A Race Divided

The conditions of passengers emigrating from Derry to the New World during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were often tragic as seen in a transcript from an account given by the Ship’s Surgeon of the ‘Adam Lodge’. By the time of its arrival four months later, there had been many deaths including 23 infants or babes-in-arms. One view is that these deaths were unnecessary and caused by the with-holding of rations by the Ship’s Surgeon as punishment for what he perceived as poor standards of hygiene in the passengers!  An alternative view point and that favoured by Australian descendants of passengers on the voyage is that the death rate although high was similar to that on many other passages to the New World. Even in these times, the voyage caused sufficient concern that Dr Alick Osborne was obliged to give an account to English Parliament of his part in this tragedy but some years later he was appointed a member of the New South Wales Parliament.

Author:  Merle O’Donnell

Peter Mayberry records over 200 convicts of Derry origin who were transported to Australia during the first half of the 1800s, mostly for trivial offences, and the justice system showed minimal consideration for human rights as we understand them today.

This is the story with a twist of the infamous 1798 voyage to Australia on board the convict ship, Britannia I. Of the 226 convicts who boarded the ship in Ireland, 32 of them received 300 or more lashes for conspiracy to mutiny and 3 died of their wounds. There were nine other deaths, three from suicide , two from murder, one from childbirth and one from being bitten by an 8-foot long black snake.

Author:   Peter Gallagher

This chapter tells the story of Ambrose McGuigan, born about 1767 and a member of the notorious “Defenders” movement. His occupation according to the reward notice printed in the Belfast Newsletter was Dance Master. What an opportunity for a rebel to enter English homes to teach dancing and spy out the land! The Committee of the Barony of Dungannon offered a reward of 50 guineas to any person who could apprehend and bring his body before Robert Lowry of County Tyrone.

Ambrose was wanted for administering unlawful oaths and, almost as an afterthought, for stopping the Honourable Major Cole-Hamilton on a road leading from Gorteen to Pomeroy.  Ambrose fired a shot at Cole-Hamilton, perhaps in self defence and slightly wounded  the major in the thigh. He was banished for life to Australia where, upon receiving his Ticket of Leave after only 7 years, he made a small fortune hunting seals in Tasmania. He went on to settle near Sidney and once again became a publican in the city where one of his inns still stands today.

It appears that Ambrose shot one of the scions of the Protestant ruling class of Ulster. Major Cole-Hamilton was related to the Brookeboroughs who later produced one of the first Premiers of post-partition Ulster, a strong opponent of Catholic emancipation. The Cole-Hamiltons were also related through marriage to the Dukes of Westminster who were cousins of the monarch. Under the circumstances, Ambrose may have been exceedingly fortunate to escape with his life!