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JOHN RYAN 1761-1800
FIRST FLEETER on FRIENDSHIP
John Bryant,
aged 17, (occupation silkweaver) and Jonathon
Darlington were indicted for feloniously stealing,
on 10th
January 1784, one woollen cloth coat, value 10s. and one
man’s hat, value 3s. the property of
Richard Price.
They were seen acting suspiciously in
Basinghall Street opposite the White Bear, walking up
and down several times, “ and I saw one point to the
other to go into the house”, reported a witness who said
he saw them go in. They were tried before Mr.
Justice Ashurst at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey.
Each to be transported for 7 years. [The Crimes of
the First Fleet Convicts p 243] On 30 March both
were sent to the Mercury transport (hulk) from
Newgate.
Ryan (recorded as such henceforth)
escaped at Torbay after the convict mutiny on the
Mercury. There is no evidence that he was involved
as a mutineer. He was retaken on 13 April,
committed to gaol at Exeter, remanded to former orders
on 24 May and sent to the Dunkirk hulk at the end
of June, aged 19. He was “ in general tolerably well
behaved, but troublesome at times”. He was discharged
to the Friendship on 11 March 1787, then aged 20.
[The Founders of Australia p320] The name John
Ryan has been accepted because of references in Ralph
Clark’s Journal p.8.
The Friendship was one of the
smaller ships being 276 tons. Her master was Captain
Francis Walton, Surgeon Thomas Arndell and
Marines Captain James Meredith, Lieutenant Ralph
Clark (whose journals have provided much
information), Lieutenant William Faddy and
First Mate Robert Laurance. She carried 97
convicts, 76 males and 21 females. The ships were
infested with rats, cockroaches and other vermin.
William Faddy, who slept in a “small place”, spent
Sunday morning of 22 July in killing “above 100 bugs
with oil and tar” [Convict Ships p.102] If such
were the conditions in the officers’ Quarters, how much
worse must it have been in the overcrowded prisons?
Some of the women on the Friendship
caused so much trouble that some were exchanged into
the Charlotte while at Rio and later the lot
transferred to Lady Penrhyn, Charlotte, and
Prince of Wales to make way for livestock and
fodder. This was much to the relief of Clark who wrote
“I am very glad of it, for they were a great trouble,
much more so than the men.”
On January 26, as a result of Arthur
Phillip’s wise selection of Sydney Cove as the site
for the new settlement, the entire fleet went around to
Port Jackson from Botany Bay. Disaster was narrowly
averted. In getting out of the narrow entrance to Botany
Bay with the wind against them, the Prince of Wales
and the Friendship fouled one another, and the
latter lost her jib-boom. Soon after the Charlotte
ran foul of the Friendship frightening those on
board, fearing being on the rocks and all gone to pieces
in less than half an hour.
At Port Jackson, according to Ralph
Clark’s Journal, on 27February 1788 John Ryan, along
with Thomas Barrit, Henry Lovell and Josh Hall
were tried in a Criminal court. “There Centance was read
the charge being clearly proven of their Stealing Butter
Pease and Pork .” John Ryan to receive 300 lashes the
others “centance” of death. Barrit was hung the same
day; the others being fortunate to wait until the next
day when the Governor pardoned them on the condition
that they were banished. John Ryan's irons were removed
and he was dismissed to his work.
In November 1788 he was accused of
“feloniously and burglariously break and enter and steal
a pair of trousers, two shirts, two aprons, one bedgown,
one silk handkerchief and one pair of stockings” from
Ann Warburton (Ann Daly). The charge was dismissed
when Francis Fowkes, with whom he was sharing a
hut, spoke up for his honesty.
In November 1789 John Ryan was reported
as living near fellow convict Robert Sidaway (Sedaway),
who employed him to care for his house and to bring in
water.
On 4March 1790 John Ryan was sent to
Norfolk Island on the Sirius. On 1 August 1790
Sarah Woolley was sent to Norfolk Island on the
Surprize. They were later married by the Rev.
Richard Johnson when he visited the island in
November 1791.
Sarah Woolley was a second Fleet convict
arriving on the Neptune on the 28 June 1790 in
company with the Surprize and the
Scarborough. She was lucky to survive this voyage
in which a total of 267 died, the Neptune losing
147 men and 11 women out of a total of 502.
Aboard all three ships, but particularly
the Neptune, the prisoners were treated with
savage brutality. They were shamefully starved, kept
heavily ironed, and except in inadequate numbers and at
long intervals, refused access to the deck, by the
master, the avaricious and unscrupulous Donald
Trail. There was no excuse for this callousness, as
at no stage of the voyage was there any suspicion of
mutiny. [The Convict Ships
p128]
Sarah Woolley (1768?-1809) and Ann
White were sentenced to seven years transportation
on 28th
October 1789 at the Old Bailey Sessions for theft of a
four yard piece of printed cotton valued at 8 shillings
from a city of London linen draper’s shop.
They came into the shop fussing and
quibbling over the price of a small piece of cotton
asking one another which pattern they liked. The
shopman called out R.F. (a code warning of suspected
shoplifters) to his employer in the back room. The
draper said in court that he sold it to them at cost
in order to get rid of them; I did not like them.
As they left he noticed White had her hand in her right
pocket and a bulge under her clothing near her hip. He
sent the assistant out after them and the bolt of cotton
was found on the floor under White’s petticoats, dirty
from the mud on her shoes from the wet street outside.
On 11November both women were sent from
Newgate prison for embarkation on the Neptune
transport. [The Second Fleet - Britain’s Grim Convict
Armada of 1790 p.629]
John Ryan and Sarah Woolley were probably
living together on Norfolk Island by February 1791 when
each was issued with a pig under Major Ross’s
scheme designed to encourage convicts to become
self-sufficient. The couple lived on a 10acre farm at
Charlotte Field (Queenborough) Norfolk Island where a
daughter Elizabeth was born in November 1792.
Ryan sailed for Sydney in March 1793, followed by Sarah
and daughter Elizabeth in March 1794 aboard the
Francis. They were granted 30 acres of land at
Mulgrave Place on the 14th
March 1794 by William Paterson.
Two more children were born; Mary
on 1 February 1796 at Parramatta (my link with this
couple) and John in 1798. Ryan was almost
certainly the man of this name receiving a 30acre land
grant on the banks of the Hawkesbury River in March
1795. In 1797, Governor Hunter made a grant to
Sarah Ryan of 30 acres of land at Mulgrave Place on the
Hawkesbury near Windsor. Their fourth child Sarah
Ryan was born on November 1 1800.
By 1800 John Ryan had either died, with
no record of his burial surviving, or left the colony.
In a list of Debtors to the Crown, June 1796 to January
26, 1808, he was listed as ”dead”. This list of money
owing to the Crown was made up for presentation to the
Bigge Inquiry. Most of the names on it were landholders
from whom the small amount of debt could have been
recovered had the government pursued the matter.
In that year, 1800, Sarah was listed as a
landholder in her own right, a status usually accorded
to widows. She owned 7 hogs and had 14 acres sown in
wheat and 5 in maize. She was self-supporting, with 3
children maintained by government rations. By 1802 she
was fully supporting her four children, owned 30 hogs,
and had 20 acres sown in wheat, 10 bushels of wheat and
20 of maize in store.
In the 1806 muster, Sarah Woolley was
shown as Sarah Ryan, free by servitude, wife to
William Mason with three male and three female
children.
On 12 April 1809, Sarah asked local
businessman Henry Kable Senior to take her for a
drive from Green Hills (Windsor) to Richmond for the
sake of her health. Accompanied by her eldest
daughter Elizabeth they set off by the riverside road.
The chaise struck a concealed stump near Mackellars
Creek throwing Kable to the ground. The women screamed,
causing the horse to bolt throwing them as well. Sarah
died in her daughter’s arms within half an hour. She was
41.
Her death was reported in the Sydney
Gazette on 16 April 1809.
“A Coroner’s Inquest was taken at 5
o’clock the same evening, whose verdict was Accidental
Death; after which the body was taken home, and interred
on Thursday evening. The funeral was numerously and
respectably attended, many persons travelling from ten
to twenty miles to pay this last tribute of respect to a
departed much lamented friend, whose kindness of
disposition and obliging manners have been the
admiration of all who were acquainted with her; as a
mother and wife her conduct was exemplary; and her loss
will for ever be sincerely regretted by a disconsolate
husband and family of six children.”
Fortunately for Sarah’s children, William
Mason became their guardian, receiving grants in trust
for them. It is thought he educated them himself, as
there is a remarkable similarity in their handwriting
and his own
.
#7228 Margaret Soward
Bibliography
The Founders of Australia – a
biographical dictionary of the First Fleet by Mollie
Gillen
The First Fleeters a comprehensive
listing of convicts, marines, seamen, officers, wives,
children and ships
Women of the 1790 Neptune
The Second Fleet Convicts – a
comprehensive listing of convicts who sailed in HMS
Guardian, Lady Juliana, Neptune, Scarborough and
Surprise.
The Crimes of the First Fleet Convicts by
John Cobley
Journal and Letters of Lieutenant Ralph
Clark 1787-1792
The Convict Ships1787-1868 by Charles
Bateson
Sydney Cove 1788 – in the words of
Australia’s First Settlers: the true story of a nation’s
birth compiled by John Cobley
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