Marine Private Edward Odgers at Nantasket Road

Marine private Edward Odgers aboard the 4^th rate 50-gun Centurion, who would survive for little more than a year after he arrived at Sydney Cove fifteen years later, watched that first squadron go, as did Ensign Francis Grose, who with the 52^nd Light Infantry on one of the remaining transports. Later that day Odgers may have seen H.M.S Hope fire on and run a rebel privateer into the land. The prize turned out to be the Resolution, a captured coal ship, now regained by the British. If there were ragged cheers across the water from the Navy ships who could appreciate a good chase with a professional eye, or from the crowded troopships and other transports , the cramped conditions in the latter two would have made them very ragged indeed. Used, by now to convoys and crowded ports, the young private, probably in his mid to late teens (like George Johnston or Francis Grose) mat have looked with some wonder at the unusual fleet surrounding him,. the Centurion's companion 50-gun ship, Chatham, the 20-gun Lively, and 62 overloaded transports crammed with soldiers, fleeing civilians, provisions and materiel. If the company he kept in New South Wales is any guide. Odgers may have had a propensity for trouble, or at least was easily led. Private Michael Tolden, his only known associate in the First Fleet Marines, had been court-martialled on the convict womens' transport, the Prince of Wales, for abusive and drunken behaviour. Sentenced to 300 lashes, he received only 175.Odgers' war record is silent about his conduct. He did not come to any superior's notice for good or ill, the norm for service personnel from the lower ranks.¹⁼

Shuldham's squadron sailed from Nantucket Road on 27 March. The Centurion did not leave without incident. She ran foul of H.M.S. Niger carrying away her own ;Main= Yard.' The Niger lost her 'Topgallant Mast ... Stay and Jibb Stay.' Both captains blamed each other for the collision. Though the Centurion appears to have had right of way, according to her captain's journal, it was commonplace for captains to minimise their responsibility for an accident in the logs which were returned to the Admiralty at the end of a voyage. Indeed, Captain John Hunter, later New South Wales's second Governor, was a master at obfuscation about his foulings, near-misses and shipwrecks while Governor Arthur Phillip's propensity for collisions and groundings in home waters possibly did some damage to his reputation, leaving Admiral Lord Richard Howe wary about Phillip's appointment as as the convict colony's first Governor. Centurion's damage was quickly repaired to on 2 April, 1776 Admiral Shuldham could report that which his squadron reached Halifax 'not the lest accident had happened during the passage.'²

1Master's Log of HM Sloop Hope, 24^th March, 1776, in Clark, (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 5, Washington, 1970, p.231; Extract of a letter from Edmund Quincy Foster to Cdr. Miff;in , Stoughtonham, April 13, 1776, in Clark, (ed.) NDAR,Vol. 4, p. 610;;Journal of HMS Niger,Captain George Talbot, Wed. 27^rd March, 1776 Clark, (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 4, p. 592; Gillen, Founders of Australia, p. 359.

2Sir John Fortescue, The War of Independence and the British Army in North America, London, 2001, p. 30; Journal of HMS Centurion, Captain Richard Brathwaite, 27^th March, 1776 in Clark, (ed.) NDAR Vol. 4, p. 539; Journal of HMS Niger, Captain George Talbot, Wed. 27^th March in Clark, (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 4, p. 592; Robert Barnes, An Unlikely Leader. The life and Times of Captain John Hunter, Sydney, 2009, Chapter 5, passim; Lord Howe to Lord Sydney, 2^nd September, 1786 in Historical records of New South Wales, ]HRNSW] Vol/ 1, Pt.2, Mona Vale, 1978, p. 22; Alan Frost, Arthur Phillip, 1738-1814. His Voyaging, Oxford, 1987, pp. 98-99; Vice-Admiral Shuldham to Philip Stephens, Chatham, in Halifax- Harbour, 15^th April, , 1776, in Clark, (ed.) NDAR, Vol. 4, p.842.