THE name "Neptune" conjures up for, most people the
image of a, benevolent-looking old personageusually to be
seen depicted on the reverse of certain English coinswhose
main characteristic is the possession of a three-pronged fork
known in- mythology as a trident.
To others the term suggests the most distant of the planets, estimated
to be 2,780 million miles from the sun.
In Australian history, however, "Neptune" is identified with a convict
transport ship, a fine vessel of 792 tons, but a hell-ship if ever there-was
one, whose story, conjointly with that of her fellow transports, the Surprise
and the Scarborough, constituted one of the darkest and grimmest pages
in the establishment of the settlement of Port Jackson.
The tragic drama of the Neptune opens with a prologue, the leading
roles falling to John and Elizabeth Macarthur, with Captain John Gilbert
as the arch-villain, the chorus consisting of male and female convicts
and soldiers of the newly-raised N.S.W. Corps.
The scene is set, first at Gravesend, where-the ship lay for
a few days', and then at Plymouth. On board were 421 male and 78 female
convicts; two officersCaptain Nepean and Lieutenant Macarthurand
42 soldiers of the Corps, six convict wives, all free women, 13 children, and
a few passengers.
Amongst the crew was the surgeon, D'Arcy Wentworth, who was himself to be
distinguished in our early history and also in the person of his famous
son, William Charles. Just prior to embarkation, on December 9, 1783, he
had stood his trial at the Old Bailey Sessions for highway robbery, and
been acquitted on this and three later Indictments.
****
THE casus belli between Macarthur and John Gilbert, the captain of
the ship, arose from the former's complaints regarding the location and
fittings of his cabin, and "the stench of the buckets belonging to the
convict women of a morning." Hotter and hotter grew the language: Gilbert
threatened to write to the War Office and have Macarthur and his wife
turned out of the ship; Gilbert gave Macarthur a punch on the breast:
Nepean interfered and patched up the quarrel temporarily. This all happened
at Gravesend.
On the seven days trip round to Plymouth there was another flare-up.
Macarthur accusing the captain of ungentlemanly conduct towards, himself
and his wife, and calling him publicly on the quarter-deckhe had
a fine capacity for vituperation"a great scoundrel." In retaliation,
Gilbert told Macarthur that he had "settled many a greater man than
him," and that he was to be seen on shore, whereupon Macarthur named
4 o'clock at the Fountain Tavern, Plymouth Docks.
They met a duel was foughtapparently a bloodless one
honour was satisfied, and both parties agreed, to live in harmony thereafter.
The wranglings between Macarthur, Nepean, the officers, and Gilbert, not
only continued, but grew in violence, so that the authorities took action
and superseded Gilbert by Captain Donald Traill, who had formerly been a
Master in the Navy under Nelson.
The change, however, appeared to be much for the worse, so that after a
few weeks of misery on the Neptune, the
Macarthurs could stand the conditions no longer, and exchanged to the
Scarborough. The details still survive in Elizabeth Macarthur's Private
Diary.
So much for the Prologue. With the appointment of Traill opens the
main action of the tragedy. The ship was so shamefully overcrowded that
200 seamen deserted before she left England. Conceive the sardine-like
packing of the convicts on the orlop, that is the lowest of the three decks.
Within a space 75 feet long, 35 broad and six feet high, were built the
miserable apartments for housing 40 men, in four rows of cabins one-storey
high, one row on each side of the ship; and two rows down the centre.
These cabins were six feet square.
A simple calculation will show that to each convict was allotted about
36 cubic feet of air space, about the capacity of two coffins of ordinary size.
It was not, however, until February 15 1792, when the report of the
Commissioners of the Navy was published that the whole of the sordid details
relating to the treatment of these "unhappy sacrifices to the justice of their
country" was made public.
On the Neptune was Lieutenant John Shapcote, the naval agent, whose
duty it was to see that the convicts received their full rations and the best
possible treatment. Apparently he failed in his duty. The crew, too, was
very disorderly, and "inclined to be riotous" throughout the voyage.
Before the Neptune left London, Shapcote put all the male convicts into
ironshe was not risking an uprising.
Even while in the river many of them died, their bodies being thrown
overboard. When a search was made for concealed weapons nearly a hundred
knives were found, so overboard they too went, with many of the
convicts' personal belongings, though rumour hath it that Traill and his
officers, appropriated everything of value. To make congestion worse, the
ship was crammed with goods, "ventures" as they were called, being taken
out as speculations by officers of the N.S.W. Corps, with the connivance of
Traill and Shapcote.
The whole voyage was one long horror. Shapcote and the ship's officers
kept every man in irons the whole six months of the voyage, many of them
coupled together, though batches of 50 or 60 were allowed on deck for two
hours each per day. The convict women were better off, having, much
to Mrs. Macarthur's disgust, the full range of the quarter deck and the
poop. At night, however, the ship's company invaded the rooms of the
women, whom they carried off to their own quarters.
****
DEATH soon began to take its toll.
The supply of water, was very limited, washing facilities non-existent.
An outbreak of scurvy and "a violent epidemical fever" killed scores of the
poor unfortunates, some of whom actually died in irons. Sometimes the
deaths were concealed until the stench of the corpses revealed their
presence to the surgeon. By such concealment, the survivors were enabled
to draw and share the rations of the deceased.
Sometimes a living man was discovered chained to a putrefying corpse.
There were 46 deaths on the Neptune before arrival at Cape Town.
Captain Hill, who came out on the Surprise, complained bitterly of the
treatment of the convicts., "The slave trade." he said, "is merciful,
compared with what I have seen in this fleet."
As the contractors, and thc captain of the Neptune were being paid 17/7/6
per head, not for the number of convicts landed, but for the number
shipped, the greater the number of deaths the fewer were the mouths to
feed and the higher the total profit.
Captain Traill, of the Neptune, appears to have been a first-class rogue
and an inhuman monster. On his return to England three of his
quartermasters and seven others of his crew lodged a formal complaint
before Alderman Clark at the Guildhall, that during the voyage he and
William Elrington, the chief mate, had cut down the convicts' water to
half a-pint-a day: that 171,(the official number is 158) died on the
voyage; that many of them were so starved that they had been seen to
take the chews of tobacco from the mouths of corpses; that men stole
and ate the hogs' swill; that on arrival at Botany Bay the captain, and
mate ransacked the convicts' boxes for anything saleable, opened a
warehouse, and disposed of the goods at a high profit;
that the ships swarmed with vermin. To these and other charges the
contractors. Camden, Calvert, and King, replied seriatim, publishing also
Traill's defence, which is not convincing. According to a letter from one
Thomas Evans to Under-secretary King. Traill and Elrington were next
charged before Alderman Boydell with the murder of Andrew Anderson, sixth
mate of the Neptune, Jno. Joseph, the cook, and an unnamed convict. Traill,
however, vanished into smoke, and the case did not come to trial. I cannot
find any details of the allegations beyond the bare affidavit in the
records, though Governor Phillip himself stated that "an enquiry into the
conduct, of the master of the Neptune
will, I make no doubt, have a good
effect. . . . for the convicts were certainly very ill-treated."
****
AT Cape Town further disorders occurred, it being alleged that a
certain Dutch captain and a Major Delisle came on board, ostensibly
to visit Captain Nepean, but in reality, "on account of the female convicts."
Shortly after leaving the Cape, a female convict, "who had constantly,
attended Lieutenant Shapcote"whatever that phrase may implyone morning
between three and four o'clock, came and informed the chief mate that the
agent, was dead. This "untimely death" was never investigated, for as
Traill asserted that the body was very offensive it was cast overboard that,
very morning; To say the least, the circumstances were all very suspicious.
By the time the Neptune reached Sydney 147 men and ll women convicts had died;
another 269 were placed in hospital. "The Governor," wrote one-correspondent,
"was very angry', and scolded the captains a great deal, and I heard
intended to write to London-about it, for I heard him say it was murdering them."
We possess several eye-witnesses' accounts of the landing of this mass
of human misery from the three transports.
The Rev. Richard Johnson, who went aboard one of them, he couldn't face up to
the Neptune, said he found men lying "some half and others nearly quite
naked, without bed or bedding, unable to help themselves"; the stench was
intolerable, dead bodies had been thrown into the
harbour, had drifted ashore, and were lying naked on the rocks; "some
creeped on hands and knees." Some were carried ashore on the backs of
others; "their heads, bodies, clothes, blankets, all full of lice";
within three weeks he had buried "not less than eighty-six."
And so the terrible tale, substantiated to the last detail
by dependable witnesses, draws to its conclusion, and the curtain drops.
Though many months later. Mr.Secretary Dundas informed the
Governor that he had "thoroughly investigated" and "taken the necessary
steps to bring forward the conduct of the parties concerned in the
treatment of the convicts on board the Neptune." no active measures to
sheet home the crime ever took place.

Sources:
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday 10 February 1945
page 8
Affair of the Neptune
George Mackaness
Transcription, janilye