Mary Bryant

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This article is about the convict Mary Bryant. For the movie see The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant

Mary Bryant (1765 - ?) was a Cornish convict sent to Australia. She became one of the first successful escapees from the fledging Australian penal colony.

Contents

[edit] Life

Born Mary Broad in Fowey, Cornwall, England, to William Broad and Grace Symons Broad, a fishing family, she left home to seek work in Plymouth, England, where she became involved in petty thievery. After being arrested and committed by J Nicholls, Mayor of Plymouth, to Gaol Prison with two accomplices, Cathrine Fryer and Mary Haysoning, for highway robbery of a silk bonnet, jewellery, and a few coins, she was sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia. In May 1787 she was sent as a prisoner with the First Fleet aboard the ship Charlotte.

Bryant gave birth on the journey to a baby girl, whom she called Charlotte after the ship, and gave the surname Spence, after one of the other convicts, David Spencer, possibly the father. When she got to Australia she married William Bryant on February 10, 1788. Bryant, a convicted smuggler, was also on the Charlotte with Mary and they later had a son together called Emanuel on May 6, 1792.

William Bryant was also from Cornwall, where he had worked as a fisherman. In Sydney Cove, a colony just starting off, William was considered useful, and was put in charge of looking after the fishing ships. When he was caught selling fish on the side to convicts he was given 100 lashes. He made a plan to escape with Mary, persuaded a Dutch captain to give him some sailing equipment, and waited until all boats that could chase after them had left. On March 28, 1791, William, Mary, her children and a seven-man crew stole one of the governor's boats.

After a voyage of sixty-six days, Mary, her children and the eight men reached Kupang in Timor after a journey of 5,000 kilometres. This extraordinary voyage became part of seafaring history, and has often been compared with William Bligh's similar epic journey in an open boat of only two years earlier, after the mutiny on the Bounty. Bligh's voyage had also ended in Timor. The trip involved navigating the then uncharted Great Barrier Reef and the Torres Straits.

Timor was then under the control of the Dutch. The Bryants and their crew claimed to be shipwreck survivors. They were later discovered to be British convicts, apparently after William became drunk and confessed in the process of bragging. To avoid an international incident they were sent back to Britain to stand trial, travelling first on a Dutch ship to Batavia in the company of survivors of a British ship sent to capture the Bounty mutineers and then later from the Cape in the company of Royal Marines returning from Sydney on HMS Gorgon. During the voyage back Mary's husband and children perished of fever; the younger child and husband in late 1791, the elder in May 1792.

She expected to be hanged or returned to Australia. However, Mary Bryant was instead imprisoned for an additional year in Newgate Prison, during which time a public outcry ensued, coupled with an onslaught of publicity by the famous writer and lawyer James Boswell. As a result, she was pardoned in May 1793, as were the four surviving men of her crew later. Boswell gave her an annual pension of 10 pounds, but nothing more is known of her life after her release.

Boswell had a reputation for amorous dalliances with lower class women and his friends took to imagining or joking that Botany Bay had provided him a new mistress.[1] His friend William Parsons wrote a scurrilous poem in which they're imagined hanged together on the gallows at Tyburn in a final union! Yet despite this elegantly turned prurience (as Robert Hughes put it), it seems Boswell was motivated only by sympathy and that all he received was a packet of Botany Bay tea leaves (the Correa plant). (The tea was found with papers at Boswell's Malahide Estate in Ireland in 1930. It and the papers are today at Yale University, which gave a portion of the tea to the Mitchell Library in Australia.[2])

[edit] Drama

She was the subject of a British/Australian television movie The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant, with Romola Garai (playing the eponymous Mary Bryant) Jack Davenport and Sam Neill. It was first screened in Australia on 30th October 2005 on Network Ten as a two 2-hour part series. It was screened in the UK over Easter weekend 2006 on ITV. It was not a historically accurate treatment of her story.

[edit] See also

[edit] Books about Bryant

  • Mary Bryant : her life and escape from Botany Bay, King, Jonathan; Pymble, N.S.W. : Simon & Schuster Australia, 2004.
  • The transportation, escape and pardoning of Mary Bryant (nee Broad), Currey, C. H.; Sydney : Angus and Robertson, 1963.
  • Boswell and the girl from Botany Bay., Pottle, Frederick A.; London : Heinemann, 1938.
  • A long way home, Walker, Mike; Chichester, West Sussex, England ; Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2005.
  • Escape from Botany Bay : the true story of Mary Bryant, Hausman, Gerald; Orchard Books, 2003.
  • To brave every danger' : the epic life of Mary Bryant of Fowey, highwaywoman and convicted felon, her transportation and amazing escape from Botany Bay Cook, Judith; Macmillan, 1993. ISBN 0-333-57438-9

[edit] References

  • Parish registers for Fowey, 1803-1970

Microfilm of original records in the Cornwall Record Office, Truro, Cornwall
Cornwall Record Office call nos.: DDP/66/1/9, 18, 21-23.

  • Cornwall parish registers, marriages

Vol. 8, p. 1-54 Phillimore, 1905

  • Devon Quarter Sessions

Epiphany 1786, DRO-QS32/73, Christmas Session 1786 Gaol Calendar

  1. ^ Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 1987, paperback 1996 ISBN 1-86046-150-6
  2. ^ Bill Wannan, Australian Folklore, Lansdowne Press, 1970, reprint 1979 ISBN 0-7018-1309-1, "Botany Bay Tea" entry, page 85
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