58' TBM SEOOHD SLBET* ^^M heonrily ironed tluii; they oouM Bcaraelf more. The {atibam Slave- with which the limbs of these haiilesB people were eonfiBed chains. . were alleged to have been prerionaly emfiojed in the Afncm ..aye trade;* they were veritBible instroBieBte of torinze. These terrible shackled were placed upon the conyicts indis- criminately, and once having been put on they do not appear t^ottaMDt ^ have been removed until the end of the voyage or death of oQBviAK relieved the unhappy wearers from their sufferings* The irons were kept on even when the prisoners were &inting from illness and exhaustion ; many of them, indeed^ died in their fetters. This was not all. Although the ships were well provisioned, the ration supplied to the convicts was cut down, BO that starvation was added to the sufferings which these miserable men had to endure* It was stated that when one of a gang died in his chains his fellow-prisoners^ under the pressure of hunger, concealed the &ct until putrefaction made concealment no longer possible, so tiiat they might share among them the dead man's allowance. sourvj-, Under such circumstances it is not surprising that scurvy, andf6ver/ dysentery, and fever raged among the convicts, and that the unfortunate people died wholesale. Phillip, who would have been justified in writing more strongly on the point, advised the Secretary of State, on the 13th July, 1790, to the following effect : —
- I will not, sir, dwell on the scene of misery wHch the hos-
pitals and sick-tents exhibited when ihose people were landed, but it would be a want of duty not to say that it was ooeasioned by the contractors having crowded too many on board those uaoaad ships, and from their being too much confined during the passage, crowdinir ... I believe, sir, while the masters of the transports think ment. titeir own safety depends on admitting few cxinvicts on deck at a time, and most of ^asm with irons on, which prevent any kind of exercise, numbers must always perish on so long a voyage ; and many of those now received are in soch a sitaatiMEi from old oon- plaints, and so emaciated from what thej have suffered on the
- This statement rests on the authoritj of Cdptain Hill, one of th« oAoers
of the N.S.W. Corps, who came out in the Surpriie. — Blstorifldl Xeooxds, vol. i, part 2, p. 867.
