to, bade them âsettle it amongst them, for he could interfere no further!ââ
XI
ONE DAY IN 1810 THERE WAS A KNOCK AT POTTERâS DOOR IN Aldgate: Kemp had come home from New South Wales to give evidence at Major Johnstonâs court martial. Bligh had singled out Kemp as the person he particularly wished to see prosecuted for the mutiny, but â of course â Kemp managed to avoid punishment. Commended for his candour in the witness box, he forfeited only his 4,000 acres and his 24 cows, rather than his freedom. 3
Nevertheless, his return home was hardly triumphant. A letter from his sister Susanna calls him âa strange manâ, often silent, very proud â and a bankrupt, just as he had left England 20 years before. From the letters I gathered that he was briefly a shipping agent, a pawnbroker, and a wine-merchant, but âlost much on Bordeaux wine speculationâ. At one point he lost a bet of £150 against the capture or death of Napoleon.
By 1815, he had exhausted his options. The world regarded him, he complained, as âan uncertificated bankrupt, alias an outlawâ. There was nowhere to go but back to the antipodes. He prepared to flee the country for a third time. Pursued by âclamorousâ creditors, he went cap in hand to see Potter in the house where he grew up and, with staggering optimism, requested his biggest loan to date: an amount equivalent to the entire annual turnover of âKemp & Potterâ.
Kemp asked Potter to guarantee two shiploads of goods worth âupwards of five thousand poundsâ. He assured Potter that he would be able to sell the goods at considerable profit in Van Diemenâs Land, thanks to the exceptional contacts of his other brother-in-law, Alexander Riley, who had recently built Sydneyâs new hospital and made £30,000 from the contract (âsome say Fifty, but he is a close man and no person could tell exactly how muchâ). A similar âmost splendid fortuneâ, he promised Potter, would be realised by âKemp & Potterâ from the cargoes of tobacco, brandy and seedlings. Kemp required the money only for nine months and would pay full interest.
Unbelievably, Potter agreed.
But Kemp did not stop there. Since 1801, the Potters had looked after his illegitimate daughter Emily. Before he boarded the Dawson , Kemp also unloaded on them his legitimate children George and Elizabeth.
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The first sign of trouble came in a letter dated several months later from Paraiba (now João Pessoa) in Brazil. Kempâs ship was detained after losing her anchor. Her captain âappears to me to be a little derangedâ. And Kemp has run out of money. âI have been under the necessity of drawing on you for sixty pounds.â
Potter hears nothing else for the next two years. He wrote letter after letter appealing to âour agreement with your good selfâ, but they remained unanswered. By now Kempâs father had died and Potter was having to steer the firm from the rocks on which Kempâs negligence threatened to pitch it. At Aldgate, his desk piled up with demands for Kempâs £5,000 (more than £400,000 today). Kempâs sisters wrung their hands uselessly. Susanna wrote to Amy: âItâs complete swindling to fly oneâs country for speculation.â
At last, in August 1817, a letter arrived from Hobart. It begins breezily: âI arrived here about six weeks ago and have commenced my mercantile pursuits.â But due to âthe severe trialsâ lately experienced, combined with âunprecedented mercantile circumstanceâ, Kemp fears he will not be able to make his remittances âso punctual as I would wishâ. He details his sales to date.
Tobacco: âI am sorry to say there is no market for that nowâ â although he did sell some sacks of Princeâs Mixture in Cape Town (âYou was either robâd or cheated,â Potter
Patricia Davids, Ruth Axtell Morren