Summary
Personal Information
Voyage
Transportation
Patrick Hunt was transported on the Chapman, departing 25th Mar 1817 and arriving 26th Jul 1817 with 202 passengers.
The Chapman ship was built at Whitby, England in 1777, rebuilt in 1811 and refurbed in 1815. Tonnage: 558 The 1817 voyage from Ireland to New South Wales, Australia is not yet fully recorded on this web site - currently being updated. A mutiny occurred on this voyage with 7 men killed and many others wounded. (200 male convicts embarked) 1824 voyage from England to Van Diemen's Land (180 male convicts). 1826 voyage from England to Van Diemen's Land (100 male convicts, 2 escaped). Royal Staff guards & 19 private passengers.
Chapman (generic)References
| Primary Source | : New South Wales, Convict Ship Muster Rolls and Related Records, 1790-1849; 1817; and New South Wales, Convict Indents, 1788-1842; Bound Indentures 1814-1818 |
Claims
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Convict Notes
1840: Patrick Hunt per Chapman is listed as having received a Pardon (New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, Convict Pardons and Tickets of Leave, 1834-1859; Tasmania; Pardons, 1840).
Muster, 1830: Listed as "in gaol" (New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849 Tasmania; List of convicts (incomplete); 1830). Muster 1833: Listed as transported to Port Arthur (New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849; Tasmania; List of convicts (incomplete); 1833). Muster 1835: Ditto.
2 August, 1825: Patrick Hunt per Chapman, free by servitude, and his co-accused Bartholomew Reardon and William Keep were found not guilty of receiving 15 head of stolen cattle, knowing them to be stolen -- 5 bulls valued at £15, 5 steers valued at £15 and 15 heifers valued at £15, the property of the late Edward Lord (https://stors.tas.gov.au/SC32-1-1$init=SC32-1-1p075jpg). --0-- 26 May, 1829: Patrick Hunt, free by servitude, William Hall, Joseph Coventry and Bartholomew Reardon were charged with stealing three bullocks, the property of the late Daniel Stanfield, valued at £50. Reardon also faced a charge of being an accessory before the fact. All pleaded not guilty. Hunt, Hall and Coventry were convicted of bullock stealing while Reardon was convicted on the second count (https://stors.tas.gov.au/SC32-1-1$init=SC32-1-1p380jpg). 26 October, 1829: Patrick Hunt and the other three men were sentenced to 7 years' transportation (https://stors.tas.gov.au/SC32-1-1$init=SC32-1-1p385jpg).
1 July, 1825: Supreme Court, Hobart: "His Honor the Chief Justice delivered judgment in the case of Patrick Hunt, who had been brought up on a Habeas Corpus, having been in gaol on a charge of assisting in receiving stolen cattle. His Honor said, that as the principal party implicated, to whom this man was a servant, had been admitted to bail, he should bail Hunt; but His Honor wished it to be understood that he should require very strong grounds to be laid, in future, before he would exercise the power of that Court in admitting to bail any prisoner to whom it was probable that two Magistrates would not, in their discretion, extend the indulgence." (The Hobart Town Gazette, Sat 9 Jul 1825, p2 at https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8791173) --0--
IN VDL: 1822: Patrick Hunt per Chapman is listed as free by servitude (New South Wales, Australia, Settler and Convict Lists, 1787-1834; New South Wales; Male and Female; 1822).
IN NSW: 1817: On arrival in NSW, Patrick Hunt was listed as a butcher from Naas, Co Kildare, 5’6½” tall with a dark ruddy complexion, black hair and hazel eyes. He was 25 (New South Wales, Convict Ship Muster Rolls and Related Records, 1790-1849; 1817; and New South Wales, Convict Indents, 1788-1842; Bound Indentures 1814-1818). 9 August, 1817: He was #61 of 70 convicts (69 from the Chapman and one from the Pilot) who were forwarded to VDL per the brig Jupiter. --00--
THE VOYAGE: 6 May, 1816: Patrick Hunt was punished for insolence to a sentry, according to evidence given at an inquiry in NSW after the Chapman's arrival. It's likely he was flogged -- given the toxic culture on board the Chapman by this time. Oxley Batman’s article, below, sheds some light on the situation that led to the deaths of 12 men and serious wounding of up to 30 more during the Chapman’s voyage to NSW. Batman says the cause was (an unsubstantiated) “fear” of mutiny: “‘The Hell Ship’ — The Tragic Story of the ‘Chapman’ Convict Ship 1817 By Oxley Batman (1952) Fear caused the death of 12 men in the transport Chapman. The transport Chapman was a reasonably happy ship, as convict transports went, until a convict named Michael Collins decided to feather his own nest. Hoping for favors, he told Captain Drake a lurid story of a planned rising among the convicts. That story began a series of tragic events which ended in 12 convicts being killed, 30 wounded, and the others starved and ill-treated for the remainder of the voyage. Governor Macquarie’s secretary, Mr. Campbell, mustered the convicts when the Chapman reached Sydney in July, 1817, and was appalled by the reports he heard from them. Macquarie ordered an immediate inquiry and wrote to the authorities in London. Macquarie placed equal blame on Captain Drake, his officers, Surgeon Dewar (the officer in charge of the convicts), and Lieutenant Busteed, commanding the military escort. These officers, he alleged, had shown “wanton, indiscriminate and unprovoked cruelty toward the miserably unfortunate men entrusted to their charge.” The evidence at the inquiry was shocking. From the time Collins told his story, the seamen and soldiers were in a state of panic. Every unusual noise, and many quite common noises, from the convict quarters were magnified into mutinies. At last, on April 18, a cook on sentry duty near the convicts shouted an alarm. Seamen and troops rushed to arms and fired indiscriminately through the bulkheads. Terry Kiernan, a convict, told the court of inquiry that most of the convicts were in bed, and all were in irons when the shooting began. He heard third mate Baxter shout, “Fire away, boys, and kill them all.” The firing continued for an hour and a half, although the convicts had cried for quarter from the fourth shot. Even then the frightened crew would not enter the convict quarters. The wounded and dying convicts, floundering in the dark, bled and suffered until dawn when a strong armed party ventured in. The dead were thrown overboard, the wounded taken to hospital and the remainder double-ironed. Four men, arbitrarily declared to be ringleaders of the ‘mutiny’, were taken to the deck and chained in the open. One of them, William Leo, said Dewar told him they would be kept there in all weathers until they reached Port Jackson. The seamen put a rope around Leo’s body and threw him over board. Eleven times they let him sink under the water, then dragged him back again. When he was dragged back on the deck, more dead than alive, soldiers pricked him with bayonets until the sergeant intervened. On top of all that, he was given 42 lashes — and Dewar ordered brine to be poured on his bleeding back. Later, Leo said, during a second minor panic, Baxter ran up with a musket and shot one of the four chained men on deck. The ship’s log supplied damning evidence of brutality. The day after the shooting, Captain Drake flogged 10 convicts — and one of his crew who was seen talking to a convict. He punished 46 more convicts the next day; 33 convicts the day after that. Thomas Higgins was given 24 lashes for telling a seaman, ‘It isn’t over yet.’ Thomas Hall got 24 lashes for ‘rattling his chains and alarming the sentry.’ There was another panic one night when a few convicts rolled in bed at the same time causing a rattling of chains. The following night someone shouted an alarm, ‘The convicts are rushing aft.’ Another convict was killed and four wounded before Drake and Busteed could check their frightened men. The officers used the excuse of a mutiny to put the convicts on half rations—and pocket the profits. Dewar told Kiernan, ‘If any one complains about rations I won’t flog him. I’ll shoot him.’ Kiernan was flogged for breaking a link of his chains so that he could remove his trousers and get rid of vermin. He was flogged for speaking to Dewar in Latin. Only two or three men of the 200 convicts on board escaped a flogging during the voyage, he said. In desperation, to allay the fears of the crew, the convicts asked that they be chained to a cable at night. This, they thought, would free them from the incessant flogging. But convicts who coughed on the chain were flogged (Baxter said they had ‘insinuating coughs’). If they rattled their chains unduly they were flogged; if they wedged their clothes on the chain to stop rattling they were flogged. The frightened crew would not give the convicts knives to eat their meat. Some broke off the handles of their tin mugs to cut up their tough meat-and were flogged for it. The ship’s officers blamed each other. Lieutenant Busteed said Captain Drake was drunk ‘a good deal of the time’, and had no control over his men. On the night of the firing, they said, Drake ‘seemed very far gone in liquor.’ Captain Drake said he had no doubt a ‘most horrid conspiracy’ existed among the convicts. Busteed’s troops, he added, ‘were in a mutinous and disorderly state and my own crew could not be trusted.’ They had fired without orders, he complained, and would not stop when he intervened. Campbell returned a withering report. Apart from the killings, the floggings and starvation — the convicts were on half-rations for three months — the chaining of 76 men to a cable all night was inhumane, he said. ‘Let a humane man figure to himself a fellow-creature, double-chained to a cable and handcuffed for three months — except when he was taken off to be flogged,’ Campbell wrote. ‘This was inhuman, barbarous, and cruel beyond all reason — even a mutiny could not justify it.’ But the other members of the court — Judge-Advocate Wyld and Police Magistrate D’Arcy Wentworth — reported to Macquarie that no criminal charges could succeed against the officers of the Chapman. Macquarie, who had intended to send them all home in irons to face trial for murder, wrote bitterly to London about the inadequacy of the report. Captain Drake took action to sue Macquarie for unlawfully detaining his ship during the inquiry. Macquarie sent Busteed and Dewar home under open arrest, together with three soldiers and a group of convict and military witnesses. But he [Macquarie] knew no one would be adequately punished. Convict lives were cheap in 1817.” (https://remembering-the-past-australia.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-hell-ship-the-chapman-1817.html) --00--
IN IRELAND: March, 1815: Patrick Hunt, a butcher from Naas, Co Kildare, was convicted of shop lifting and sentenced to 7 years' transportation (New South Wales, Australia Convict Ship Muster Rolls and Related Records, 1790-1849; 1817; Chapman). 21 August, 1815: Patrick Hunt, prisoner #1795, was admitted to Kilmainham jail in Dublin, awaiting transportation. He was sent from Kilmainham on 6 September that year "to board the convict ship". Most of the men admitted from Co Kildare at the same time as him were sent to board the Guildford (1816), but Hunt was held over for the Chapman (Ireland, Prison Registers, 1790-1924; Dublin; Kilmainham, 1815-1910). --00--