Transportation (penal)

Transportation (penal), system of exiling criminal offenders from Great Britain to foreign shores, principally (from 1787) to the newly discovered Australia. There are many theories about the true reasons for convict transportation to Australia: commercial advantage, defence strategy, genuine penal urgency, a telling blow by the privileged in the class war—these are some of the constituent items in what has come to be known as the “Botany Bay debate”. But no one disputes the centrality of penal considerations.

Essentially, the “Convict System” as it became known (ironically, since it was anything but systematic) was simple. With the loss of the American colonies in the American War of Independence, Britain had to find a new repository for its exiled offenders. In 1784, the government was authorized by Parliament to seek such a place and the choice was New Holland—the South Land discovered by Captain James Cook in 1770. The First Fleet of convicts and their military and naval warders left in 1787 under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. Their landfall was Botany Bay, as charted by Cook; but, seeking a better environment, Phillip discovered Port Jackson and established the settlement on its shores at Sydney Cove, the site of modern Sydney.

Between 1787 and 1852 about 150,000 convicts were transported to eastern Australia; of these, 80,000 went to New South Wales and most of the remainder to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, but Tasmania received another 37,000 convicts, the last of them in 1853. Western Australia continued to receive convicts, under pressure of desperate labour shortages, until 1868. There was no transportation to either Victoria or South Australia. Other smaller, but disproportionately notorious, convict settlements were at Norfolk Island, Port Macquarie, and Moreton Bay.