Jack Moseley - Slave Childhood in Revolutionary Virginia

Jack Moseley was born to a slave mother about 1758 on Edward Hack Moseley's 560 acre Rolleston Hall, Princess Anne County, Virginia, close to the port of Portsmouth on Chesapeake Bay. His master, (and probably his father), Edward Hack Moseley, one of the most prominent Virginia planters, a burgess in the Virginia General Assembly, militia colonel, sheriff and vestryman at Lynnhaven Parish Church, bestowed the name, Jack, on the boy. Young Jack bore the surname all his life, though for a brief time in London, either as an assertion of his independence, or as a criminal alias to avoid detection for defrauding the Royal Navy, he was known as John Shore. One of his enduring childhood memories was undoubtedly of Hack Moseley's 'famous wig and shining buckles', though not as enduring as the memory of being a slave with every facet of his life controlled at Moseley's whim or the memory of the hard labour to which he would soon be put.¹

Practically from the day of his birth, Jack was carried into the tobacco fields 'tied onto [his mother's] back with a bandage.' There he would be laid down uncovered on the ground, and suckled for a few minutes when hungry. Some masters, and Moseley was probably one, were solicitous of the mothers and newborn, while others were not, ordering their overseers not to allow the new mothers to interrupt the hoeing and planting by stopping to feed their babes, at the risk of a flogging. Once weaned, though, Jack was left behind at the slave quarters to play in the care of the very old or of children barely out of infancy themselves, while his parents went off to work in the tobacco or wheat fields 'sunup to sundown'. Such an idyll would not last long.²

At the age of five Jack would have been put to work in the tobacco fields for the first time, probably in the summer. His job, alongside the other young children new to the fields, was to pick off the tobacco worms and their eggs which grew on the underside of the leaf. The work was only part-time. At nine, or perhaps as early as seven, Jack was expected to be half as productive as the adults. Weeding and transplanting began in April once the frosts were gone. Children did not engage in the frenetic task of making beds for the tobacco, at the rate of 350 a day at less than two minutes per bed, a speed that left workers near collapse with exhaustion by sunset. About 28,000 plants were seeded every day. Transplanting the new shoots of tobacco from these seedbeds after each summer shower had to be done quickly. Every slave on the plantation was put to the task, again at a speed that fatigued. Soon enough, Jack Moseley was old enough to join them, as part of a hard-pressed work-gang. Inexperienced workers like Jack were not allowed to remove the selected plants from their beds. They took on the less skilled tasks of weeding and replanting, which took all summer. Children in the gangs quickly learned from their elders to progress at the pace set by fellow-workers, always one slower that that demanded by the white overseers. In the late summer the vast numbers of tobacco stalks were split and left to wilt. Gathered up, the plants were left to hang and dry in the tobacco houses all through the fall and winter. Early the next year a closely supervised Jack would kept stripping, sorting, bundling and packing the tobacco leaf in hogsheads, this latter job one that required great physical effort and left one with aching muscles, and shoulders bruised by the rod if not done fast enough. Much of that work was done at night by firelight,breaking into the slaves' sparse recreation time.³

Tobacco cultivation was not the only onerous duty demanded of Jack and his fellows. Particularly during Moseley's childhood Virginia was in the grip of a tobacco glut. One observer noted 'the country is so excessively poor that even the industrious frugal men can scarcely live, and the least slip in our economy would be fatal.' Planters diversified into wheat and corn in a desperate attempt to recoup a profit. Slave-owners shortened or got rid of the lunch break in the field. Holidays other than Christmas, Whitsunday and Easter were cut. On some plantations Saturday became a full working day. Wheat was sown in the autumn, and sowing was a task well suited to children Jack Moseley's age. Harvest came in July, after the tobacco had been transplanted, and again, all hands were put into the field to work quickly before the wheat fell to seed. Then came the threshing, sometimes into the night, further encroaching on limited leisure time.⁴ By the earliest age young Jack Moseley saw before him nothing but a life of endless exploitative toil, bother for himself and any future progeny.

At ten Jack would have left his mother's quarters and gone to live with relatives or in an all-male barracks. Wherever he moved to, it would have been to a log house, the gaps between the logs caked with dried mud, surprisingly cool in summer and warm in winter. Quarters were sparsely furnished, but Jack perhaps acquired an iron pot and ceramic bowls and jars to eat from. Food was coarse, usually a ground corn-meal that could be baked while in the fields into a cake, molasses and possibly some buttermilk. Whisky and rum were kept for Christmas, though Moseley does not seem to have been much of a drinker. His garb, at least as a field hand, was 'an old blue jacket and trowsers', and presumably 'coarse shoes'.

The slaves would gather together every night to play music, especially the fiddle, and dance, however hard the day's work. On Saturday they could tend to their own gardens, if they had a pass from the master visit family or friends on nearby plantations. On Sundays there was gambling, usually on cockfights, sleeping and church. Jack Moseley appears to have been brought up a devout Christian, probably Anglican, because his master was Anglican, though the Baptist fervour of the first Great Awakening would not have passed him by. He worshipped up the back of the Lynnhaven Parish Church, where Edward Hack Moseley was a vestryman. Thus, he again came to his master's notice.⁵

Jack's piety was impressive enough for Edward Hack Moseley to apprentice him as a waterman. The job was not prestigious; he still came into regular contact still with the field-hands loading and unloading at the plantation wharf but it was not as monotonous or backbreaking as working in the tobacco fields and houses. The work gave him mobility, transporting hogsheads and bags of wheat in scows to nearby Portsmouth and busy Norfolk. Here, too, he probably got to know and fell under the influence of a slightly older slave named Daniel. Apparently he was able to make some money working for himself, which was not unusual for watermen, who could hire themselves out for the rest of the day like any other slave artisan once they had completed their allotted tasks. He grew familiar with Chesapeake Bay and 'most of the Rivers in Virginia and Maryland.' With the fulfilling work came a sense of pride and self-worth. Before long, his master was describing him as 'artful' with 'a surly look' which can probably be read as meaning he was intelligent and developing a sense of independence. Like many watermen he began to dress with a sense of style. By the age of seventeen he had Sunday apparel of 'a new dark Russia drab coat and breeches with white metal buttons'; and owned '2 shirts' and '2 white jackets.'⁶

Shortly afterJack Moseley's eleventh Christmas brought news on the slave telegraph of a bloody slave revolt upstream in Hanover County Forty or more slaves seized the overseer on their plantation and whipped him 'from neck to waistband' in revenge for their own frequent punishment and fought back, trapped in a barn when local whites tried to bring the rebellion to an end. In a lesson to slaves everywhere, three blacks were killed and five others wounded in retribution. Many of the others were tried and hung. In January 1770, the next year, in Hanover and in the counties of York and James City news of an increasing number of runaways from there spread through the black community. Then, in the spring of 1771 Virginia had the greatest flood in its history, swelling the James and Rappahanock Rivers. It wiped out those same counties already plagued by an increased incidence of runaways. The 'almost general Calamity' took 150 lives, swept away or submerged riverside warehouses, drove larger vessels ashore, capsized many smaller boats, endangered shipping with uprooted floating trees, and washed topsoil and thousands of hogsheads of tobacco away. Neither Portsmouth nor Norfolk are singled out in accounts of the Great Freshet so we can assume Ralleston Hall was affected only by minor flooding, if at all. Nevertheless, unease was heightened by the possibility of Britain going to war with Spain over the Falkland Islands. Troops were recruited in Norfolk. Rumours swept the blacks working on the wharves and ships, Jack among them, that 'in Bermuda Owners of Vessels generally' procured ' passes for their Slaves as Freemen, in case they should be taken by the Enemy.' One Bermuda-born slave, on this basis, laid claim to his freedom. Whipped up by sailors and watermen like Jack, frissons of hope swept the slave households, horror the whites. Gossip about the eagerly awaited new Governor, who people knew had been forced to give up the more lucrative post of New York for Virginia, and deeply resented having to do so, did not impress the white majority.. In a drunken midnight frolic John Murray, Lord Dunmore, 'destroyed the coach and cut the tails from the horses' of New York's Chief Justice. When he was expected to arrive, only his dogs and baggage sailed down from New York. When he finally did turn up, in September 1771, women pronounced him handsome, men, in hindsight, thought 'his chin a little too weak, his mouth petulant.' Apart from his penchant for drunkenness, cruel practical jokes and his beautiful wife, he seemed yet another nondescript, boorish, imperial official who would come and go with little effect on the fortunes of the colony.⁷

1Ralleston Hall, Virginia, http:www.ralestonhalluk/hall/virginia.htm ; Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, p.8; Ann Waters Yasinke, Virginia Beach. A History of Virginia's Golden Shore, Charleston, 2002, p.66;Gary B. Nash, 'Forging Freedom. The Emancipation Experience in the Northern Seaport Cities', in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, Charlottesville, 1983, p.23; Old Bailey Proceedings Online. (www.oldbaileyonline.org version 6.0 17 April 2011) April 1784. John Moseley t17840421-17; Allen Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves. The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800, Chapel Hill, 1986, pp. 387-388.

2Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint. Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake & Low-country, Chapel Hill, 1998, p.200; Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves, pp. 73, 94, 372-3; Michael Mullin, Africa in America. Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736-1831, Urbana, 1994, p. 169; Edmund S. Morgan, Virginians at Home. Family Life in the Eighteenth Century, Williamsburg, 1952, pp. 65-66; Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery. From the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800, London, 1988, p. 462.

3Kenneth M. Stamp, The Peculiar Institution. Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, New York, 1956, p. 49; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, pp. 19, 167,188,198. It is estimated there were about 80 slaves working on the various home plantations of the 100 leading Virginia planters, among whom Edward Hack Moseley should certainly be included. Cf. Thad. W. Tate, The Negro in Eighteenth Century Williamsburg, Williamsburg, 1965, p. 21; John Richard Alden, The South in the Revolution, 1763-1789, Urbana, 1957, p. 19; Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves, p. 373.

4Joseph A Ernst, 'The Political Economy of the Chesapeake Colonies 1760-1775: A study in Comparative History', in Ronald Hoffman, J. McCusker, Russell R. Manard, & Peter J. Abbott, (eds.) The Economy of Early America. The Revolutionary Period, 1763-1790, New York, 1960, p. 183; Marc Egnal, A Mighty Empire. The Origins of the American Revolution, Ithaca, 1988, p. 145; Loren S. Walsh, 'Slave Life, Slave Society and Tobacco Production in the Tidewater Chesapeake, 1620-1820' in Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, (ed.) Cultivation and Culture. Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas, Charlottesville, 1993, pp. 179-180; Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone. The First Two Centuries of Slavery in America, Cambridge, Mass. 1998, p. 116; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, pp. 170-172.

5Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves, pp. 369, 371; Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, (ed. Frank Shuffelton), New York, 1999, p. 158; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, pp. 111, 114; Robert McColley, Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia, 2^nd. Edition, Urbana, 1973, pp. 61-63; Virginia Gazette or Norfolk Intelligencer, 26.7.1775 http.www.etext.lib.virginia.edu/ 24.4.2012, Virginia Runaways Project; Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black. American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812, Baltimore, 1969, p. 131; Stephen A Marini, 'Religion, politics and Ratification' in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, (eds.) Religion in a Revolutionary Age, Charlottesville, 1994, p. 197; Holton, Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era,p. 3.

6 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, pp. 238, 234; Virginia Gazette or Norfolk Intelligencer, 26.7.1775 http.www.etext.lib.virginia.edu/ 24.4.2012, Virginia Runaways Project; W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks. African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, Cambridge, Mass., 1997, p. 25; Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion. Slave Resistance in Eighteenth Century Virginia, Oxford, p. 51.

7Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution. The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America, London, 2007, p. 117;Tate, The Negro in Eighteenth Century Williamsburg, p.113; Arthur Pierce Middleton, Tobacco Coast. A Maritime History of the Chesapeake in the Colonial Era, Baltimore, 1984, pp. 58-59; Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War. Race, Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia, Williamsburg, 2007, pp. 24-25; John Shy, Toward Lexington. The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution, Princeton, 1965, pp. 391-392; Philip D. Morgan, 'British Encounters with Africans and African Americans circa 1600-1780' in Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, (eds.) Strangers within the Realm. Cultural Margins of the First British Empire,Chapel Hill, 1991, p. 195; Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation. A History of the American Revolution, 1763-1776, Indianapolis, 2004, pp. 392-393; Alf J. Mapp, '' 'The Pirate Peer”: Lord Dunmore's Operations in Chesapeake Bay' in Ernest O'Neill Eller, Chesapeake Bay in the American Revolution, Centreville, 1981, p. 56

The Tragedy of George William Maxwell

By the early eighteenth century Massachusetts and Rhode Island had built up an illicit rum trade with islands in the French West Indies and in Canada along the St. Lawrence, in contravention to the British Trade and Navigation Acts. Local customs officers and, indeed, Governors milched the revenue collected from the 1733 Molasses Act for their own personal benefit or accepted bribes to ignore the regulations In this period the Royal Navy took no part in enforcing the navigation laws because they were barred judicially from seizing ships 'within the limit of any point within the territories of the respective Governors of his majesty's Plantations.'¹

The trade between New England and the French territories did not stop with the outbreak of war between England and France in 1756. So efficient were the Yankee traders that the French were able to provision their bases with ease throughout the war. Such illegal traffic delayed the British capture of Louisburg on the St. Lawrence for a year. Lord Loudain, the commander of British forces in North America, singled out the Rhode Islanders as 'a lawless set of smugglers, who continually supply the Enemy with what Provision they want, and bring back their goods in Barter for them.' William Pitt the Elder ordered this 'illegal and most pernicious Trade' shut down, but so endemic was it, so long-standing was the corrupt behaviour of customs officials, it was accepted as part of normal everyday life by all concerned. So it was, in the war's final years, the British Government determined to wipe out colonial smuggling. They began by authorizing the Navy to enforce rigourously the 1733 Molasses Act. With the newly passed Revenue or Sugar Act which came into effect in April 1764 the duty on molasses was reduced but the customs service was reformed root and branch, so that it actually collected more duties and cracked down intensively on smuggling in general. This was be disastrous for local economies already plunged into post-war depression. Local coastal trade was severely disrupted because of officious implementation of the new customs procedures, especially by the Navy. City after city had a rush of bankruptcies.²

Even before the Sugar Act was passed Rhode Island merchants vehemently protested it would be the colony's ruination. Lord Admiral Colvill, Commander if the North American Squadron anticipated problems from the Rhode Islanders and ordered the twenty-gun Squirrell, Richard Smith, to winter at Newport. She was blown off course into Virginia and could not find a pilot to take her to New York over winter. The Newport Mercury did not hear of the reprieve, falsely reporting the ship's arrival. George William Maxwell was one of the crew, probably a nine-year old captain's servant. He apparently fulfilled his duties satisfactorily as he was not sent back to his parents. His time on the Squirell was probably not a happy one. Judging on his own attitudes to those below him when he was a third lieutenant, bullying and beatings may have been the order of the day aboard Richard Smith's ship.. The Squirrell did not sail into Newport Harbour until April 23, 1764. It expected serious trouble with smugglers.³

Serious trouble, aligned with a touch of pettiness, it got. Rhode Islanders immediately spread a rumour that anybody rowing provision-boats out to the Squirrell would be impressed. She was left stranded in the harbour with not a bum-boat in sight. Captain Smith had to resort to publishing a disclaimer in the local press before his crew could get any fresh food.

The Navy fared no better when the coast-guard cutter, the St. John, appeared in one of the estuaries of Narragansett Bay hoping to recruit local seamen. Merchants of the district 'entered into a Combination to distress us as far as they were able, and by threats and promises to prevent Seamen from entering for this vessel.' 'Combination' was replete of dark, conspiratorial doings that were a threat to the security of the Crown. Lieutenant Hill, commanding the St. John, seized the Bristo,a merchant vessel bringing molasses from Monte Christi in the French West Indies. There was the usual procession of restraining orders and chicanery by customs officials against the Navy to guarantee themselves the seizure fees. The lieutenant travelled to Boston to dispute the customs interloping with the Collector's superior. The Newporters cried 'pirate' because at the beginning of it all the Royal Navy had fired on a merchantman. Townspeople demanded the blood of the local pilot who had led the Navy to the smuggler in the first place. Sailors from the St. John snuck ashore and stole some pigs and chickens from a local miller. A deserter, caught by the locals, was threatened with hanging. A boatload of sailors hunting for him was pelted with stones. Demands for the pilot continued. The Newport Sheriff demanded the chicken and pig thieves be handed over to the local courts, but was refused permission to board the cutter.

At this point the St. John sought instructions from the Squirrell. Some of the mob ashore packed onto a sloop ready to take the St. John but thought better of it when faced with the cutter's guns. Captain Smith ordered the cutter to anchor under the Squirell's protection. Following orders from some members of the Governor's Council, the ceremonial gunner at Fort George on Goat Island fired a few cannonballs in the St. John's direction, but, on his own initiative, made sure he had not aimed to hit it and called for the surrender of the pig and chicken thieves. The Squirrell brought her broadside to bear on the island's battery but no further cannonades followed. Maxwell's role in all this is, of course, unknown, but he may have heard Richard Smith bitterly lament it was no longer necessary to convince the Newporters 'of their error.' The young lad was being imbued with that culture of determined aggression characteristic of the British Navy since the controversial execution of Admiral John Byng for cowardice in the face of the enemy after he fled the battle of Minorca in 1756.⁴

Neither Maxwell nor John Hunter could have met in the 1760s. Their various ships were in different parts of America, for the most part chasing different merchant-smugglers. But by mid 1787, on the way to Teneriffe in the first stages of the voyage to Botany Bay, the aging John Hunter, as captain of the Sirius, saw a side of the now thirty year old Maxwell, whom he had now known for some time, that would at first enrage him and Governor Arthur Phillip, but later cause them great concern. Maxwell had taken over the forenoon watch, only to discover there was only one watch on deck instead of two. He summoned the missing sailors then ordered the boatswain, who was responsible for discipline, to cane 'them, all round, one by one.' Their screams alerted Hunter and Phillip. They came up on deck 'to see what was the matter.' When Hunter learnt of Maxwell's antics he gave him 'a severe dressing down'. Phillip forbade all his officers from striking a man, threatening instant demotion. The story was told by Jacob Nagle, one of Phillip's boatmen. A young Pennsylvanian, he fought on the American side at the battle of the Brandywine in 1777, later was an American privateer, but through a series of fateful events ended up with the British. We shall hear much more of him later. Hunter saw Maxwell's behaviour as the first sign of a 'gradual decline in his faculties.'⁵

In his first months ashore at Sydney Cove Maxwell was stable enough; not so on the easterly voyage for supplies to Cape Town on which Phillip had dispatched the Sirius in October 1788. Once in the high latitudes, Hunter ran during the short nights as well as the long days for there was 'scarcely an hour which could be called dark'. A day's sail from Cape Horn, Maxwell went stark, raving mad as the ship wended its way 'in strong gales with very heavy frequent squalls' close to 'very high ice islands' in temperatures far below zero, while he was the night officer on watch. Amid the hazards of the icebergs he ordered the crew to set all the sails the ship could bear despite the strong breeze blowing. At midnight, after the watch changed, he set the steering sails, rolling the ship. Below decks Hunter was thrown from his cot. Still in his nightshirt he rushed on deck to immediately order the billowing sails taken in 'as fast as possible.' Once the Sirius was safe he demanded an explanation from Maxwell who screamed words to the effect that he had created a sudden emergency to see if the 'set of damned rascals' could cope. Hunter saw he was delirious and relieved him. He later said 'I feel very sincere concern at the nature of Mr. Maxwell's indisposition ...we served as lieut[enant]s together in three different ships in the last war, when he was a most diligent, active and capable officer.⁶

At Cape Town Hunter probably sought some ease for his friend's suffering in the local hospital. His responsibility for the health of other crew was heavy. In the long voyage across the Southern Atlantic thirteen had been crippled with scurvy, no longer able to go aloft. Only Maxwell would not be 'perfectly recovered' for the long return to Sydney Cove. Possibly Hunter sent a message to England from Cape Town to Maxwell's 'dearly beloved friend' and cousin, Jane Maxwell, who seems to have organised a bank draft from England to cover for Maxwell's needs while in New South Wales.⁷

There was little inner peace for the disturbed man back in Sydney. Once the various doctors had declared him irrecoverably insane he was relieved of his commission. Initially left to his own devices, he was allowed to wander off on his own. In April 1790, as the colony teetered on the brink of starvation, he went missing from the hospital for nearly two days. A marine sergeant, out fishing at Middle Head spotted him in a small boat close to being 'dashed to pieces' on the head's dangerous rocks. He had been rowing furiously from 'one side of the lower part of the harbour' to the other, provisionless and sleepless, ever since he had disappeared The marine brought him safely back to the hospital, but from then on for his own safety 'he was more narrowly watched.' Given a house and garden in the hospital grounds, he managed to avoid his attendant long enough one day to get a hoe and dig enough holes to bury all of seventy gold guineas, one by one, so the garden would grow money trees to increase his riches. A desperate search for the coins by the doctors, in which he probably stubbornly refused to help, only recovered one third of his fortune..⁸

Once the replacement New South Wales Corps arrived in the Second Fleet in June 1790, Phillip could think about repatriating any naval or marine personnel who wanted to go home. He ordered Maxwell aboard the snow Waaksamheid in March 1791, again under the charge of John Hunter. Nagle, another of the returnees, and always interested in Maxwell's fortunes since the 'starting' aboard the Sirius, noted he 'lay in his cabin in a dreadful condition, constantly delerious and insensible of anything whatever.' Three weeks into the home journey Maxwell died. He was buried at sea ' in as genteel a manner as could be expected to see.'⁹

1Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided. The American Revolution and the British Caribbean, Philadelphia, 2000, pp. 62-63; Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution, Philadelphia, 1974, p. 85; Neil R. Stout, The Royal Navy in America, 1760-1775. A Study of Enforcement of British Colonial Policy in the Era of the American Revolution, Annapolis, 1973, p. 9.

2I. R. Christie, Crisis of Empire. Great Britain and the American Colonies, 1754-1783, New York, 1966, pp. 36-37; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1775, New York, 1962, p. 30; Fred Anderson, Crucible of War. The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766, New York, 2000, p.520; Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution, p.85; Gary B.Nash, The Unknown American Revolution. The Unruly birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America, London, 2007, pp. 45-46; Jeremy Black, Crisis of Empire. Britain and America in the Eighteenth Century, London, 2008, p. 106; Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible. The Northern American Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution,Cambridge, Mass.1986, pp. 155-159.

3Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation. A History of the American Revolution, 1763-1776, `Indianapolis, 2004, p. 280; Stout, The Royal Navy in America, 1760-1775, pp. 65-66; Gillen, The Founders of Australia. p.242; N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World. An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, New York, 1996, pp. 266-267.

4Stout, The Royal Navy in America, 1760-1775, pp. 66-68; Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution. Colonial radicals and the development of American opposition to Britain, 1765-1776,New York, 1991, p.10; N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean. A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815, London, 2004, p. 272.

5Stout, The Royal Navy in America, 1760-1775, p. 78 et al.;The Nagle Journal. A Diary of the Life of Jacob Nagle, Sailor, from the Year 1775 to 1841, (ed. John C. Dann), New York, 1988, pp. 85-86 and passim.

6John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, (ed. Alec H. Chisholm), Sydney, 1962, p.141; John Hunter, An Historical Journal of Events at Sydney and at Sea, 1787-1792, (ed. John Bach), Sydney, 1968, p. 67, 69; Newton Fowell, The Sirius Letters. The Complete Letters of Newton Fowell, (ed. Nance Irvine), Sydney, 1988, p.100;The Nagle Journal, pp. 105-106; Captain Hunter to Governor Phillip, Sirius in Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, 17^th December, 1789 in Historical Records of Australia, Series 1. Governors' despatches to and from England, [HRA], Vol. I, 1788-1796, Melbourne [?], 1914, p.263.

7Fowell, The Sirius Letters.pp. 102-103; Hunter, An Historical Journal of Events at Sydney and at Sea, 1787-1792, p.177; Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia, p.247 for Maxwell's family.

8Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney, Government House, Sydney Cove, Feb. 12^Th 1790 in HRA, Vol. I, p. 147; Enclosure No. 3, Port Jackson, New South Wales, 26^th December, 1789, sgd. John White, D. Considen, G. B. Worgan in HRA, Vol. I, p. 264; David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. I, Sydney, 1975, pp. 80 and.83;The Nagle Journal, p.111.

9Governor Phillip to Secretary Stephen, Sydney, New South Wales, 14^th March, 1791 in HRA, Vol. I, p.254; The Nagle Journal,p. 131.