Regulation of Convict Transportation to Australia

Factual Questions
1

From Cowen&Tabarrok’s intro econ textbook:

The next paragraph provides their answer.

The survival rate “shot up to 99%” after a “new system” was implemented in 1793, under which captains were paid not per person who boarded in England but per person who successfully walked off the ship in Australia. The incentive was now that the captains took sufficiently good care of their passengers that they survived. This shift in the payment scheme is said to have succeeded where other less direct methods had failed.

Sharp little anecdote. As presented.

I wanted more information.

There are two cites in the textbook. Neither cite is to a contemporary newspaper or clergyman’s sermon. One of the two citations is to an economist in 1862 – around 70 years after the events in question. This is obviously the original source of the economist-hero story that the textbook writers borrowed from. The 1862 account is exactly this, that “humanity was appealed to in vain” until the shift in how payment was arranged, after which “economy beat sentiment and benevolence”. Or check this sentence out: “When the sentimentalist and the moralist fails, he will have as a last resource to call in the aid of the economist”. Anyway, this change in payment increased the survival rate of the convicts, according to this account, with the survival rate later reaching 98.5%. That’s all the information given by the 1862 economist.

There is one more citation in the textbook, this time to a chapter from a relatively recent book about the history of human transport during the slave era: Many Middle Passages, the chapter “The Slave Trade is Merciful Compared to [This]”. Ahhhh yes. This has citations to newspapers regarding the treatment of the convicts, and – even more – to the trials of those directly accused of that harsh treatment. (Acquitted.) Details omitted from the textbook: the First Fleet of transported convicts did not have the same horrific mortality. It was the Second Fleet, in which slave transport shippers were hired to transport convicts, that suffered these brutal losses. This chapter is where that quote is taken from about the captains having no incentive to care about the convicts. The next fleet transport, also using slave transport shippers, likewise suffered relatively bad losses and brutal conditions.

I feel the need to note that neither source cited by the textbook mentions the year 1783.

It is mentioned in this book chapter (and also omitted from the textbook) that the government then stopped using slave shippers for their convict transport. This book chapter neglects to mention how subsequent captains were paid, but it does argue this:

The one policy mentioned in particular is the refusal to hire any more slaver shippers. No other “checks” or “regulations” are described with any more specificity than this. It’s possible that the “laws changed” here is intended to refer to payment of ship captains, but it doesn’t say for certain.

Trying to find more, I found Russ Roberts article “Incentives Matter” which relates the same story, with the argument that there was a “bonus” for each survivor. (Roberts was a colleague of the two textbook writers, and this article precedes the first edition of the textbook.) This article also gives the survival rate before and after the change – around 89% survived before the change – but doesn’t cite its source for this information.

We’re getting closer to my question now.

The accounts here refer variously to “regulations” or “laws changed” in response to the horrific treatment of convicts during transportation – one account as an example of failure, and the other as an account of eventual success. But no specific piece of legislation is cited. No law is cited. No specific year is given for any change in the law except the change in payments in 1783, and only Russ Roberts mentions this but not his source. The only specific policy mentioned by the book chapter is the eventual refusal to use slave shippers.

So… WHAT specific, exact “regulations” were passed related to the shipment of convicts to Australia, and WHEN were those “laws changed”? This seems like a rather important part of the story, but no source has anything specific to say about this. Does anyone here know?

2

Interesting OP.

Resources to hand don’t allow but I’m dubious about 1783 as being the “WHEN” for any systematic approval in conditions on convict transports.

In 1784, the British government passed legislation authorising the transportation overseas of convicts from the prison hulks.
I haven’t information to hand about what regulations were applicable before then.

The worst survival rates of a convict ship was the Hillsborough which arrived in Sydney(Botany Bay) in 1799.
Arguable the most notorious convict transportation voyage was the ‘Britannia’ and it’s sadistic master Thomas Dennott in 1797.

Following these incidents English authorities began to review the system in 1801. I would have placed the big changes as being from 1802 when private contractors in England came under the direct supervision of Aaron Graham.

Changes included

  • ships would be sent regularly twice a year at the end of May and the beginning of September
  • independent Surgeon Superintendents

The reference Convicts to Australia includes the notation “Add that to the fact that a bonus was paid to the charterers to land the prisoners safe and sound at the end of the voyage” which indicates this came into effect no earlier than 1802 and probably as part of subsequent revisions to regulations.

If I can find anything more specific to the questions posed will revert.

3

In The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes:

“The commissioners tried but usually failed to stop contractors filling their ships with goods to be sold in Sydney at huge markups. However, they put a naval surgeon aboard each vessel who was answerable to them and not the contractors; his job was to supervise convict health, correct the abusive conduct of the ships’ officers and keep an eye on lax or incompetent contractors’ surgeons. No mere medical officer could tell a master what to do on his own ship. Still, their presence was felt. The first transport to sail under this arrangement was the Royal Admiral in May 1792, followed in 1793 by three more shiploads of English and Irish prisoners. All had supervisors on board, and out of 670 prisoners only 14 died. 49 The moral was clear, but by 1795 the Napoleonic Wars had begun and England had no naval surgeons (and few ships) to spare for Botany Bay. In the next twenty years only one privately contracted transport sailed with a naval surgeon on board. Between 1792 and 1800, eighteen convict ships went to Australia from Britain. The first six (from 1792 to 1794) all had supervising agents. Their death rate was one man in 55, one woman in 45. Of the next six ships, only two carried naval agents or surgeons, and their death rate was one man in 19 and one woman in 68. The last group of six had no naval supervision of any kind, and one man in 6 died, and one woman in 34.”

4

1784 law says that the proper security be taken, to ensure the effective delivery of the prisoner to the destination.
See here …

5

I’ve also read this story quoted as lore by economists, and wondered about the veracity of it.

For starters, it is always described as “an economist”. Which economist was it that came up with this plan? Presumably there aren’t many it could have been in that era

6

That was exactly my own warning bell.

If it actually was one “economist”, dude saved some lives. Not saying we should start sculpting some marble for an eternal monument to the power of incentives, but this merits at least explicit mention of his name in a freakin textbook. Credit where it’s due, right? Instead the writers get to pat themselves on the back for their chosen profession, based on an incident they didn’t seem to properly research or cite.

It’s still a pretty decent textbook, tho, as these things go. Better that they fuck up history than the actual subject matter. I’ve got other intro books on my shelves with basic econ errors and that’s just embarrassing.

7

The only reference I can find to 1700s legislation requiring carriage of naval surgeons is the Dolben Act, which only regulated ships carrying African slaves. It’s entirely possible that there was similar legislation governing ships used for Transportation, but I can’t find it.

8

But that makes the opposite point that economists usually make about this. The implies was the extra government regulation (in the form of a surgeon), not an economic incentive that got them there alive.

9

Sure, but the implication is irrelevant if it isn’t actually true (as to Australia).

10

Sorry, but its time to crack open the textbooks.

WH Oldham, Britain’s convicts to the colonies [1992 edition] [plus another half dozen as cross-checks]- Initial engagement of convict transport ships was on a contract system, through engagement with the Navy Board. Because of the high mortality of the Second and Third Fleets, the British Home Secretary Henry Dundas, who was a lawyer and not an economist ‘suggested to the Treasury that contractors should be paid for the number of convicts landed in the colony and not for the number embarked.’ [p. 157]. The way this was operationalised was a sum per head embarked, and then a further sum for each landed.

The details were embedded in contracts between the Government, via its Navy Board agent and ship owner contractors. There was no legislation or regulation, it just became the performance standard that all contracts were to comply with. The responsibilities of surgeon-superintendents on board, and their power to direct ship captains on the voyage, were clarified and amplified.

So, no economist, no legislation.

11

But yay lawyers!

12

Good find, thanks. Interesting as Henry Dundas is remembered as a villain of history on the whole (for oppression of highland culture in Scotland following the Jacobite uprising, and opposition to the abolition of slavery)