Seizure of the Cyprus Brig in Recherche Bay

DESCRIPTION: "Come all you sons of freedom, a chorus join with me, I'll sing a song of heroes and glorious liberty." Transportees who got in trouble are put on the Cyprus to be sent to a new prison. The prisoners rebel and gain their freedom
AUTHOR: "Frank the Poet" (?)
EARLIEST DATE: 1967 (Stewart/Keesing-FavoriteAustralianBallads)
KEYWORDS: transportation prison crime mutiny escape freedom
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1829 - the Cyprus Mutiny
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Stewart/Keesing-FavoriteAustralianBallads, pp. 65-67, "Seizure of the Cyprus Brig in Recherche Bay" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Geoffrey C. Ingleton, _True Patriots All: or News from Early Australia as told in A Collection of Broadsides_ ("Garnered and Decorated" by Ingleton), Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1988, p. 129, "Seizure of the Cyprus Brig in Recherche Bay" (1 text)
Hugh Anderson, _Farewell to Judges and Juries: The Broadside Ballad and Convict Transportation to Australia, 1788-1868_, Red Rooster Press, 2000, p. 487, "Seizure of the Cyprus Brig" (1 text, with a tune on p. 608)
Roud #9122
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Cyprus Brig" (subject)
NOTES [716 words]: This song is about a true event, but the details are often a little hazy. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding, Knopf, 1986, pp. 214-216, has a summary of the events involving the Cyprus, and quotes several stanzas of this song.
The convicts on the Cyprus had originally been sent to Van Diemen's Land, but committed additional offenses there and were to be sent to Macquarie Harbour, a harsher encampment. There were 31 of them. Contrary to the song, their crimes were not "little trifling offences"; most were capital crimes that had been commuted to secondary transportation (Hughes, p. 215).
William Swallow, the key figure, is perhaps a case in point. As early as 1810, he had "hijacked" a schooner at Port Jackson, which resulted in his transportation to Tasmania. Sent there aboard the Deveron, his actions during a storm saved the ship, so the crew rescued him after he was turned over to the authorities in Hobart. He made it all the way to Rio before the British caught him again. He escaped again, but rather than flee to someplace safe, he went to London, where he was caught and once again transported. So he ended up in Tasmania, where he managed to get in even greater trouble, resulting in his transfer to the Cyprus.
The officer in charge of the Cyprus was a Lieutenant Carew, who commanded not only the ship's crew but also sufficient soldiers to (it was thought) guard the convicts. Not even all the convicts wanted to rebel; 13 were not part of the plot. But, somehow, the rebellious convicts overpowered Carew, the soldiers, the crew, and the loyal convicts when they were at Recherche Bay near the southern tip of Tasmania. They then forced Carew and Co. to leave the ship.
In all, they sent 45 people over the side: Carew, his wife, the soldiers, the loyal convicts, etc. Despite having a large load of supplies for Macquarie Harbour available (supposedly a year's rations for 200 people), the mutineers left minimal provisions for the loyalists, who very nearly starved. A convict named Popjoy and Mrs. Carew managed to build a 12-foot coracle out of branches and old hammocks, and they were able to get help, just in time to save the survivors (Hughes, pp. 215-216). Popjoy was given a free pardon for his heroism and allowed to return to England.
The mutineers, meanwhile, had put Swallow in charge, presumably because of his sea experience. How he navigated the ship I don't know (being a sailor isn't the same as being a navigator!), but after making several island stops, they ended up in Japan in 1829. Several of the mutineers left the ship there, or even before they got there. (According to the Wikipedia article on the Cyprus mutiny, this part of the voyage, often dismissed as fiction, has now been corroborated by Japanese records.) Swallow and several others ended up in China, having abandoned or lost the ship. Swallow presented himself at Canton (the city properly known as Guangzhou) as a captain who had lost his ship, and managed to make it back to England *again*.
Swallow's stubbornness cost him. Astoundingly, Popjoy spotted him and his confederates in England, and they were taken into custody. Two of the remaining mutineers, George James Davis and William Watts, were hung -- but Swallow and Popjoy said that Swallow had been forced to run the ship because he was the only experienced sailor, and the court accepted it, at least enough to spare his life. So Swallow, for the third time, was transported. Sent to Hobart, he was transferred to Macquarie Harbour, then to Port Arthur when Macquarie was closed. There were no more escapes; he died there of tuberculosis (Hughes, p. 216).
"By the early 1830s [the Cyprus mutineers] had become the subject of one of the 'treason songs' or proscribed convict ballads" (Hughes, p. 214).
Hughes, in the photo section following p. 194, has a contemporary woodcut showing Lieutenant Carew's party trying to build their coracle. There have also been historical novels and dramas about the event.
There is at least one other song about it, too, "The Cyprus Brig/"
For background on the likely author "Frank the Poet" (who is credited with the song, e.g., in Ingleton's broadside, but that appears to be an editorial addition) see the notes to "Moreton Bay (I)." - RBW
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File: StKF065

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