TL;DR -
Amateur historian connects the dots between some Australians (who escaped from Tasmania as pirates) and a bunch of Japanese records of what appeared to be a British ship, by realizing the Japanese records indicated the ship was probably a pirate vessel, and (literally) googling "mutiny 1829" (since most pirate vessels were from mutinies).
What's really neat is how detailed the Japanese records were, and that they were made by Samurai, and incorporated watercolor illustrations. I didn't realize (or, it never sunk in) the variety of work they were responsible and trained for.
For a Japanese twist, read Eiji Yoshikawa's novels - he fictionalized historical accounts into novels, Taiko is set before Shogun and is about the rise of Oda Nobunaga, who was succeeded by Clavell's Tokugawa Ieyasu. Musashi is about the famous swordsman's life.
By that time, the samurai were the administrative and bureaucratic class. They were doing pretty much everything you would expect government officials to be doing.
Most samurai who lived between the mid-1600s and the mid-1800s never experienced combat, except for practicing sword fighting.
The obvious analogy is knights. We have a lot of iconic depictions of circa 13th century knights from works in later periods. Small feudal chiefs or mounted warriors. That depiction is a particular fictionalization of a particular periods from a particular period.
Knights actually date back to early roman times where they were a mounted warrior class and other European predecessors. Today, they still exist in some form. In between, they were all sorts of things. Even during that iconic late medieval period, knightly orders were responsible for a lot of unexpected stuff. Knights ran an international bank service, for example.
The Australian classic novel, "For the Term of His Natural Life" by Marcus Clark (1874) contains a fictionalised account of this mutiny and convict life. It's a good read.
The novel in turn draws from Clark's earlier piece "The Seizure of the Cyprus" [2].
Thanks for posting that. It's amazing how accessible the english language was (190 years ago) to a reader today. Spelling and vocabulary are pretty much the same. Compare that with a period 190 years before 1829, 1639 and you'd almost be back in Shakespearean England.
> A remarkable instance of the presence of mind in a female occurred. The Serjeant's wife, during the confusion rolled up the Government dispatches, intended for Macquarie Harbour, and actually succeeded in bringing them safe off in her apron !
“It is very strange that everyone who goes out for a closer look returns feeling very sorry for them.
I feel sorry for them from what I know about convict history and penal colonies in Australia. The British authorities were very nasty. You could be sent to the penal colonies with hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread to feed yourself. Patrick Logan, the commander of the Moreton Bay penal colony here in Brisbane, was a very vicious man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Logan
There's a folk song about Moreton Bay that details some of the horrible things Logan did. Here's a pretty recent rendition by a couple of British folk musicians (apologies to any Australians who know of good Aussie versions): https://saulrosejamesdelarre.bandcamp.com/track/moreton-bay. Although lyrics change over time, folk songs are often a good record of events as they were usually created by less literate people and you get the working man's viewpoint essentially by word-of-mouth.
> Although lyrics change over time, folk songs are often a good record of events
On the other hand, these songs could be disingenuous romanticizing of criminal lifestyles. Just look at the narcocorrido genre in Mexico -- two centuries from now, do you think it would be reasonable for people to examine then and think that their subjects were decent, hardworking folk being unnecessarily hassled by The Man?
Broadside Ballads often described events and people and were usually written to be sung to common tunes that the public might know. A lot of the ballads became folk songs over time and the lyrics/stories/tunes changed, but they're often still traceable back to their roots. So where a ballad might describe an event pretty plainly, the songs derived from it will most likely embellish and romanticise it.
The Bodleian Library in Oxford has an online collection of Broadside Ballads that is very well maintained: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/. I found the following whilst seeing if there was anything related to Moreton Bay, and although it only shares the namesake, this is quite a good example of how the ballads were written: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/15000/....
A good example is the quite famous folk song Scarborough Fair, which is one of a number of variations descended from a ballad called The Elfin Knight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elfin_Knight.
My knowledge is mostly limited to English and related folk music, so I'm not sure if there's anything similar elsewhere, but it's certainly an interesting subject and it can be pretty fun to take a song and see if you can find out the original story :)
My name's sake was convicted of fraud, stealing two books by way of deception and was sentenced to transport for 7 years hard labour (Australia, First Fleet). Up until the 1830's lashes (whipping) was the most common punishment meted out to convicts, more than 50 lashes at a time was not uncommon even for small infractions. Governor Burke passed the Magistrates Act in the 1830's limiting lashes to 50 even though many complained that very harsh sentences were the only way to keep convicts in line.
Having said that most convicts upon emancipation were allotted land and tools (and sometimes convict help) required to cultivate farms.
My 8x Great Grandmother was transported on the First Fleet for stealing some clothes and a teaspoon (which she tried to hide in the toilet).
Ultimately, she ended up having 6 children with 3 different men. The first was a guard on the transport ship - I doubt you could define 'consent' in that situation, and the 'relationship' ended when the voyage did; her second 'husband', my great grandfather, was a fellow convict on Norfolk Island - he became the colony's first hangman! and died there before the colony was evacuated to Hobart, where her third (and only legal husband) seemed to help her raise the family. Until he drowned in a ferry accident.
Of course, who knows what her life in London was like or may have been. 220 years on, I'm certainly glad she (and a dozen other branches of my fanily tree) ended up here.
22 comments
[ 88.4 ms ] story [ 1100 ms ] threadWhat's really neat is how detailed the Japanese records were, and that they were made by Samurai, and incorporated watercolor illustrations. I didn't realize (or, it never sunk in) the variety of work they were responsible and trained for.
The shogunate and the Meiji period are very, very interesting periods of history, and under-represented.
Most samurai who lived between the mid-1600s and the mid-1800s never experienced combat, except for practicing sword fighting.
Knights actually date back to early roman times where they were a mounted warrior class and other European predecessors. Today, they still exist in some form. In between, they were all sorts of things. Even during that iconic late medieval period, knightly orders were responsible for a lot of unexpected stuff. Knights ran an international bank service, for example.
The novel in turn draws from Clark's earlier piece "The Seizure of the Cyprus" [2].
[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3424
[2] http://www.telelib.com/authors/C/ClarkeMarcus/prose/OldTales...
Original account of how they took they ship.
What often makes Shakespeare difficult is that he and his audience had a shared background so a lot of allusions are lost on a modern audience.
Even Chaucer has a lot of quite readable passages. Take a look at this side by side original and modern English versions of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales: http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/source/CT-prolog-para...
[1] http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/by/year
Interesting times indeed.
I feel sorry for them from what I know about convict history and penal colonies in Australia. The British authorities were very nasty. You could be sent to the penal colonies with hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread to feed yourself. Patrick Logan, the commander of the Moreton Bay penal colony here in Brisbane, was a very vicious man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Logan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fields_of_Athenry
Though it's been co-opted and changed into a sports song by some football clubs.
On the other hand, these songs could be disingenuous romanticizing of criminal lifestyles. Just look at the narcocorrido genre in Mexico -- two centuries from now, do you think it would be reasonable for people to examine then and think that their subjects were decent, hardworking folk being unnecessarily hassled by The Man?
For quite a long time a lot of events were written down and communicated via Broadside Ballads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadside_(music).
Broadside Ballads often described events and people and were usually written to be sung to common tunes that the public might know. A lot of the ballads became folk songs over time and the lyrics/stories/tunes changed, but they're often still traceable back to their roots. So where a ballad might describe an event pretty plainly, the songs derived from it will most likely embellish and romanticise it.
The Bodleian Library in Oxford has an online collection of Broadside Ballads that is very well maintained: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/. I found the following whilst seeing if there was anything related to Moreton Bay, and although it only shares the namesake, this is quite a good example of how the ballads were written: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/15000/....
A good example is the quite famous folk song Scarborough Fair, which is one of a number of variations descended from a ballad called The Elfin Knight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elfin_Knight.
My knowledge is mostly limited to English and related folk music, so I'm not sure if there's anything similar elsewhere, but it's certainly an interesting subject and it can be pretty fun to take a song and see if you can find out the original story :)
Having said that most convicts upon emancipation were allotted land and tools (and sometimes convict help) required to cultivate farms.
Ultimately, she ended up having 6 children with 3 different men. The first was a guard on the transport ship - I doubt you could define 'consent' in that situation, and the 'relationship' ended when the voyage did; her second 'husband', my great grandfather, was a fellow convict on Norfolk Island - he became the colony's first hangman! and died there before the colony was evacuated to Hobart, where her third (and only legal husband) seemed to help her raise the family. Until he drowned in a ferry accident.
Of course, who knows what her life in London was like or may have been. 220 years on, I'm certainly glad she (and a dozen other branches of my fanily tree) ended up here.