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WILLIAM WHITING Convict
OF ALMONDSBURY GLOUCESTERSHIRE
- ALEXANDER
this story is under review by Membership Team
William Whiting
(Whiteing in indictment) was a convict who arrived in
Australia in 1788 on the convict ship Alexander
that was part of the First Fleet from England to
Australia. This vessel (along with ten others) arrived
in Botany Bay from the 18th
to the 20th January 1788. All the ships then moved from
Botany Bay to Port Jackson, now known as Sydney Harbour,
on the 26.1.1788 and it was here that Captain Philip
went ashore and raised the English flag proclaiming
the land to be part of the colonies of Great Britain.
This day is now called ‘Australia Day’. It is highly
desirous now that you announce to the world that your
ancestors were part of this journey but in the past
things were very different as it was considered shameful
and nobody spoke of it.
For stealing livestock (a wether sheep)
with a value of ten shillings and the goods of a
Thomas Pearce, Whiting was arrested on the 16.9.1774
at Almondsbury in Gloucestershire. He was tried,
convicted and sentenced to death on the 23.8.1775. In
December 1775 he was given a reprieve if he took
transportation for seven years and so he boarded the
Alexander on the 6.1.1787. For a few years the
English government was looking around to settle their
convicts elsewhere as their avenue to the colony in the
Americas had been closed due and prior to the war in
1776. It was decided in late 1776 that the new land
Captain Cook had discovered in 1770, would be a
perfect choice so a decision was made to settle and, at
the same time, transport the convicts overflowing the
gaols to help settle the land by working as unpaid
labour.
The First Fleet was the name given to the
eleven
ships
that sailed from Portsmouth England on the 13th May 1787
with about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts (192
women and 586 men), to establish the first European
colony in
New South Wales.
This fleet was led by Captain
Arthur Phillip.
The ships arrived at
Botany Bay
between 18th and 20th January 1788. HMS Supply
arrived on 18th January, Alexander,
Scarborough and Friendship on 19th January
and the remaining ships the 20th January.
The exact number of people directly
associated with the First Fleet will likely never be
established as all accounts of the event vary slightly.
A total of 1,420 people has been identified as embarking
on the First Fleet in 1787 and 1,373 are believed to
have landed at Sydney Cove in January 1788.
While the names of all crew members of
Sirius and Supply are known, the six
transports and three store ships may have carried as
many as 110 more seamen than have been identified – no
complete musters have survived for these ships. The
total number of persons embarking on the First Fleet
could, therefore, be approximately 1,530 with about
1,483 reaching Sydney Cove so the additional 100 people
are constant.
Conditions on the journey varied with the
weather and the latitude. With fine weather the convicts
were allowed on deck and on 3rd June 1787 the fleet
anchored at
Santa Cruz
at
Tenerife.
Here fresh water, vegetables, fruit and meat were taken
on board for all concerned to make sure no scurvy became
present. Phillip and the chief officers were entertained
by the local governor, while one convict tried
unsuccessfully to escape.
The weather became increasingly hot and
humid as the fleet sailed through the tropics. Vermin,
such as rats, parasites, bedbugs, lice, cockroaches and
fleas, tormented the convicts, officers and marines.
Bilges
became foul and the smell, especially below the closed
hatches, was over-powering. On the Alexander
several convicts fell sick and died. Tropical rainstorms
meant that the convicts could not exercise on deck, and
were kept below in the foul, cramped holds. On the
female transports, promiscuity between the convicts and
the crew and marines was rampant. In the
doldrums,
Phillip was forced to ration the water to three pints a
day.
On 10th June they set sail to cross the
Atlantic to
Rio de Janeiro,
taking advantage of favourable
trade winds
and ocean currents, but this still took eight weeks.
This was
followed by a five and a half week voyage
to the Cape of Good Hope – their last link with home.
On 12.11.1787 the Fleet set sail for Botany Bay which
took nearly twelve weeks to be completed.
There had been significant issues with
the ship even before the Fleet sailed, and there was not
a name more suited to an all-male convict transport
vessel than the Alexander. Built at Hull in 1783
with three masts and two decks with a quarter deck but
no galleries or figure-head it was the largest transport
vessel in the fleet. The Alexander was owned by
Southwark master mariner William Walton whose
company Walton & Co, decided there was money to be made
transporting convicts to Botany Bay. The transport was
fitted out at Deptford under the supervision, firstly of
Captain Stephen Teer, the Agent for Transports in
the Thames, and later, of Lieutenant John Shortland,
who on returning with troops from Halifax, was appointed
naval agent in the First Fleet. The first of the 192
male convicts who had been sent from the prison hulks at
Woolwich moved to the Alexander on 6th January
1787. William Whiting was one of those prisoners.
William Bradley
noted in his journal on the 4th
January, orders were received at Woolwich for the
convicts to be embarked on the Alexander but some
of the convicts were in such a deplorable situation from
disease they could not be received. In February 1787
Alexander came to anchor on the Mother Bank
With sickness aboard, all hands were
employed washing and smoking the vessel between
decks. They removed the convicts, whitewashed the ship
before reloading the convicts but deaths still occurred
before sailing. During the voyage to Botany Bay
sickness and mortality rates aboard the Alexander
were the highest among the transports.
The Principal Surgeon of the new colony
was John White, who had received his first
warrant in the navy in 1780, and had charge of the
medical arrangements during the voyage. He embarked in
the Charlotte and one of his three assistants,
William Balmain, embarked in the Alexander,
with the ship’s Master, Duncan Sinclair.
The Agent for the Botany Bay transports
John Shortland, arrived on board with his son, 2nd
Mate Thomas George Shortland, and theother
Shortland son John was 2nd
Mate aboard Friendship. John snr and Thomas
George returned to England on the outward voyage of
Alexander.
The Log book of the Alexander
shows the final days of their long voyage and on the
24th January 1788, it said: Two ships appeared in the
offing with French colours that endeavoured to beat us
into the bay, but could not. With the discovery of
Sydney Cove as the preferred site for the new
settlement, the entire fleet departed Botany Bay for
Port Jackson.
Records confirm that William Whiting was
on the Alexander and after he arrived in Sydney
he went to work on the land to assist in commencing this
convict settlement. At the time of this happening he was
twenty-eight years of age and must have been wondering
what in the world had made him steal a sheep to deserve
all this!
We have already discussed how William
came to Australia so we can now go back to his roots for
a short while. William Whiting was born in Almondsbury
Gloucestershire England C1760. As far as can be
ascertained, his father was a Stephen Thomas Whiting
(11.6.1725-4.4.1790) and his mother Sarah
with no further information available. Stephen Whiting
was born in Avening also in Gloucestershire. It can be
established that William had a sister named Mary
who married a James Speck on 26.12.1774. Stephen
Whiting’s parents were John (1674) and Mary
(1681) Whiting (nee Sanders) both born in Avening.
For the first two years after his
arrival at Sydney Cove William’s job was serving salt
provisions from the stores. However, on the 29th
December 1788 he was charged (with three others) for
being up late and disturbing the peace and lost three
weeks flour ration as punishment. There are no further
records of his misbehaving before he was released in
1790.
When he left England for Australia he was
serving a sentence of seven years of which he had
already served three. The actual date of his release is
unknown but we do know he was given permission to marry
Mary Williams on the 28th
June 1790. At the time convicts and ex-convicts were
encouraged to marry and have children to increase the
population of the settlement. The marriage took place at
the original wattle and daub St Phillip’s Church,
officiated by Chaplain Richard
Johnson.
Mary Williams, also a First Fleeter, had
arrived on the Lady Penrhyn and was some twenty years
older than William. A needleworker and a native of
Middlesex, she had been transported for seven years
after an Old Bailey trial for stealing clothing to the
value of twenty shillings. There were no children born
to the couple. Mary Whiting’s burial is registered both
at St Philip’s and at St John’s Parramatta as having
taken place on 13 July 1801. Some researchers believe
that her remains were interred in the Old Sydney Burial
Ground.
By 12 May 1792 Whiting had settled on
fifty acres at the Northern Boundary Farms and the grant
was dated 10.7.1792.
By 1795 he and Mary Williams had parted
ways and he was living with a Mary Smith with
whom he had two daughters, Jane and Sarah.
Mary Smith, also a convict, had arrived in the colony
onboard the Pitt on 14 February 1792. No marriage
is recorded for the couple.
By mid-1800 he was still on his grant
with a woman and child, presumably Mary and Jane. Jane
had been born in 1796 and Sarah two years later. Sarah
lived just less than a year and is buried at Parramatta
where a headstone records her passing. By then Whiting
owned ten hogs and had sown twenty acres in wheat with
eight more ready for planting maize.
In 1803 this land availability had nearly
doubled in sowing for wheat and maize, assisted at the
time by one free servant who was self-supporting.
On the 13 April 1805 he leased his land
to a Samuel Hadlam(Haslam?) for two years at
twelve pound a year.
By mid 1805 he was a self-employed
Butcher, his licence having been granted to him on the
28.10.1804 (Sydney Gazette). He continued in this trade
until his death on the 8th March 1808, the latter
recorded at St Philips Church in Sydney where he is
buried in the grounds of that church.
What we have then is a young man who,
although apparently coming from a decent family, decided
at around twenty-five years of age to steal one sheep
and a few belongings of another man and ended up being
sentenced to death, served some time in England and then
given a reprieve and transported
As indicated above, when William Whiting
died in 1808 in Parramatta Sydney he was not an old man,
just forty-eight years of age. He left one de facto wife
(Mary Smith) and a twelve year old daughter (Jane).
There is no confirming death certificate for Mary but it
is believed she died in 1810 or 1811 which would leave
her daughter Jane all by herself at the age of fifteen
or just under. It is through Jane and her marriage to
Thomas Barrett in 1811 that the family line of
descendant members of William Whiting can be traced.
[ED
Note: This article has been researched and presented by
#8469.1 Roddy Jordan on behalf of his wife Christine,
descendant of FF William Whiting].
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