`The serpent we are nursing at Botany Bay': The mystery of the merchants not named by Sir George Young: Where the money went (Part One): Where the money went (Part Two): Did NSW profits flow to Blackheath? 

 

The Blackheath Connection

Chapter 43

 

`The serpent we are nursing at Botany Bay':

 

      Reportedly, the chairman of the East India Company, Francis Baring, in 1793 remarked on "a serpent" the Company was nursing at Botany Bay. In its way, Baring's remark is one of the few notes of real poetry uttered about the early convict colony. By 1792-1793, the East India Company, as was William Richards, was aware that something possibly significant - and dangerous - had transpired with the establishment of Botany Bay. And that the new settlement had survived against heavy odds. ([1])

 

      IF Baring did indeed remark on "the serpent we are nursing at Botany Bay", IF there was relatively little profit involved for shipowners engaging in transportation, or trade, or both, more so if there was great profit, just what kind of serpent did Baring have in mind? The Company had already confronted government over new waters for the whalers, the Company's charter was being renegotiated. Did Baring fear conflict with the Spanish for a financier's reasons? Did he fear a heavier involvement in convict transportation of slavers such as Camden, Calvert and King, before they traded in India?  And about 1793, alderman William Curtis, ([2]) friend of London's South whalers, again tried to send a ship to Nootka Sound, this time with the backing of a senior government minister, Dundas, as far as gaining permission from the Company was necessary. ([3])

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The mystery of the merchants not named by Sir George Young:

 

       The Morning Chronicle on 21 March, 1793 carried a long editorial on Pitt's economic policy with the announcement, "Another banking house in this city yesterday stopt payment. The dreadful consequence of the war.... is swelling to such a [state] of calamity as never was known in the memory of men. The first question now asked is, what houses have stopt today? And we are sorry to say, that for three weeks past, no one day has the question been answered with a negative..." ([4]) This situation prevailed when J. J. Angerstein contracted the loan of £6 million nominal at 3 per cent at 72. Angerstein here had bid below the previous mentioned price of 77. As a result, Pitt used Angerstein for a 1794 loan.

 

       And as Shaw indicates, between 1793 to September 1800, only 1234 male and 564 female convicts were landed at Sydney. Judging from Collins' account, nearly 100 expirees had departed from NSW, or about 10 per cent of the ex-convicts entitled to do so. Almost as many had successfully absconded while still under sentence. ([5]) It seems likely some provisioners to NSW did well out of the war. With De Lancey of the army, Alexander Davison made contracts to the supply the army down to the Mediterranean. Part of Davison's arrangements were made with the coal factors Henlys, who at auction ([6]) had bought Lady Juliana after her trip to NSW. Alexander Davison ([7]) vittled the troops in Canada and Nova Scotia, reimbursed about £24,000. ([8])

 

        Neave ([9]) and Aislabie also supplied troops in the West Indies. Over 1793-1794,  Mr. Everett vittled the troops at Gibraltar. The firm Turnbull, Macaulay and Gregory, for provisions to Canada and Nova Scotia, were reimbursed £23,398/16/10d. The Earl of Harwick heard from one disgruntled firm, Henshaw Russell, about the business methods of Macaulay and his partners - what is today called insider trading. Which means that Macaulay's partners often enjoyed good information on government plans.

 

       In 1783 Russell ([10]) had been told that the contract was about to be renewed for supplying money for the pay of troops at Gibraltar (Mainwaring and Russell had previously had the contract for same) On 25 November Russell had sent proposals to put the system on a better footing. He heard nothing more until "we were told that Messrs Gregory & Turnbull had got the contract at the price which we offered to fulfil it with an addition of 2/3d for issuing the pay in silver, and one of the partners at the time declared that they should have got the contract on more advantageous terms, they boasted of knowing, and to show that they did, they mentioned the very date of them"... 1793 public bidding... Mr Steele found ours the lowest ... we were asked for £7000 immediately which we provided ... then the bidding was opened again and it was 1/4 of a penny under ours and was accepted.

 

           And in the same file as Henshaw Russell's complaint is a curious note.... "Observes on Botany Bay by Mr Beth, Barrister at Law, Inner Temple Lane, 13 April, 1789 ... Rough outline by Geo. Young (?RN) of many advantages that may result to this nation from a Settlement on the Coast of New South Wales." So it seems, that years before, Young had sought legal advice on his long-held plans to colonise in the South Pacific?

 

       Sir George Young ([11]) is much-mentioned in an anthology of articles on the Botany Bay debate. ([12]) Alexander Davison did not meet Sir George Young till some weeks before 12 February, 1793, when Davison wrote to Dundas that day, with Young and Call, aware of the renegotiation of the charter of the East India Company. Certain interests were trying to promote a linkage of NSW with Madagascar, although Davison did not  think such business necessary to the state. ([13]) In 1793, as armchair coloniser, Sir George Young, earlier a promoter of Matra's scheme, wrote Alexander Davison a curious letter, in which, after referring to the "dog in the manger" attitude of the East India Company, he said that in 1784 he had "put the plan into the hands of some merchants when it was immediately adopted in the manner you so well know. Without animadverting on men or measures on that occasion..." And we know little more. ([14])

 

    Young's letter is difficult to interpret, but he was evidently referring to matters well-known to himself and Davison: matters perhaps not known to historians. Young's letter though is evidently a proof that some merchants, whoever they were, were keen on the prospects being discussed in the contexts of either a new colony in the South Pacific, and/or convict transportation, between 1784 and 1793. It is possible that those men were South Whalers. It seems unlikely they were men comfortable with the East India Company, and Calvert and Macaulay were not comfortable with the Company. In all, Davison seems to have asked Young what on earth was going on with business to early NSW? And shortly he lost interest in the colony and left it to its own devices.

 

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Where the money went (Part One):

 

        An Australian historian, K. M. Dallas, ([15]) whose work helped provoke the writing of this book, records that to 1793, £186,000 out of £473,000 (39 per cent of the cost) for New South Wales had gone on the cost of transport vessels. Between 1794 and 1801, the hire of ships took 78 per cent of £181,000. These were windfall profits for the whalers and their associates. But counting the costs of the early colony is a fraught business. For example, in Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, Vol. XIV. 1793-1802, ([16]), from p. 492 is an appendix: An Account of the Total Number of Ships, and their Tonnage, Port of London, 1792-98. In this account, Botany Bay was classified with the East Indies, and so relevant figures can remain disguised.

 

     In this account, we find that 39 ships in the South whale fishery in 1793 compare strikingly with 33 East India Company ships that year. Due to romantic views about the Company, non-statistical views on the Company's volume of shipping generally appear to overestimate it. Some relative (and relevant) financial figures are provided in Sir John Clapham, The Bank of England, citing banking investment figures "in discount" pertaining to various maritime and land-based trading sectors. ([17]) In comparison with such figures, any monies outlaid by the British government for the NSW colony, or monies handled by British merchants dealing with the new colony, look decidedly insignificant.

 

        Clapham shows that on 1 January, 1800, the aggregate for persons "in Discount" with the Bank [of England] were: West India Interest £581,000 worth of bills under discount that day - sugar and slave men; Irish merchants, £541,000; American Russian and Peninsula Group each with £200,000-300,000 worth; East India agents and merchants were insignificant, it being in form of the Bank's overdraft to the East India Company, of £300,000-400,000; Some £768,000 covered Africa, Mediterranean, Baltic, Hamburg and the Channel Isles. Miscellaneous tea dealers, grocers and sugar refiners, 433,000; Wool textilers, £257,000; silk manufactory and gauze weavers, £243,000; textiles and hosiery, £232,000; Corn, hops, and ironmongers, £100,000-£200,000; coal and cotton, £50,000; leather and oil merchants, £100,000; most cotton imported from the Levant and West Indies; Hudson's Bay Company.  10,000-15,000 north-west coast of America. (HBL loans were intermittent but numerous.)

 

       Parliamentary concern producing the Navy Office Accounts is illustrated by figures on the volume of Treasury Bills received at Treasury for NSW costs:

 

Re: Navy Office Accounts (being incomplete) 1793-1794 - (A) Compilation by George Rose of the Navy Office Accounts now published in HRNSW. (Chamberlayn's Account of the charges made by legal men for finding documentation of the First Fleet convicts was not included.) Rose's definition of relevant costings did not include questions of costs for the hulks establishments. These Accounts are valuable for listings of ship men interested in convict carriage, but material provided by Duncan Campbell was thus excluded... With figures coming recently to notice, Parliament in 1793 found itself worried by the mounting cost of the venture to Botany Bay. Accordingly, George Rose at the Treasury called up all or most of the relevant accounts and had them presented to the House. (A similar collation of accounts was presented in 1794.) ([18]) Perusal of those accounts refer the reader inevitably to the alliances made between shipmen after the departure of the Second Fleet, and, in some cases, well before that fleet's departure.

 

Where the money went (part two):

 

      Shaw ([19]) has many details and costings of relevance here. Especially, Shaw writes, many Treasury Bills drawn between 1793-1796, after the Third Fleet, were presented to the Treasury in 1797. What is not known, is just who presented them: that is, who had collected the monies in London. Shaw suggests that "In 1798 the House Of Commons Select Committee of Finance, alarmed by the sudden presentation... of bills amounting to nearly £80,000, investigated its expenditure". One suspects the Committee was also alarmed, or surprised, by the identity of the presenters of the bills? This cost of £80,000 may or may not have included the bill of £18,000 from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the transportation of Irish convicts. If it is added, some £98,000 is close enough to an earlier estimate herein, of about £100,000 going to those here defined as Blackheathites. On the evidence of the Shelton Contracts, Thomas Shelton between 1786 and 1797 failed to ask for reimbursement of about £2900 for drawing contracts. ([20]) The Irish contracts remain unlocated, so the costings for transporting Irish convicts remains anomalous.

 

     At this point, (1793) it is useful to ask how much money spent on shipping convicts to New South Wales had gone back to Blackheath? It is probable that about one third of money expended on convict transportation and supplies went to Blackheath merchants. Over £54,000 went to William Richards ([21]) for the First Fleet. It is known what Camden, Calvert and King received for the Second Fleet, over £30,00, but their income from the Third Fleet is harder to assess and was shared by Enderbys and other whalers. What Alexander Davison received for provisions can be roughly calculated from the 1793-1794 Navy Office Accounts. ([22])

 

    The reading here of the 1793 accounts is the result of a chronological reconstruction of transactions and deals made. Dallas ([23]) has also estimated that to 1793, £473,000 had been put out for NSW, £186,000 having been spent on the cost of transport vessels. For the whalers,  the charter charges were something of a windfall, but even given that, it seems from Saunders Newsletter ([24]) that the next large whaling fleet after the Third Fleet was not mounted until 1798.

 

       With the public wrangle over expenditure, it is not surprising that Alexander Davison, a large financial player, a non-Blackheathite, wrote to Sir George Young on merchants' involvements to NSW. ([25]) Young replied with a curious letter, in which, after referring to the "dog in the manger" attitude of the East India Company, he said that in 1784 he had "put the plan into the hands of some merchants when it was immediately adopted in the manner you so well know. Without animadverting on men or measures on that occasion......"

 

      Young in saying he did not wish to animadvert on men or measures indicates that he could have done so. But it is evident he was  referring to matters well-known to himself if not to Davison. ([26]) Young's letter though is evidently a proof that some merchants, whoever they were, were keen on the prospects being discussed in the contexts of either a new colony in the South Pacific, and/or convict transportation, between 1784 and 1793. It is possible that those men were South Whalers and likely they were the Blackheath men. There were, after all, few men persistent with the business, and Davison evidently found them irritating as competitors.

 

      By October 1793, if not earlier, Davison or one of his staff of 300 had surely noticed St Barbe, Green and Bignell active in business relating to NSW, as with the ship William  Capt. Folger. About August 1793, for example, Captain Thomas Melville of Britannia of the Third Fleet was returning to NSW waters in the Enderbys' Speedy. ([27]) Davison's final response was to relinquish the NSW business, and apply himself to supplying the army, leaving long-range sea cargo to ship men. ([28]) For reasons unknown, but relating probably to his difficulties in obtaining the good will of the East India Company, Macaulay also pulled out. Larkins also pulled out, and never sent another ship to Sydney.

 

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      How much was the convict colony costing? A House of Commons select committee on finance would become alarmed by the sudden presentation at Treasury of bills totalling nearly £80,000, ([29]) But no count is satisfactory. One count to 1800 is that the total cost of NSW, including associated naval expenditure, was £1,306,360, or £36 per convict per year, that is, about three times the cost of maintaining prisoners in hulks. As a comparative figure, the tribute paid to the British government by the East India Company was estimated at £2 million per year. As a comparative figure, though it was not yet fully realised, Britain had acquired half an arid continent, areas of which were studded with gold, though that would not become apparent till the 1850s. Was there a  disappointment, half-conscious, that Australia did not have a large population which could be subjugated, as in India?

 

     But such observations do not fit the facts either, since the British in Australia had more need to restrict expansion for security reasons, rather than expand settlement and exploration. Restrictions on funding and personnel also made this reaction necessary. Yet the maritime often produced spectacular results. In the handling of prisoners, or mental patients, and indeed, any people needing to be watched, including small children, there is a paradoxical law of human life which authorities must heed on a just-in-case basis: if security (confinement) can be decreased or reduced, surveillance must be increased. The design of Bentham's Panopticon relied on this paradox, which is yet another of the many paradoxes afflicting rational discussion of Britain's Australian convict colonies.

 

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       In London, Charles Abbott MP, step-brother of Jeremy Bentham, was in 1797  appointed chairman of the Select Committee on Finance. ([30]) The costs due to policing, managing convicts and maintaining the hulks were to be examined. Patrick Colquhuon would depose evidence. Bentham had already met Colquhuon, who was given to describing the hulks as "a complete Seminary of Vice and Wickedness," and willing to promote Bentham's Kafka-esque Panopticon. Bentham had a larger role in the reports of the Committee than has been thought, and spent much time examining data on the costs of the NSW colony... such as the average amount spent annually on a convict, from 1786 to 1797. (Incidentally, there might well have been a storm of protest if Campbell had been let near such a committee).

 

       Here, Bentham encountered some mysteries which still bedevil historians. The figures were so mystifying, Bentham re-examined his assumptions, including one of his first assumptions, that NSW was only a penal colony. He then obtained a falling trend in the costs, despite volatile expenditures (at a time of fairly high wartime inflation). He obtained a figure of £37 per year. (Ironically, Bentham was making calculations just as the numbers of convicts transported from Ireland would rise dramatically due to the Irish rebellions, doubtless throwing out his figures). Since Bentham worked in 1798, no one has quite succeeded in verifying the costs of the NSW colony. R. V. Jackson in considering Bentham's activities here has concluded that apart from the costs of convict administration to NSW, the government had other policy objectives than maintaining a gaol only. And so Bentham's financial analysis as a case against NSW, and for the establishment of a Panopticon, failed to persuade.

 

     Here, historians may never agree about early NSW. Jackson's conclusions about the activities of Bentham as a highly motivated enemy of both the hulks system, and NSW as a penal colony, are in direct opposition to the findings of Frank Lewis, an econometrician. ([31]) Lewis' finding was that "Australia was seen as a low-cost alternative to [building] new British prisons." That it was cheaper to transport convicts to NSW, with the bonus of added net returns, which admittedly were all not obvious by 1810. On a cost basis, the expense of the First Fleet and subsequent transportations was "a reasonable experiment" which worked well enough, according to Lewis. What we learn is that two intelligent researchers working on the same problem, nearly 200 years apart, can still come to opposed conclusions in the ambit of "the Botany Bay debate".

 

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Profits flowing to Blackheath (Part Two):

 

        Money matters, because from 1786 to 1797, there is the possibility that up to one third of the money the British Government spent on shipping costs for its convict colony, went to Blackheath men. That figure would not include whatever profits from other sources the Blackheath-employed ships captains had made. That is, much of any profit made from supplying early Sydney with food, and/or convicts, concentrated back at Blackheath. This is new information which also implies that much of the profit from opening the sealing grounds of Bass Strait and New Zealand, the whaling of the Pacific, concentrated at Blackheath.

 

     Just how many people the Blackheath men employed in London is unknown. However, they all had families, city offices where they employed clerks; warehouses. They dealt in commodities such as tea, sugar, tobacco, cotton or whale oil and needed  transport facilities including the work of watermen. They owned ships and employed captains and sailors. They knew their navigation and invested in diverse portfolios including land. They also left an information trail on their activities, not to speak of descendants, but few of their descendants have been interested in these matters.

 

     The Blackheath men were well-known to London's traders between 1780 and 1810. They are a part of Britain's mercantile history, a history that Britain, assisted by Australia, has strangely devalued. History has been damaged by this under-valuing of maritime history, and is reflected in certain inaccuracies in relevant London local history, and more so in the poor regard in which academics in both England and Australia have held the English South Whale fishery. Despite that low regard, the whale fishery provided the fuel that allowed many people in England to see each others' faces indoors at night, to read, to be entertained. Whale products, candles, whalebone for women's garments, lubricants for an industrial revolution, all came from the fishery.

 

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Did NSW profits flow to Blackheath?

 

      Since business is business, it should be possible to trace where money went. About £100,000 would have been handled by ships captains, agents, or the men themselves of Blackheath. This would have been about one third of the money government allocated to the project. Here I have considered the sums mentioned in the Navy Office Accounts, 1793-94, plus a variety of estimates on monies allocated to ships captains, such as money issuing by the New South Wales Corps at Sydney. Considerable monies reimbursed to contractors for NSW, Alexander Davison, and Neave and Aislabie, are not included in this count. Overall, the figures available are not very accurate, and copyright regulations may put paid to ambitions one might have to try to codify all information that is available, but is not in official records.

 

     This count also does not assume that one Thomas King of Blackheath ([32]) was Mr. Thomas King of Camden, Calvert and King. If any members of this firm did occupy land at Blackheath, then the count of monies handled by Blackheath men would rise by over £30,000 for the mounting of the Second Fleet alone. It can be argued then that the money involved was worth fighting over - but only if a ship with its way paid out for government passengers or stores could trade elsewhere at minimum cost. It is apparent from the maritime record that the commercial opportunities available in the Pacific appealed to very few London merchants. Certainly, no single merchant from the top echelon of any business in London interested himself in Australasian-based trading opportunities. (In which case, the East India Company successfully protected its privileges.) If there was any chicanery in shipping business, as suspected by Alexander Davison, or Richards, such chicanery could be most closely associated with either the slaving firm, Camden Calvert and King'; or, with Turnbull, Macaulay and Gregory, who can be considered, "insider traders". By 1793 there was only one location where a concentration of interest in the Pacific existed, that can be specified in terms of shipowner names - at Blackheath.

 

       Involved were energetically anarchic whalers, rebellious ship insurers and three slavers - versus fastidious East India Company men. The blurring of the boundaries makes citation difficult. Further, unless Macaulay's business failure in 1796 was related - by revenge from unknown quarters - to his "Botany Bay adventures", it is possible to find only find one other merchant involved to New South Wales who was punished for his pains - Richards.

 

       In 1793, twenty whalers returned to England from the Pacific fishery. Four had been working off New South Wales and were specifically listed thus. ([33]) About 1793, Enderby was helping organise the Pacific voyage of HM Rattler, Capt. Colnett. Dakin notes that the years 1793-1800 were lean for the whalers, although Enderbys did not give up hopes for the Australian and nearby whaling.

 

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     By 1793, too, Patrick Colquhuon had departed Glasgow and appeared in London as a magistrate at Worship St. Colquhuon was to expend great effort in researching the "criminal classes" preying on river commerce. Despite his claimed familiarity with criminality, Colquhuon never approved of the government's Botany Bay adventure. ([34]) Part of his early research involved an inquiry to Campbell.

 

Campbell Letter 226:

[A note in 1793]

Mr Campbell presents his compliments to Mr Colquhuon and sends him herewith a list of the numbers of Convicts who have been discharged from the Hulks at Woolwich for the last twelve months. ([35])< /p>

 

Campbell at the time had financial problems with the hulks.

 

Campbell Letter 227:

 [Some time in 1793, a piece of paper retained with the manuscript, undated, scrawled, much crossed out]

Sir -

   Nothing but real necessity could have induced me to apply to you at this perhaps unreasonable period of the year but the truth is, that I cannot carry on the Contract I am Engaged in With the Lords of the Treasury Without your and in this Respect I then Request           With I trust appear the more reasonable & understanding To a Gentleman of your knowledge & understanding  When I inform you that there is now              which due to some from the Lords of the Treasury for the sum of £1333/15/11d & another for £1192/17/10d - These two sums amounting together to £2728/13/9d. I beseech you to                 Lordships pleasure that              may be           an instalment due me for the Prudentia Hulk £1335/15/9d. and another for the Stanislaus £1192/15/9d.  There is beside two more instalments Viz one for the Prudentia due [pounds sign no figure indicated] and another for the Stanislaus ([36])< /p>

 

     By 13 February, 1793, Campbell was writing to James Piercy at Bridge St and William Smith at Limehouse, wanting confirmation of the date he bought the hulk Prudentia, (12 January, 1790), since a sailor named Anderson had (falsely) bought a suit against Campbell, claiming to have been on a voyage to Ostend on Prudentia before 14 July, 1789, for which Campbell owed him.

 

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           Campbell was already a member of an Amicable Club, which may have been linked with Freemasonry? (Although, London also had an Amicable Society, a non-maritime insurance firm). ([37])

 

Campbell Letter 228:

Robert Street Adelphi

                           16 Feb 1793

Sir John Dyke

Lullingstone

             Mr Campbell presents his most respectfull Compliments to Sir John Dyke and takes the liberty to remind him that the Amicable Club was at last meeting adjourned to Tuesday 26 Feby, then to meet at Mr Campbells house in Robert Street Adelphi where the honour of Sir John Dyke's Company is expected

        Dinner on the table at 1/2 past 4 O'clock. ([38])< /p>

 

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      The hulks were again under inspection...

     

There occurred on 13 June, 1793 the death of Campbell's youngest son, Neil. The grieving father duly informed his older sons. He later wrote to Erskine:

 

Campbell Letter 229:

Adelphi 4 July 1793

Capt Erskine

Woolwich

        I am desired by Mr Campbell to acquaint you that Mr Addington will probably tomorrow or next day send some of the Bow Street folks to make a visit to Woolwich, you will I know receive them civily, but it may not be necessary for you to interfere in the enquiry they are about to institute and will explain to you, in which you own good sense will point out the conduct you should hold. I sent by the coach this morning another Cox Bark with (??) Camphire as you desired

                 I am ([39])< /p>

 

Campbell was again worried about his son-in-law, Willox, whom he could never admire. ([40])

 

Campbell Letter 230:

Adelphi 12 July 1793

John Hunter Esq

               It gave me much satisfaction to find that my nearly allied friend Capt Willox had put himself under your hands where if relief in such a case as his can be obtained, it may be expected from the abilities and professional knowledge of Mr John Hunter, but as Mr Willox's weak state renders his visit to you precarious & difficult, will you forgive me as an old acquaintance if I presume to request the indulgence of your occassionally looking in upon him at his lodgings where you are too sure of finding him at home & if I do not ask too much of it - would be an agreeable circumstance to me that you & Doctor Pitcairn would make him a joint visit and at your convenience give me your opinion of his situation. With very great Respect and Regard I have the honour to be Dear Sir ([41])

 

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[Finis Chapter 43]

Words 4752 words and footnotes 6489 pages 12 footnotes 41