Governor Macquarie,
on one of his official trips to Newcastle, saw her and asked what she was doing
there. When told she was holed her ordered her to be brought up on the beach
and repaired. Both Macquarie and Mrs Macquarie had a soft spot for the Lady
Nelson, having sailed on her to Hobart Town in 1811. It was said that
they thought her the safest ship they had ever sailed on.
The Lady Nelson continued her
work along the east coast of Australia under many colourful Captain (some
ex-convicts) until she was commissioned to sail to Port Dundas at the northern
part of Australia in 1824 to again help with a new settlement.
This voyage was to be her swan song, on
arriving in the north she was sent to the Timor Sea in an attempt to buy pigs
for the new settlement. While on the island of Baba the Lady Nelson
was overrun with islanders, the crew was killed and the ship stripped and later
burnt and sunk. This was the end of the
Lady Nelson, who had been the Colony’s work-horse for over
twenty-four years. Surely one of the ships worthy of respect then, as the
replica is now.
The Lady Nelson will play a big part in the Norfolk Island Arrivals Bicentenary from November 2007 till October 2008, when we will have historical sails on the River Derwent in memory of those who made VDL their new home in 1807-1813.
See poster for
dates and information.
Irene Schaffer 2006