Explore "Moreton Bay" by F.W. Mole on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Excitement ran high at the Settlement when it became known that a transport had arrived from overseas, bringing a fresh contingent of prisoners to Moreton Bay. This was the first vessel that had come direct from England and everyone was agog to hear the latest news from Europe. Even the "old hands" at the settlement, men who had known the horrors of Port Macquarie, Norfolk Island, and Botany Bay, forgot for a space their toil and suffering, in the hope of learning something of a world from which they had been long divorced and which they would never see again.
When the vessel anchored at the Bight in mid-stream, she was boarded by the Commandant and his staff in all the panoply of official regalia and official importance. He soon learnt that the man officially in charge of the transport was Captain John Gow. The manifests and official papers were carefully gone through and a complete inventory of the human cargo was taken and checked with the lists that had been handed to the master before leaving Channel waters.