American History – June 2019

62 AMERICAN HISTORY

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expected their sentences to be appealed in habeas corpus

hearings, but for that to occur the convicted rebels had to

travel by train to London, arriving in January 1839 at Newgate

Prison. “The massive doors were unbarred to welcome us,”

Miller wrote. “We were again buried in a living tomb.” Daily

guards released the men for appearances in Westminster Hall.

In May the court upheld Miller’s and many others’ convic-

tions, remanding the prisoners to custody to await transporta-

tion. “During this long and anxious period, our suffering

arising from hope deferred and the uncertainty of the future,

were often intense and severe,” the former rebel wrote.

From London authorities moved the convicts to Ports-

mouth, in Miller’s words “an exceedingly filthy seaport town.”

Fellow prisoners rowed them to York, a Royal Navy man-of-

war reduced to service as a prison hulk. Trusties removed the

prisoners’ irons, sheared their hair, confiscated all money and

tobacco, and ordered them to strip and wash in a large, dirty

cistern, “in which the whole van-load of prisoners had

cleansed their filthy carcasses,” Miller observed.

Until they sailed for Australia, prisoners awaiting transpor-

tation had to work at hard labor. Miller “began to learn that a

prisoner must have no will of his own, no feelings, no soul:

the discipline to which he is subjected, being intended not

only to torment the body, but to crush and destroy all those

attributes which constitute the man as distinguished from

the brute.” Nightly, exhausted, cold and hungry, hands and

feet blistered from toil, the men of York squeezed into tiny

hammocks to roost. Meals were as squalid as the conditions:

porridge for breakfast, a ship’s biscuit for lunch, dinner of a

pint of watery soup, a half-pound of salt beef that was mostly

bone, and a pound of “brown tommy” bread. “I do not exag-

gerate, when I assert that swine, in my own country, would

not eat it unless half starved,” Miller wrote.

In September 1839, York emptied its human contents into

the 500-ton merchantman Canton for passage to Van Die-

men’s Land and the intervening punishment of sea travel.

“No sooner were the sails unfurled, than sea-sickness com-

menced, and in a short time became general,” Miller recalled.

“‘Accounts were cast up’ without ceremony, not only on the

floor but in the berths; and our apartment was rendered truly

horrible. An entire week passed before it could be properly

cleansed.” Miller and fellow rebel prisoners were traveling

with civilian felons who also were paying for their crimes

A Green and Not Very Pleasant Land

Britain had been transporting convicts for decades.

Here, prisoners arrive on Van Diemen’s Land in 1804.

Far Side of the World

Hobart’s peaceful seaside mien stood

at odds with the town’s punitive role.