The Cozens/Byrnes Merchants Networks Project - Updated 19th January 2018

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Pathways to the Convict Contractors to Australia

(And to many of their associates)

Dan Byrnes´ three print-published articles on the convict contractors are:

Dan Byrnes, '"Emptying The Hulks": Duncan Campbell and the First Three Fleets to Australia’, The Push From The Bush: A Bulletin of Social History, No. 24, April, 1987., pp. 2-23.

Dan Byrnes, 'Outlooks for the English South Whale Fishery, 1782-1800, and the "great Botany Bay debate"', The Great Circle, Vol. 10, No. 2, October 1988., pp. 79-102.

Dan Byrnes, 'The Blackheath Connection: London Local History and the Settlement at New South Wales, 1786-1806', The Push, A Journal of Early Australian Social History, No. 28, 1990., pp. 50-98.

Continuation from file pathways3.htm

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Convict transportation to Australia was maritime history as well as penal history

Commentary by Dan Byrnes

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Most of the Convict Contractors outlined above are little discussed even by Australian or British maritime historians. Despite the fact they are rather fascinating in terms of social history. Interestingly, we find that Marxist-inspired historians have never taken them on as exponents of the class war in Britain!

Probably, the single most-discussed merchant/convict contractor name has been Duncan Dunbar II, who was a truly phenomenal businessman, though mostly he is not exactly identified as a convict contractor.

Perhaps the name the second most-discussed, at least by Australians, and that in terms of an extremely bad press, is that of Anthony Calvert, who tends to stand is as the dominant name of the London slaving firm Camden, Calvert and King, who organised the half of the Second Fleet with an atrociously high death rate, and most of the Third Fleet.

And in general, because so little work has been done on the contractors, the views given by the first historian to give them due attention, Charles Bateson, have tended to prevail in a way that colours Australian perceptions on the entire topic. Other names discussed somewhat (for various reasons not necessarily including convict contracting) are the whaler Daniel Bennett, merchant Robert W. Brooks, John William Buckle, Duncan Campbell, members of the Chapman family, alderman (Sir) William Curtis, Alexander Davison, Devitt and Moore, Samuel Enderby Snr, members of the Larkins family of Blackheath, the London Missionary Society, George Lyall, the Mangles family, George Moore (because he was so early, by 1783-1784), John Prinsep (but not his partners Lambert and Saunders), Pirie (because he was a Lord Mayor of London), William Richards (contractor for the First Fleet), Samuel Francis Somes and Joseph Somes. Most of the other names have gone little commented by Australians.

In general, it can be said, that where convict transportation was most objectionable, such difficulties arose mostly with ships arriving to Australia before 1800-1805. After 1805, the convict transportation system, because it was more settled-in, became more sedate, and more attentive to prisoner-welfare, especially once ships doctors were given a wider role to play, a phenomenon which has promoted the appearance of a few specialty articles devoted to questions more of medical management strategies.

Historians interested in other areas of history apart from the maritime, have perhaps given the convict contractors more attention, in terms of topics such as the history of Anglo-Australian migration patterns, British business histories, changes in British navigation laws and trading patterns, and/or the histories of a variety of mostly London-based organisations, such as the General Shipowners Society of the nineteenth century. The neglect given them by Australian historians in particular is why they have lately been grouped here. They are grouped above, alphabetically, until information on them is better organised for this website, then in due course they will be re-grouped chronologically.

Of course, the netsurfer will quickly realise that information on many of the contractor names is still difficult if not impossible to locate for anyone not working in the UK. These lacunae indicate how much the names have been ignored by historians, and it also suggests they have been ignored by family historians of the UK.

I feel that many matters need to be commented regarding the Convict Contractors, and suggest that the following points be considered:
(1) That the convict service, as it can be called, the system used by the British Government to transport convicts to Australia, went through successive phases 1786-1865, till it petered out and was finally abolished. These phases have been largely ignored, and lack of detailed information on the contractor names involved has hardly helped to stem a blurring effect.
(2) The attention Australians have traditionally given to the first three fleets of convict ships, seen as separate from each other, has had the paradoxical effect of splitting, and resplitting, relevant information instead of allowing information to be gathered and regathered in increasingly useful ways. My own solution to this, in 1987, was to suggest in an academically-published paper, that the first three fleets be seen as a single burst of shipping - given that within that single burst, there was a power struggle between contractor names that led to the business demise of the contractor of the First Fleet, William Richards, the battle having been won by Anthony Calvert and his allies. Regrettably over time, the article prompted almost no Australian reader to re-examine anything. (The article was, Dan Byrnes, '"Emptying The Hulks": Duncan Campbell and the First Three Fleets to Australia’, The Push From The Bush: A Bulletin of Social History, No. 24, April, 1987., pp. 2-23.)

(3) During the latter phases of the convict service, some convict contractors branched into shipping free passengers to Australia, and/or New Zealand, helping to promote Britain´s emigration programs.
(4) Where convict contractors had London addresses, the addresses fall into several sub-categories: (a) areas intensely devoted to maritime industries, such as Wapping, (b) London City addresses, that is, in what is regarded as The City of London, the square mile of the financial services precinct, or very close to it (c) affluent suburbs some distance from The City, such as Blackheath, Cheltenham, Epsom in Surrey. Given the closeness of addresses to The City, it then becomes interesting to see which contractors were members of which organisations which met regularly, and with whom they would thus have associated in various way, either for social or business purposes, or concering the goals of the particular organisation. Various contractors were affluent enough to have estates in the country and have been designated as such above.
More to come.

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