Journal of Australian Colonial History: Book Reviews
Vol. 11, 2009
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Closing Hell's Gates: The Death of a Convict Station, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2008, ISBN 978 1 74175 149 9, pbk, viii + 312 pp, $24.95.
Hell's Gates was the name given to the entrance to Macquarie Harbour, which perhaps was the most notorious penal station in Van Diemen's Land. Between 1822 and 1833 this remote, wind-swept wilderness was home to some 1,136 male and 16 female convicts sent there because of colonial misdemeanours.
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart provides a finely nuanced account of the penal station, set within the wider context of the convict system and penal policies, practices and ideologies. Drawing on extensive primary sources he builds a detailed picture of life at the station, beginning with the dreadful voyage from Hobart Town, sailing against roaring winds and high seas to reach Macquarie Harbour on the west coast. Daily work schedules for convicts at the station included rolling timber into the harbour and standing waist deep in water to form the logs into rafts, mining clay to make bricks, burning timber for charcoal, and making lime. The book effectively captures the variations and contrasts of convict life. While most of the convicts slept in cramped, miserable quarters, those assigned as officers' servants slept in relative comfort in their masters' houses and escaped the severity of labouring in the gangs.
The book employs mini-biographies to reveal the characters at the station, their backgrounds and their lives before Macquarie Harbour. The colonial 'crimes' that landed them at the station were mostly trivial. Nearly half were re-transported for petty theft and nearly one third for absconding from their master or gang. The majority were banished to this place of deprivation and torture by lesser courts such as a magistrate's bench rather than by the Supreme Court. The minor nature of their offences sets an unexpected backdrop for one of the more confronting aspects of the book, namely cannibalism and unprovoked murders. The most shocking acts of violence at Macquarie Harbour were committed by those sent there for trivial matters, thus revealing a startling insight into human nature when brutalised and deprived of basic necessities. A highlight of the book is its masterful separation of myth from reality in these grisly episodes. This separation is needed because press reports at the time repeatedly depicted the station as harbouring the most degraded elements of humanity, portrayed murderers as demented monsters and recast incidents of cannibalism from survival narratives into far more sinister tales.
The book skilfully moves from the violence of inmates to the violence of the lash, a remorseless, legally sanctioned terror that drove some men to murder and mutilation in their desperation to escape. In six days in July 1823, for example, fifteen men received 1,700 lashes. Another highlight is the account of James McKinney, a young Irish weaver sentenced to the station for attempted fraud. When McKinney tried to abscond from Macquarie Harbour he received the standard punishment of 100 lashes and six months in irons. Over the next two years he retrained as a sawyer and was sent back to the settled districts. Four months later, with only a year of his sentence to serve, he ran into the bush and joined a group of bushrangers led by Matthew Brady. This is proof, according to the author, that his 100 lashes were 'as wasted as the blood that had seeped into McKinney's shoes'.
The fast-moving narrative helps to span the potentially awkward gap between scholarly and popular history. The narrative is interrupted, however, in Chapter 7 when the book diverts to a broad discussion of the convict system, assignment policies and the tensions between punishment and productivity. Those familiar with Maxwell-Stewart's previous writings will recognise salient themes — convicts whose skills were in demand were more likely to be rewarded than flogged, while many unskilled convicts were employed in road gangs where flogging was the prevalent method of control. Another tension between scholarly and popular history is evident in the scope of the endnotes. Only the sources of direct quotations are cited, and readers must consult an associated website to gain full access to the references. While this multi-media compromise is understandable, hopefully the complete references have been deposited in print form in major libraries in case these web pages disappear after changes in policy or funding.
Closing Hell's Gates is at its best in the chapter on absconding ('Mr Douglas's list'). Nearly one in four convicts attempted to abscond from Macquarie Harbour, and we are given a splendid insight into how differently their exploits were perceived by officials and convicts. According to the official version, 93 per cent of all escapes from the station ended in the death of the convict, but the reality was rather different. Many made it back to the settled areas and the administration actually had no idea of the fate of those who disappeared. Conveniently they presumed them dead, but many survived, their success fuelling rumours and hopes among the convicts. To make matters worse for officials, captured absconders were usually returned to Macquarie Harbour, thus providing the opportunity to use 'whispered words to fill in the blank sections on the surveyor's map' for would-be runaways. A minor quibble at this point is that a map showing the main escape routes would have been helpful for those not familiar with the geography of the island.
Towards the end of its time as a penal station, an amazing transformation of Macquarie Harbour emerges. Floggings have decreased, fewer men are working in irons, incentives for good behaviour are more evident, and some inmates are attending evening classes run by a Wesleyan missionary. A few are even singing in his choir. The ration has improved, mortality rates are down, and much of the unskilled drudgery has been replaced by skilled tasks. In 1829 alone the shipyard completed a remarkable 300 tons of boats. Evidently Macquarie Harbour was no longer a place of terror and extreme punishment. Maxwell-Stewart attributes the transformation to economics, to the triumph of production over punishment rather than to the mollifying presence of the Wesleyan missionary and his choir. Yet for me, these factors do not fully explain the radical changes and I was left to ponder what else might have contributed to the turnaround. Closing Hell's Gates is essential reading for anyone wishing to better understand the convict system and the role that penal stations such as Macquarie Harbour played in it. The book's reach beyond the official records into the personal lives of those banished there is thought provoking and memorable.
Brian Walsh
Citation: Journal of Australian Colonial History, Vol. 9, 2009, pp. 202-04.