The Horror Voyage of the Hillsborough

The Hillsborough was a ship weighing 764 tonnes. It arrived in Port Jackson on 26 July 1799 having sailed from Portland on the 23 December, 1798. The voyage took 212 days. Of the 300 convicts who embarked, 95 had died by the end of the voyage. Richard Perkins was one of the 205 survivors. The Master of the ship was William Hingston and the Surgeon was John Justice William Kunst.

The Hillsborough was the worst of the transports in terms of lives lost during the voyage. Although the master had been short changing the convicts of their rations, the real killer was the typhoid which had arrived onboard through the convicts who had been transferred to the ship from the hulks at Langstone Harbour, Portsmouth. These hulks had been fever ridden for many months. Despite the advice from the surgeon who inspected the ship that the convicts should not be made up of those in the Langstone hulks, his advice was ignored. Although the regulation stated that only convicts who were fit to travel should be transported, this requirement was rarely enforced in practice, at least in the early years of transportation.

The following is an extract from the book "The Convict Ships 1787-1868" by Charles Bateson regarding the ill-fated voyage of the Hillsborough.

"The Hillsborough sailed in a convoy from Portland Roads on December 23, and at once ran into heavy weather. As her decks required caulking, and the sea was breaking over her continuously, the convicts’ quarters were deluged and their bedding soaked. When the weather moderated a few days later, a youthful informer told the captain that many of the convicts were out of their irons and intended to murder the officers. Those found out of their irons were flogged, receiving from one to six dozen lashes each, and were shackled and handcuffed, some with iron collars round their neck. Their allowance of rations and water was also reduced, so that for several days the prisoners were half starved. In all the circmnstances it is not surprising that the disease carried aboard by the Langstone convicts spread rapidly, and from the beginning of January deaths became alarmingly frequent. Yet the convicts were kept closely confined and double-ironed, were short of water, and were half starved.

“It was, one would think,” wrote William Noah, a convict who left a moving account of the prisoners’ sufferings in his diary of the voyage, “enough to soften the heart of the most inhuman being to see us ironed, handcuffed and shackled in a dark, nasty, dismal deck, without the least wholesome air, but all this did not penetrate the breasts of our inhuman captain, and I can assure you that the doctor was keep at such a distance, and so strict was he look after, that I have known him sit up till opportunity would suit to steal a little water to quench the thirst of those who were bad, he being on a very small allowance for them.”

According to Noah, thirty convicts had died when the Hillsborough anchored in Table Bay on April 13. There were then about 100 prisoners very ill, and although fresh provisions were served, deaths became so frequent that the authorities were alarmed, and the ship was ordered to move to False Bay. Noah alleges that to avoid further interrogation, the master buried some of the convicts at the harbour entrance, but within a few days the bodies were washed ashore. On May 5, by which time at least 28 convicts had died since the ship’s arrival at Table Bay, the surgeon, J. J. W. Kunst, returned from Capetown with an order permitting the sick to be landed. Why this step was so long delayed is incomprehensible but it was useless because no provision was made for the proper accommodation of the patients ashore. When 146 were landed on May 6 they found that their miserable hospital had previously been a stables and was without a fireplace, windows and lavatory accommodation, and next morning 56 of the prisoners were returned to the ship. When the Hillsborough sailed on May 29 at least 50 of the convicts had been buried at the Cape.

Governor Hunter, when the Hillsborough reached Sydney, described the survivors as “the most wretched and miserable convicts I have ever beheld, in the most sickly and wretched state”. Almost every prisoner required hospital treatment. The frightful mortality was due primarily to the embarkation of the Langstone prisoners, but also partly to the harsh treatment of the convicts on the voyage. Noah’s diary proves that they were kept double-ironed, and when on deck were chained together, so that they could not walk about at all, but had either to stand up or lie down on the deck. They were inadequately fed, and, especially between the Cape and Port Jackson, the weather was so stormy that the prison was continuously damp and the convicts’ bedding seldom dry."