Free A Commonwealth of Thieves by Thomas Keneally Page B

distracted by the ceremonies of an officer or bosun dressed as King Neptune apparently rising from the sea to chastise and initiate those who had never crossed the line before.
    On 5 July, Phillip felt it necessary to reduce the water ration to three pints per person per day, all of it going to consumption, leaving everyone to have recourse to salt water for washing clothes and bathing. Sometimes garments were washed by being dragged on a rope overboard, and one sailor lost a pair of breeches to a shark this way. A convict was washed overboard and lost when he went on deck to bring in the washing during the sudden onset of a storm.
    On the
Prince of Wales
Jane Bonner, married, one child, guilty of stealing a coat, was hit on the head when a longboat fell from the booms where the ship's carpenter was caulking it. She died of brain injuries six days later. On matters of general health, Chief Surgeon John White and his three assistants were rowed around the fleet when weather permitted to consult with captains and such resident surgeons as Bowes Smyth of the
Lady Penrhyn,
and to inspect health arrangements or undertake care of the convicts.
    Where the north-east trades blew, ships were capable of making good time, as on 17 June, when
Friendship
logged a refreshing 174 nautical miles to the
Sirius
's 163. For the fast sailers to keep in touch with the slow ones was tedious, and Phillip was already contemplating splitting the flotilla into fast and slow divisions. Even on a bad day for the whole fleet, 26 June,
Friendship
made 29 nautical miles to
Sirius
's 25.
    The run was good to Rio, and on 5 August the fleet stood in the estuary off that city. Private Easty on
Scarborough
was impressed with the thirteen-gun salute from the fort, and the similar response from the
Sirius.
The total deaths since embarkation were twenty-nine male and three female prisoners, which was considered an excellent result. The convoy had been able to keep in contact, although the journals of the gentlemen indicate that the
Lady Penrhyn
was continually lagging.
    The Portuguese filled the first boat to return to the
Sirius
with fruit and vegetables “sent as presents to the Commodore from some of his old friends and acquaintances.” On the second morning, when Phillip and his officers paid a courtesy call on the Viceroy, a guard stepped forward and laid the national colours at Phillip's feet, “than which nothing could have been a higher token of respect.” That night the town was illuminated in his honour. The English officers could go where they wanted within the city, without escorts. One evening a Portuguese soldier presented himself to Phillip and asked to be allowed to sail to New Holland with the expedition. Phillip would not hear of it and had him dropped off onshore, “but with great humanity permitted him to be landed wherever he thought he might chance to escape unobserved, and have an opportunity of returning to his duty.”
    Collins tells us that while in harbour in Rio, every convict was regularly given one and a half pounds of fresh meat, a pound of rice, a suitable portion of vegetables, and several oranges. Sailors returning from jaunts ashore brought a great number of oranges and even pelted the convicts with them. The Viceroy set aside Enxadas Island to allow the expedition to set up tents for the sick and use as a shore base. Lieutenant Dawes of the marines also set up a temporary observatory there. In February 1787, the Astronomer Royal, Dr. Neil Maskelyne, proposed adaptations for three telescopes and acquisition of a 10-inch Ramsden sextant to serve Lieutenant William Dawes, surveyor and astronomer, in making nautical and astronomical observations on the voyage to Botany Bay “and on shore at that place.” Dawes was one of the Portsmouth division of marines, a spiritual young man who had been wounded in a sea battle with the French in Chesapeake Bay during the war in America, and had volunteered for New South Wales out of