Читать книгу The English Colony in New South Wales (Vol. 1&2). Narrative of the British First Settlement in Australia 1788-1801 онлайн

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A contract had been entered into by government with Messrs. Calvert, Camden, and King, merchants of London, for the transporting of one thousand convicts, and government engaged to pay £17 7s. 6d. per head for every convict they embarked. This sum being as well for their provisions as for their transportation, no interest for their preservation was created in the owners, and the dead were more profitable (if profit alone was consulted by them, and the credit of their house was not at stake) than the living.

The following accounts of the numbers who died on board each ship were given in by the masters:

Men Women Children On board the Lady Juliana 0 5 2 On board the Surprise 42 0 0 On board the Scarborough 68 0 0 On board the Neptune 151 11 2 Total 261 16 4

All possible expedition was used to get the sick on shore; for even while they remained on board many died. The bodies were taken over to the north shore, and there interred.

Parties were immediately sent into the woods to collect the acid berry of the country, which for its extreme acetosity was deemed by the surgeons a most powerful antiscorbutic. Among other regulations, orders were given for baking a certain quantity of flour into pound loaves, to be distributed daily among the sick, as it was not in their power to prepare it themselves. Wine and other necessaries being given judiciously among those whose situations required such comforts, many of the wretches had recourse to stratagem to obtain more than their share by presenting themselves, under different names and appearances, to those who had the delivery of them, or by exciting the compassion of those who could order them.