THE JOURNEY 

by Richard Banks

They are all here now: George, William, Frederick, Herbert, Mary-Anne, Elizabeth, Esther and their mother. Hushed voices by the bedside and in the room beyond. Don’t whisper. I want to hear what you say. Come on, you can be candid, now that I can no longer see or speak, almost dead, but not quite away. What do you really think of me? What have you discovered? Have you separated out the myth from the reality, or have I covered my tracks too well? Speak up now, I won’t be around for the funeral eulogy. What’s that George? - “

He was one of the founding fathers of Hobart.” That’s putting it rather grand, son, but not untrue. “He was descended from landed gentry in Hampshire, England.” So you swallowed that one. I must have told the story well.

     Your grandfather also told a good story; tales of Huguenot ancestors who fled from persecution in France to settle in London’s eastern suburbs. They had been well-to-do silk weavers, or so the legend went. Well, poor people need their legends and there were few poorer than us, even in the slums of Bethnal Green. The golden age of hand-weaving had well and truly ended. The Spitalfields Acts, which kept up our prices, had been repealed and duties on foreign silks either cancelled or much reduced. It was free trade they said. It would benefit the nation. Well, it didn’t benefit the hand loom weavers - many thousands out of work and the rest on short time, earning only a fraction of their former pay. 

      In truth, we had outlived our usefulness. Machines now ruled - power looms that produced woven cloth more quickly and cheaply than we ever could. The old skills were no longer needed and we were cast aside to eek out a living as best we could. Many dropped down to become labourers or street hawkers. Others, like myself, stubbornly persisted in the old trade, hoping against hope for better times. Lucky the poor weaver who had only himself to feed!                               

      Five good souls depended on me and a sixth grew ever larger inside my wife. They were starving, and I was desperate, too desperate to pass by an open window in a deserted lane. The sovereigns I stole that day kept us in food and lodging for a month. It was my first robbery and I vowed it would be my last, but in the absence of honest work I soon sank into the residuum of London’s criminal underclass. I became a housebreaker and sold my looms in order to buy the tools of my new profession, fool that I was! 

      Three months later, I was seen leaving a house in Stepney and pursued through the streets by a parish constable who knew me by name. I gave him the slip in a warren of dark alleys and laid low in a common lodging house, but there was little hope for me now. There was a price on my head, and within days I was seized by thief-takers and taken to the nearest police office.

     The guilty verdict at my trial was as inevitable as the sentence of death which accompanied it. But the times were changing and capital sentences for robbery were often commuted on appeal. Accordingly, seven honest tradesmen of my acquaintance petitioned the Home Secretary and my sentence was reduced to one of transportation for life. At once I was full of hope and wrote to my wife, urging her to also petition the Home Secretary, asking that she and the children be allowed to follow me abroad. It was a forlorn hope, dashed almost as soon as it was conceived. 

      My brother came and gave me news that had hitherto been kept from me; news that made me the most wretched man on God’s earth. There had been an outbreak of typhus fever in the eastern parishes and two of my children, who had been lodged with friends, were dead. My wife, despairing of the filth and squalor of Bethnal Green, had left London with our other children, intending to find work in the textile mills of Lancashire. It was to be a new start, away from me and those who knew of my disgrace. She bid me forget her and by my brother returned her wedding ring. I now bitterly regretted my reprieve and wished only to die, but the Government had other ideas and I was taken to the Lord William Bentinck, a convict ship bound for Van Dieman’s Land. 

     I joined the ship at Spithead, with four other prisoners and was examined by the Medical Officer, who declared me fit to travel. Indeed, compared to the prisoners who had been on hulks at Gosport, I was a picture of health. They were a sorry sight, sallow and emaciated, some not well enough to make the journey. We up-anchored on 7 May 1832, which was the last time I ever saw England. Soon, we were out of sight of land and heading south-westwards, into a vast and empty ocean.      

     At first there was much sea sickness and the medical officer was oft amongst us, dispensing calomel and other medicines. He bid us to be of good cheer and promised us fair treatment if we conducted ourselves like good men. Gradually the weather became warmer, our fetters were removed and we were allowed to exercise daily on deck. We had our sea legs now and were put to work swabbing and holystoning the decks, washing clothes and cleaning the privies. We worked hard and in return were given two meals a day, a gill of wine when the weather was inclement and lemon juice when it was fair. What greater irony could there be than we were now provided with the necessary things previously denied us and which we had sought to secure by our crimes.

     On the thirty-seventh day of our voyage, in worsening weather, we sighted the coast of Argentina and with the wind at our back, turned eastwards towards the Australian colonies. The regulated routine of our existence began to be relaxed and we were allowed free time on deck to fish, play at cards or otherwise amuse ourselves. Some, not many, used this freedom to plot mutiny - wild talk about seizing the ship and sailing it to Africa. Did they know where Africa was? I doubt it. Just talk, empty talk for which one of them, poor fool, received four dozen lashes. There was little appetite for mutiny after that. We were resigned to our fate, and sought every means to make our captivity more agreeable. We entertained ourselves as best we could and looked forward, with almost pathetic relish, to the evening pipe of tobacco that was allowed to those who worked well and gave no trouble. 

      Occasionally, the tedium of our ordered lives was enlivened by the misfortune of others: two prisoners who fought at cards were consigned to the cramping box, a seaman fell from the rigging and broke a leg, an old pickpocket was found dead in his bunk and buried at sea. For the rest of us, misfortune consisted chiefly in the slow passage of time, which grew ever more oppressive to us. 

     At last, after one hundred and thirteen days at sea, we arrived at Port Hobart, on the island now known as Tasmania. Our relief at our journey’s end was mixed with apprehension as to what was to become of us. We were not long in finding out and two days later I was assigned to George Johnstone, a merchant and shopkeeper. He was my master now and I his slave but he treated me well and by degrees I earned both his trust and affection. The work was much to my liking, as was the town and the countryside that surrounded it. Far from being the hot and arid place I had been expecting, the climate was temperate and the land much cultivated with corn and potatoes. It was a new country, raw but full of promise and I worked hard in the hope that I might someday share in its future prosperity. 

      My hopes were fulfilled seven years later when I was given a conditional pardon and Johnstone took me into partnership. He opened a new store on the far side of town, where I was not known, and put me in charge. It was there that I met the young woman, a free settler from England, who was to become my wife. I told her I was a widower, the younger son of a country gentleman. She told me she was niece to the Archbishop of Canterbury. We understood each other only too well and were married within the year. 

      In the next twenty years she bore me nine children, of whom seven have survived. As my business interests expanded I invested much money in their education. What clever children I have: two solicitors, a banker, an aspiring politician and daughters with wit enough to marry into good families. None of them know of my criminal past and none of them must know. God help them if it should ever became common knowledge. 

     They say that life is a journey. If that be true I have journeyed far. In my lifetime I have traveled from one side of the world to the other. I grew up in a country that denied me opportunity and condemned me to poverty and servitude. I prospered in one that valued the hard work of willing toilers. I exchanged the disease and destitution of the slums for the clean air and water of an unspoiled land. I have been a weaver, criminal, convict, shopkeeper, merchant and speculator in property. I was born a pauper, I die a gentleman. Much has happened. The journey has been a long one. Is it about to end, or is death just a staging post on some longer journey? Soon I will know what those on earth can only guess at; will see what those before me have already seen. 

         Not long now. The voices by the bedside say their last goodbyes. A final prayer is said. 

      Remember me, who journeyed far, and journeys on in hope.   

Copyright Richard Banks