In August 1808, Charles Flynn stood before the Court of Criminal Jurisdiction in Sydney, charged with stealing from aboard the ship Hero, anchored in Sydney Cove. The stolen items were modest: two brass spy-glasses valued at 40 shillings and a table cloth valued at 10 shillings.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty. In the harsh legal climate of early colonial New South Wales, the theft was enough to send Flynn to the gallows. He was hanged on 28 August 1808.
In 1786, Britain faced a crisis of its own making. Decades of the so-called bloody code had swollen the criminal class with petty offenders, American independence had slammed shut the old dumping ground of the colonial plantations, and the gaols were bursting. The solution settled upon was audacious: ship Britain’s unwanted more than 15,000 miles to New South Wales, a coastline only recently mapped by Captain Cook, who had praised the land around Botany Bay.
Over the next 80 years, more than 160,000 men and women were transported to Australia and Van Diemen’s Land. Transportation meant total erasure: the loss of home, family, and identity, followed by a brutal sea crossing and survival in an utterly foreign land. Yet for many, the far side of the world offered something the old country never would: a second chance.
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