Jordan Goodman - Planting the World

After that New Holland disappeared from the scene.

Seven years went by.

On 30 November 1778, following the resignation of Sir John Pringle, Banks, aged thirty-five, was elected, almost unanimously, President of the Royal Society.[5] In the early part of 1779, a few months after his election, Banks received an invitation from Sir Charles Bunbury, MP for Suffolk and Steward of the Jockey Club, to appear before his House of Commons committee to give expert evidence. This was Bunbury’s second committee investigating the general issue of crime and punishment in England.

The first, which convened on 23 March 1778, was set up to assess the effectiveness of an Act of Parliament, which was given Royal Assent on 23 May 1776 and which authorised for the first time the use of hulks, disused naval warships and other vessels, to house prisoners on the River Thames.[6] The Act, the result of desperate government action on a very serious and growing problem of where to house prisoners, and discussed by prison reformers such as John Howard, parliamentarians and religious leaders alike, was passed as a temporary measure and would be in force for two years in the first instance.

Why the desperation and why was it temporary? In 1718, Parliament had passed the Transportation Act which authorised foreign banishment, specifically to the American colonies, as a punishment for serious crime, the term length, depending on the kind of crime, being either seven or fourteen years.[7] Between 1718 and the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1776, about 50,000, men, women and children had already been disposed of in this way, ending up, for the most part, working on tobacco plantations in Virginia and Maryland.[8] But now, with war raging in the American colonies, there was nowhere to transport the prisoners. Hulks were considered a reasonable solution, especially as they provided the opportunity for hard labour, preparing ballast for ships; and the two years that the Act ran was viewed as a trial period. They interviewed several witnesses. These included Duncan Campbell, who ran the government contract for hulks, and Daniel Solander, who had paid an unannounced visit to the Justitia , a retired East India Company ship and the first ship supplied by Campbell as a prison, to inspect the accommodation. Bunbury’s committee concluded that the system was working well and should continue.[9] Once again the Act was passed and Royal Assent was granted on 22 May 1778.[10]

Not everyone in Parliament and among the public was satisfied with this conclusion – hulks were only absorbing a small proportion of the prison population and many believed the conditions on board, often fatal, were worse than those in the prisons. In response, on 16 December 1778, Bunbury was asked to convene a second committee to seek more detailed information on the number and condition of prisoners convicted of serious crimes in London and the southern English counties jails; to provide more information concerning conditions on the hulks; and, finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, to provide ‘A short Account of the Acts relating to Transportation, and of the Proposals which have been stated to your Committee, for recurring in some Degree to that Mode of Punishment’.[11]

Transportation was back on the agenda. Duncan Campbell was called again, this time to talk about transportation. For twenty years he had been taking British prisoners to Virginia and Maryland. He was asked for his opinion as to where he would send prisoners now. He answered that Georgia and Florida would be suitable but not for large numbers.[12]

On hearing this, the Committee ‘thought proper, therefore, to examine how far, Transportation might be practicable to other Parts of the World’.

It was time to call Banks. He was no expert on transportation but he was one of the few people in London who could speak authoritatively on another part of the world that might be suitable as a destination for those whose punishment, in the eyes of the Judiciary, was transportation.[13]

The report of Banks’s appearance began thus: ‘ Joseph Banks , [was] requested, in case it should be thought expedient to establish a colony of convicted Felons in any distant Part of the Globe, from whence their escape might be difficult, and where, from the Fertility of the soil, they might be able to maintain themselves, after the First Year, with little or no aid from the Mother Country, to give his Opinion What Place would be most eligible for such Settlement?’ Banks answered straight away that that place was ‘ Botany Bay , on the Coast of New Holland , in the Indian Ocean , which was about Seven Months Voyage from Englan d ’.[14]

Then Banks explained his choice further. He spoke glowingly of Botany Bay. The climate was right – like Toulouse, he said – though he admitted he had only been there for a week when the weather was ‘mild and moderate’; the soil would be able to support large numbers of settlers, and sheep and cattle would thrive – there were no predators; fishing was good, water plentiful, and there was an abundance of timber. The inhabitants, he added, were few in number – no more than fifty in the neighbourhood he reckoned; they were willing to share their land (but not their produce). There were no Europeans anywhere nearby – ‘escape would be very difficult’. A settlement would begin to maintain itself after the first year, he asserted, though for the first year the settlers would need to bring all of their necessary provisions with them from England. Would the Mother Country reap benefit from this settlement, the Committee asked? Banks replied confidently that ‘if the People formed among themselves a Civil Government’, the population would grow, they would demand more European goods and, with a land mass exceeding that of the European continent, they ‘would furnish Matter of Advantageous Return’.[15] Banks made no mention of the Endeavour River area where he had spent seven weeks, considerably longer than at Botany Bay.[16]

This was probably the first time that Banks spoke publicly about Botany Bay. He was certainly an illustrious witness but one suspects that what he said made little impression. The real focus of attention, as an alternative to the American colonies, was a place much closer to home and with connections that went back more than a century – West Africa. Bunbury had invited six witnesses to speak about their experiences in this part of the world. Between them they had more than thirty years’ experience living and working on the coast. One of the witnesses, John Roberts, who had been in command of the West African trading and slaving forts for nine years, advocated an African penal colony – his preferred choice was a port, 400 miles upriver from the mouth of the Gambia River. He produced figures to back up his case that the overall cost of this penal colony would be less than the corresponding costs to keep prisoners on hulks. Two other witnesses were in broad agreement with Roberts while the three remaining witnesses were not in favour, citing especially the horrible mortality rates among Europeans. Transportation was not intended to be a death sentence.[17]

After taking expert evidence, Bunbury’s recommendation was that the laws governing transportation, which specified the American colonies as the destination, should be altered to include ‘any other Part of the Globe that may be found expedient’.[18]

As the revolutionary war across the Atlantic progressed, North America became increasingly closed as a destination for transportation: some convicts were sent to West Africa, typically to be enlisted there in the military, but there were few of them. Suggestions of where convicts should be sent were made from all quarters. Possible destinations included Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in Canada, the West Indies, British Honduras, Gibraltar, Menorca and St Helena, but none of these came to anything.[19] It may have been that the government was hoping that the war would be won and that transportation to the American colonies could resume as before.