Great Escapes by Convicts in Colonial Australia
Author : Warwick Hirst
Publisher :
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 22,71 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Australia
ISBN : 9780731808151
Author : Warwick Hirst
Publisher :
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 22,71 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Australia
ISBN : 9780731808151
Author : Warwick Hirst
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 36,19 MB
Release : 2021
Category : Australia
ISBN : 9781761282140
Six vividly told true stories of daring, desperate and dangerous escape attempts by colonial era convicts. Just how did Mary Bryant make it from Sydney to Timor in an open boat? And how did the murderous cannibal Alexander Pearce managed to escape not once, but twice, and with what dire consequences?--Publisher.
Author : Adam Courtenay
Publisher :
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 12,18 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Convicts
ISBN : 9781525279577
The greatest escape story of Australian colonial history by the son of Australia's best-loved storyteller In 1828, James Porter, sailor, chancer, illywhacker, found himself on a ship bound for Van Diemen's Land, having been convicted of stealing a stack of beaver furs. After several escape attempts from the notorious penal colony, Porter, who told authorities he was a 'beer-machine maker', was sent to Sarah Island, known in Van Diemen's Land as 'hell on earth'. Many tried to escape the island, few succeeded. But when Governor George Arthur announced that Sarah Island would closed down and the prisoners moved to the new penal station of Port Arthur, Porter, along with a motley crew of other prisoners, pulled off an audacious escape. Commandeering the ship they'd been building to transport them to Port Arthur, the escapees sailed all the way to Chile. What happened next is stranger than fiction, a fitting outcome for this true-life picaresque tale. The Ship That Never Was is an entertaining and rollicking story from our past by an exciting new voice in popular history. James Porter, whose memoirs were the inspiration for Marcus Clarke's For the Term of his Natural Life, is an original Australian larrikin whose ingenuity, ability to talk himself out of a tight corner and refusal to buckle under authority makes him an irresistible anti-hero in the tradition of Ned Kelly.
Author : David Levell
Publisher : University of Queensland Press(Australia)
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 21,93 MB
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 9780702236860
Vivid and barely believable stories of courage and foolhardiness in colonial Australia. Tour to Hell tells the riveting and often tragic stories of the convicts who escaped, or tried to escape, Australia's early penal settlements. With the continent a blank slate to the newcomers, a 'convict escape mythology' developed, suggesting sanctuaries in the bush and short overland journeys to other countries. One of the incredible myths that spread was that China was just north of New South Wales, separated only by a large river. Until this mythology swept through the convict ranks, the bush had made a very effective prison wall. Once it did, however, the fear of the unknown became a liberating (but mostly misplaced) faith in the bush. With an engaging and fast-paced narrative, Tour to Hell is Australian history at its rollicking best. It graphically brings to life the adventures of absconding sanctuary-seekers and their opponents.
Author : Adam Courtenay
Publisher :
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 38,88 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Large type books
ISBN : 9781525280184
The greatest escape story of Australian colonial history by the son of Australia's best-loved storyteller In 1828, James Porter, sailor, chancer, illywhacker, found himself on a ship bound for Van Diemen's Land, having been convicted of stealing a stack of beaver furs. After several escape attempts from the notorious penal colony, Porter, who told authorities he was a 'beer-machine maker', was sent to Sarah Island, known in Van Diemen's Land as 'hell on earth'. Many tried to escape the island, few succeeded. But when Governor George Arthur announced that Sarah Island would closed down and the prisoners moved to the new penal station of Port Arthur, Porter, along with a motley crew of other prisoners, pulled off an audacious escape. Commandeering the ship they'd been building to transport them to Port Arthur, the escapees sailed all the way to Chile. What happened next is stranger than fiction, a fitting outcome for this true-life picaresque tale. The Ship That Never Was is an entertaining and rollicking story from our past by an exciting new voice in popular history. James Porter, whose memoirs were the inspiration for Marcus Clarke's For the Term of his Natural Life, is an original Australian larrikin whose ingenuity, ability to talk himself out of a tight corner and refusal to buckle under authority makes him an irresistible anti-hero in the tradition of Ned Kelly.
Author : Tim Causer
Publisher : UCL Press
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 33,35 MB
Release : 2017-06-07
Category : History
ISBN : 191157681X
Among the vast body of manuscripts composed and collected by the philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), held by UCL Library’s Special Collections, is the earliest Australian convict narrative, Memorandoms by James Martin. This document also happens to be the only extant first-hand account of the most well-known, and most mythologized, escape from Australia by transported convicts. On the night of 28 March 1791, James Martin, William and Mary Bryant and their two infant children, and six other male convicts, stole the colony’s fishing boat and sailed out of Sydney Harbour. Within ten weeks they had reached Kupang in West Timor, having, in an amazing feat of endurance, travelled over 3,000 miles (c. 5,000) kilometres) in an open boat. There they passed themselves off as the survivors of a shipwreck, a ruse which—initially, at least—fooled their Dutch hosts. This new edition of the Memorandoms includes full colour reproductions of the original manuscripts, making available for the first time this hugely important document, alongside a transcript with commentary describing the events and key characters. The book also features a scholarly introduction which examines their escape and early convict absconding in New South Wales more generally, and, drawing on primary records, presents new research which sheds light on the fate of the escapees after they reached Kupang. The introduction also assesses the voluminous literature on this most famous escape, and critically examines the myths and fictions created around it and the escapees, myths which have gone unchallenged for far too long. Finally, the introduction briefly discusses Jeremy Bentham’s views on convict transportation and their enduring impact.
Author : Adam Courtenay
Publisher : HarperCollins Australia
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 50,68 MB
Release : 2018-06-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1460708849
The greatest escape story of Australian colonial history by the son of Australia’s best-loved storyteller In 1823, cockney sailor and chancer James Porter was convicted of stealing a stack of beaver furs and transported halfway around the world to Van Diemen's Land. After several escape attempts from the notorious penal colony, Porter, who told authorities he was a 'beer-machine maker', was sent to Macquarie Harbour, known in Van Diemen's Land as hell on earth. Many had tried to escape Macquarie Harbour; few had succeeded. But when Governor George Arthur announced that the place would be closed and its prisoners moved to the new penal station of Port Arthur, Porter, along with a motley crew of other prisoners, pulled off an audacious escape. Wresting control of the ship they'd been building to transport them to their fresh hell, the escapees instead sailed all the way to Chile. What happened next is stranger than fiction, a fitting outcome for this true-life picaresque tale. The Ship That Never Was is the entertaining and rollicking story of what is surely the greatest escape in Australian colonial history. James Porter, whose memoirs were the inspiration for Marcus Clarke's For the Term of his Natural Life, is an original Australian larrikin whose ingenuity, gift of the gab and refusal to buckle under authority make him an irresistible anti-hero who deserves a place in our history.
Author : Lucy Williams
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : pages
File Size : 10,70 MB
Release : 2019-10-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526756312
In the eighty years between 1787 and 1868 more than 160,000 men, women and children convicted of everything from picking pockets to murder were sentenced to be transported 'beyond the seas'. These convicts were destined to serve out their sentences in the empire's most remote colony: Australia. Through vivid real-life case studies and famous tales of the exceptional and extraordinary, Convicts in the Colonies narrates the history of convict transportation to Australia - from the first to the final fleet. Using the latest original research, Lucy Williams reveals a fascinating century-long history of British convicts unlike any other. Covering everything from crime and sentencing in Britain and the perilous voyage to Australia, to life in each of the three main penal colonies - New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and Western Australia - this book charts the lives and experiences of the men and women who crossed the world and underwent one of the most extraordinary punishment in history.
Author : Liam Barry
Publisher :
Page : 72 pages
File Size : 41,20 MB
Release : 1992
Category : Authors, American
ISBN : 9780646094298
Biography of the Irish Fenian convict who escaped to America from WA in 1869 and became a journalist and editor in Britain.
Author : Kirsten McKenzie
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 10,74 MB
Release : 2016-01-14
Category : History
ISBN : 1316453596
During a major overhaul of British imperial policy following the Napoleonic Wars, an escaped convict reinvented himself as an improbable activist, renowned for his exposés of government misconduct and corruption in the Cape Colony and New South Wales. Charting scandals unleashed by the man known variously as Alexander Loe Kaye and William Edwards, Imperial Underworld offers a radical new account of the legal, constitutional and administrative transformations that unfolded during the British colonial order of the 1820s. In a narrative rife with daring jail breaks, infamous agents provocateurs, and allegations of sexual deviance, Professor Kirsten McKenzie argues that such colourful and salacious aspects of colonial administrations cannot be separated from the real business of political and social change. The book instead highlights the importance of taking gossip, paranoia, factional infighting and political spin seriously to show the extent to which ostensibly marginal figures and events influenced the transformation of the nineteenth-century British Empire.