From the brief accounts available in the Admiralty records, together with various correspondence sent to my mother and myself prior to my rather forced departure, I had been able to glean a certain amount of information upon the history of Port Fortitude. It was not exactly an encouraging read.
The settlement appeared to have been founded quite by accident - and not, it had to be said, in the most auspicious of circumstances.
The colony had its origins in the early autumn of 1800 - when a British naval vessel, the HMS Fortitude, under Captain George Strickleigh, a Master and Commander of apparently questionable mastery and negligible command, had taken a wrong turning somewhere south of Tahiti and finished hundreds of nautical miles away from its intended destination: the established settlement of Sydney Cove.
Caught in one of the sub-tropical storms abounding in that part of the South Pacific, the Fortitude ricocheted gracelessly off one of the many jagged reefs on this portion of the coastline, and ran aground upon a rocky headland – where it sustained a gaping hole in its hull and was soon battered to pieces by the high seas.
Poor Captain Strickleigh was never seen again. It was believed that he had been asleep below – the written accounts provided no further details of this. In any case the surviving crew, together with a handful of hardy (or possibly foolhardy) settlers, and a smallish gaggle of convicts and their guards, managed to stumble ashore and set up camp with enough provisions to ensure their temporary survival.
Word of this soon reached Sydney Cove by means of reports from passing trading vessels. While perhaps wisely unwilling to negotiate the perilous reefs or hazard a nip into the shallow harbour, they at least passed word to the larger settlement of the evidence they had seen from a distance of some living European presence there – a presence which could only have consisted of the survivors of the Fortitude.
The authorities saw this possibility, if true, as quite fortuitous. The inhospitable nature of the place, remarked upon by explorers and traders - its reefs too hazardous, its bay too exposed and too shallow, its soil too sandy, its insects too profuse, and so forth - had meant that the authorities had been so far unable to persuade anyone to establish any kind of settlement there. Indeed, no settlements existed for some distance either to the north or south. Anything to the west, of course, was assumed to be total wilderness and quite uninhabited – except, perhaps, for natives, who were most likely hostile.
The colonial authorities, then, were eager to grasp this new opportunity of gaining another coastal foothold upon the massive continent – since they lived in constant fear of it being taken away from them by the French. Consequently they had rushed an Acting Governor, a small garrison of troops and a contingent of hardened convicts around the coast from Sydney Cove.
They arrived at the starving survivors’ camp in the nick of time, and duly proclaimed it to be from thenceforward His Majesty’s Penal Colony of Port Fortitude.
Slowly, like a local sapling snaking raggedly upwards from sandy soil, the settlement had begun to grow.
Unfortunately, by the time I had read these accounts, and forged from their unwelcoming lines even greater misgivings than I had previously held as to what might await me in this forbidding place, it was altogether too late to turn my mother from her singleminded determination to send me there. I pleaded eloquently, apologised profusely for my past failures, promised sincerely to redouble my efforts, and finally questioned with the greatest respect whether it might not be just a tad excessive to compound an offspring’s failings and to deny him a chance at redemption by condemning him to the probability of an untimely death – whether from the perils of the voyage, or from a native attack, or perhaps from some dreadful tropical disease. Or indeed all of the above.
Alas, it was to no avail. Mother was unmoved and quite resolute. My place in the family heritage must be salvaged, she determined, and salvaged it would be; and if I should perish in the attempt, then it were better to perish bravely than to live on in lily-livered disgrace.
I had no choice, then, but to grit my teeth and accept my fate. I was to be transported to this God-forsaken spot, for - who knows? - possibly the term of my natural life. Given what I had read of Port Fortitude, most likely a term of no great duration.
Still, at least I had survived the blasted voyage. So far, as they say, so good.
On the craggy headland above the grey mist stands a solitary figure – the first to view the arrival of the ship.
She is Polly Dawes, a convict maidservant in plain sturdy working dress, apron and cotton bonnet. She has been up and about already for some hours, rising before daybreak to pump water from the well, to be used in the washing of clothes and the watering of chickens and pigs.
She’s just completed this last chore, and has emerged onto the grassy headland between Government House and the cliffs, full washing basket under one arm, empty scrap tin in one hand, empty water bucket in the other.
Bleedin’ pigs, she thinks with annoyance. Third one this month that’s got out, an’ I don’t suppose we’ll ever see that one again, run off into the bush like the others. So there’s one more dinner that’ll have to be filled out with potatoes an’ greens an’ whatever else we can grow in this rubbish soil. Oh well. Nothin’ to be done.
Now she stops as something in the distance catches her eye. She squints towards the horizon and her eyes widen slightly. She takes a step towards the clifftop and puts down the bucket and tin, one grubby sleeve mopping sweat from her ruddy cheek.
Ah, she nods, the ship is in at last. Its tall, pale sails loom unmistakably up out of the ocean mist as it inches its way slowly around the perilous reef and into the shallow bay.
Polly stands, stares at the ship for a moment, removing her bonnet to swat a stray fly from her cheek. About bleedin’ time too, she thinks. Now maybe we might get some little rise in the food rations at last. Maybe they’ve brought over some more pigs, an’ all.
Well … no point standin’ around here when there’s work to be done, she determines, and no doubt there’ll be a good deal more rushin’ about at Government House once that lot get ashore, what with all the unloadin’ and cartin’ about an what-have-you. All those men with their grand schemes, lots of shoutin’ an’ everythin’s the most important thing that ever there was, an’ it must all be done by about yesterday, or there’s hell to pay. An’ if it’s not done, well, most likely it’ll be some poor convict that gets the blame. She shakes her head slowly.
She turns, leaving the bucket and scrap tin for the moment where they lie in the shallow heath. She gathers her washing basket in both hands, and turns again towards the clothesline.
But as she does so, behind her she hears a noise. No, more than just a noise, a definite and human sort of noise. Well, barely human – and, she shudders, recognising the sound, most decidedly unwelcome. The sound is a low, rasping clearing of the throat, exaggerated to the point of stagecraft. It is a noise that could only come from one person.
Fixing a politely bland expression onto her healthy features and summoning what civility she can muster, Polly turns to face the Reverend Ezekiel Staines, colonial chaplain.
“Mornin’, Reverend”, she intones steadily.
The Chaplain smiles, his ineffectively shaven jowls creasing into a leer above the ever-present off-white clerical collar - which looks very much the worse for having had a number of fluids spilled down the front flaps of it, over the significant period since it appears to have seen any hint of soapy water.
“Lovely