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 The Spitalfields Acts, which kept up our prices, had been repealed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