First convicts direct to Australia

About 30% of all Australians are of Irish birth or descent. Many emigrated freely but many are descended from convicts transported there in the early years of the colony.
The last convict ship sailed from Ireland to Australia in 1853 and over the course of 60 years, 30,000 men and 9,000 women were transported for a minimum of seven years. While a good number of them were patriots and rebels – United Irishmen and Young Irelanders – the majority were transported for petty crimes. There were stories of unfortunate people committing simple crimes just to get sent to Australia in the hope of a better life or to join a husband or wife already transported.
Britain had a policy of transportation. Most were sent to the American colonies or the West Indies. The American Revolution ended that and by the 1780s, Britain badly needed prison space. Petty criminals were housed on overcrowded prison ships anchored on the Thames. In 1786, the government decided to start a prison settlement in the new colony at Botany Bay.
The transportation was arranged by a private company and those convicts who arrived there were actually the lucky ones, as conditions on the journey were horrendous and many died en route. The organisers of the transportation ships operated on a contract basis. They were paid a certain amount per head and the less provisions they gave the prisoners the more profit they made.
The first two fleets of convict ships sailed from England. The first ship to sail directly from Ireland was The Queen, which left Cork in April 1791 and joined the third fleet sailing from England. On board were 133 male convicts, 22 females and three children. The youngest on the ship was two-week-old Margaret, daughter of convict Sarah Brennan.  The youngest convicts were 11-year-old David Fay and 12-year-old James Blake, convicted for stealing  pair of buckles. The oldest convict was Patrick Fitzgerald, aged 64, from Dublin, who was sentenced to seven years for stealing clothes. Seven men and one woman died on the voyage and within a year, half the men who had sailed on The Queen were dead. Young James Blake died within a few months of landing.
Transportation continued for more than 60 years and was followed by assisted emigration. More than 100,000 travelled on assisted passage during the 1850s alone. Some were assisted on their journey by charitable organisations in an effort to relieve distress. There was also what was referred to as ‘Bride Ships’ whose names are self-explanatory. Some landlords used the system to facilitate wholesale evictions and clearances of their estates, as did a landlord called Adair. He was the original owner of the Glenveigh National Park in Donegal. He cleared his estate and when the evicted tenants were destitute or in the workhouse, he shipped them off to Australia. With the end of transportation, all emigration was either assisted passage or by the emigrants’ own resources. The last transportation ship, the Phoebe Dunbar, sailed from Dun Laoghaire in 1853, bound for Perth.
The first transportation of convicts direct from Ireland was on The Queen, which sailed from Cork and landed at the penal settlement of Botany Bay on September 26, 1791 – 219 years ago this week.
Michael Torpey