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Chapter One Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson

Chapter Two Jack Harp / Peevay / George Baines, employee of the New World Land Company / Peevay

Chapter Three Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley

Chapter Four Jack Harp / Peevay / Sir Charles Moray, Secretary for Colonies, London, to George Alder, Governor of Van Diemen’s Land / George Alder, Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, to Sir Charles Moray, Secretary for Colonies, London / Peevay

Chapter Five Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Dr Thomas Potter / Timothy Renshaw

Chapter Six John Harris, Van Diemen’s Land settler and landowner / George Alder, Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, to Mr Smithson of the Prison Committee of the Society of Friends, London / Jack Harp / Ben Hayes, Van Diemen’s Land farmer / Peevay / Ben Hayes, Van Diemen’s Land farmer / George Alder, Governor of Van Diemen’s Land / Peevay

Chapter Seven Timothy Renshaw / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Dr Thomas Potter / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson

Chapter Eight Nathaniel Stebbings, Bristol schoolmaster, to John Harris, Van Diemen’s Land settler and landowner / Jack Harp / Julius Crane, visiting inspector of the London Prison Committee / Jack Harp

Chapter Nine Dr Thomas Potter / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson

Chapter Ten Peevay / Mrs Catherine Price, wife of the storekeeper, Wybalenna Aboriginal Settlement, Flinders Island / Peevay / William Frampton, Governor of Van Diemen’s Land / Peevay

Chapter Eleven Dr Thomas Potter / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Timothy Renshaw / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / Timothy Renshaw

Chapter Twelve Superintendent Eldridge of the Oyster Cove Aboriginal Settlement, to Gerald Denton, Governor of Tasmania / Pagerly / Mrs Gerald Denton, wife of the Governor of Tasmania / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Peevay / Mrs Gerald Denton, wife of the Governor of Tasmania / Mrs Emily Seaton / The Colonial Times / Dr Thomas Potter / Peevay / Dr Thomas Potter

Chapter Thirteen The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Peevay / Dr Thomas Potter / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Dr Thomas Potter / Timothy Renshaw / Dr Thomas Potter / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Dr Thomas Potter / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / Dr Thomas Potter / Peevay / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Dr Thomas Potter / Peevay

Chapter Fourteen Timothy Renshaw / Dr Thomas Potter / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / Dr Thomas Potter / Peevay / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley / The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson / Dr Thomas Potter / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley

Chapter Fifteen Timothy Renshaw / Mr P. T. Windrush / Peevay / Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley

Epilogue

The Anglo-Manx Dialect

Acknowledgements

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matthew Kneale was born in London in 1960, the son of two writers. He studied history at Magdalen College, Oxford, then spent a year in Japan, where he began writing fiction. His first novel, More Banquets, won a Somerset-Mangham award. Sweet Thames, which was set in the London of the 1840s, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. When not writing he travels, and he has visited eighty-two countries and seven continents, walking in mountains from Ethiopia to New Guinea.

Epilogue

All fiction – and non-fiction – changes and concentrates what it portrays. This is one of its first purposes. Having said this, I have tried to represent this era as truthfully and precisely as possible. All the major events of the Tasmanian strand of the novel follow real occurrences, from the stealing of aboriginal women by sealers to the massacre on the cliff, the bizarre cruelties of the convict system, the fiasco of the Black Line, and the terrible farce of Flinders Island. Likewise some of the characters are closely based on people of the time, including Robson, the various governors and their wives, and also Mother (Walyeric). She was inspired by a formidable woman named Walyer, who fought the whites and was greatly feared by them. She knew how to use firearms, was reputed to have cut a new path through the bush to facilitate her campaigns, and would swear fluently in English as she launched her attacks. She was eventually captured by the British in late 1831, and at once began trying to organize fellow aboriginals in a rebellion. She died not long afterwards.

Another character based on a real figure of the time is Tayaleah, or George Vandiemen. The real George Vandiemen was a Tasmanian aboriginal child who was found wandering close to New Norfolk in 1821, having become separated from his family. His aboriginal name is not recorded. His discovery came to the attention of a recently arrived settler, William Kermode – oddly enough, a Manxman – who decided to have him sent to Lancashire to be educated. The boy did well in his studies, and was sent back to Tasmania in 1828, only to fall sick and die soon afterwards. His short history was soon forgotten.

Now I’d like to jump forward a little. During the 1850s a quiet revolution was occurring in England. Prior to this time Europeans had frequently treated other peoples with great cruelty – the worst example being, famously, slavery – yet there was little or no attempt in educated circles to justify such behaviour. The biblical notion that all men are roughly equal may have been ignored, yet it had remained largely unchallenged. This was all to change. In 1850 a disgraced surgeon named Robert Knox published The Races of Men, a Fragment. This was in many ways a precursor of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, insisting that all history was nothing more than a process of racial conflicts (rather as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in their Communist Manifesto of two years earlier, had declared all history was merely a struggle between economic classes). Knox was among the first writers to claim that the various races of mankind were actually different species (a ludicrous notion in modem scientific terms), while it will come as little surprise that he proposed that the Saxon, of England, was among the most exalted. His book was an immediate bestseller. For the first time it became acceptable, even fashionable, to see the world in these terms. Though such ideas were strongly opposed in some quarters they continued to gain influence, forming a kind of ugly background music to the latter part of the century. Their impact since then is infamous, and we are living with it still today.

If only the Victorian British had troubled to look a little more carefully at the evidence before them. It was widely accepted throughout the later nineteenth century that the most inferior of all races had been the aborigines of Tasmania – how else could they have so foolishly permitted themselves to be exterminated? – who were often depicted as being a kind of halfway house between men and apes, wholly lacking in faculties of reason. Another presumption of the time was that the highest and rarest form of reason was mathematics.

I would now like to include a factual document from that time. This is George Vandiemen’s final school report, written by his teacher in Lancashire, John Bradley. I have reproduced it in full.

Mr Kermode,

You will perceive, in George’s ciphering book, the easy manner that has been pursued in teaching him Arithmetic, a branch of education that he was supposed to be incompetent in, but this supposition, I am persuaded, could only have arisen from want of method and experience in those who attempted to teach him, and not from want of faculty in George. His abode with me has been but short, but I am convinced that his good memory, which you will perceive in his repetition of the Psalms and other things which he has got off, must certainly enable him to go through common Arithmetic with as much faculty as boys do in general.

I feel much gratified in having had this boy with me, tho’ but a little time, as it confirms me more in the opinion that I have long cherished: that Man is on all parts of the globe the same; being a free agent, he may mould himself to excellence or debase himself below the brute, & that education, government and established customs are the principal causes of the distinctions among nations. Let us place indiscriminately all the shades of colour in the human species in the same climate, allow them the same means for development of intellect, I apprehend the blacks will keep place with the whites, for colour neither impairs the muscles nor enervates the mind. We know that a black horse can match a white one in the race and that Hannibal and his black Africans contended gloriously with Rome for the Empire of the world. May the revolutions of mind establish the empire of reason and benevolence over the ruins of ignorance and prejudice. But I fear, sir, that I am running from the subject, which is by your desire to say the method that I would recommend to be pursued in the passage.

Arithmetic may be followed up by selecting the easy examples out of a printed one which he has with him; but care should be taken that he do not disfigure his ciphering book, as it may be shown to the Governor, so that if he should write down any sums let it be on common paper, these may be at some future time transcribed, if it should be thought necessary.

The Psalms. Repeat one daily so as to keep in most those which he has already got off.

Read a lesson daily in the juvenile Reader and commit a portion of it to memory.

Say the multiplication and pence tables frequently, also a portion of the Geography and write a lesson out of the Orthography & get the Rule connected with the lesson.

I refer to your judgment for the next. May the Giver of Intellect bless your endeavours and make you happy in the exercise of benevolence. I also pray that our Nation may be just as it is great and secure to George a portion of the land that gave him birth, that our Rulers may in this instance be governed by justice, let the Native have what the voice of reason and equity adjudge to him, and not let power supersede right.

Accept my wishes for your own and George’s prosperity & a pleasant voyage to the other side of the globe.

Your humble servant,

John Bradley

The Anglo-Manx Dialect

The Manx spoke a Celtic language, closely related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It gradually declined during the nineteenth century and the last native Manx speaker died in the 1970s (though recently there has been a move to teach it in Manx schools). As the old language faded there grew up what became known as the AngloManx dialect. This was a form of English but was peppered with Celtic words and thoughts, and grammar was often a literal translation from Gaelic. Thus Manxmen would not say he has a new hat but there’s a new hat at him, and the definite article (the) could be used for emphasis, as in the phrase the hot I am.

Sad to say the Anglo-Manx dialect has, like the old Gaelic language before it, largely vanished now, apart from the odd word or phrase, but fortunately a full record was made when it was still widely spoken, at the beginning of this century (Vocabulary of the Anglo-Manx Dialect by A. W. Moore, Edmund Goodwin and Sophia Morrison), which offers an intriguing picture of past Manx preoccupations. The sea, herring and superstition all figure strongly. So do various types of character, all of them viewed with disapproval. Smooth, slippery people are represented by no fewer than nine words (Creeper, Click, Clinker, Cluke, Crooil, Reezagh, Shliawn, Slebby and Sleetch). Showy, boastful people get ten (Branchy, Filosher, Feroash, Gizzard, Grinndher, High, Neck, Snurly, Stinky, Uplifted). Large blundering people get fifteen (Bleih, Bleb, Dawd, Flid, Gaping, Glashan, Gogaw, Gonn, Hessian, Kinawn, Looban, Ommidhan, Slampy, Sthahl and Walloper), while peevish people – especially small scolding women – get as many as eighteen (Borragh, Coughty, Crabby, Cretchy, Corodank, Gob-mooar, Gonnag, Grangan, Grinnder, Grouw, Huffy, Mhinyag, Pootchagh, Scrissy, Scrawl, Smullagh, Spiddagh and Targe).

There is also a wealth of words concerned with beatings, inheritance, and small amounts of money. Most of all, though, the dialect gives an impression of a people who delighted in playing games with language. I have used it sparingly, so it does not become too much of a distraction, and have tried to make the meaning of words apparent from their context. In case any have proved puzzling, though, I offer a glossary.

Anglo-Manx Glossary

Baarl	Manx name for the English language
Babban	Baby
Bat	Hit
Bat	Hit
Big	Denoting anyone of importance
Black Pig	Sulk: He had the black pig on his back
Bleb	Fool
Boaster	Someone from Ramsey Town
Body	Commonly used for person
Branchy	Boastful, showy, spreading oneself out
Brave	Smart/intelligent
Canokers	A beating
Clicky	Crazy
Cob	Short, stout person
To Cog	To beat down a price
Cretchy / Cretch	Querulous, infirm/querulous person
Crooil	Crouching, deceitful
Crust	A frail old person
Customs	An officer of the Customs
Dawd	Dull, awkward person
Derb	Wild, intractable person
Dirt	No-good person/bad weather
Fritlag	Worthless person/rag
Gizzard (to have)	To be conceited
Glashan	Big, hulking boy
Gorm	A lout
Grouw	Glum, sulky
Guilley	Boy, fellow
Hard Case	Someone with daring
High	Proud, fine, loud
To be Hobbled	To be in difficulties
Huffy	III-tempered
Humpy	Humped/hunch-backed
Jerrude	A state of forgetfulness/dreaminess
Jink	Money
Lonnag	Sea name for a mouse
Lumper	Anything of a good size
Mhinyag	Short person
Mie	Good
To Molevogue	To punish
Morrey	Morning
To Murder	To ill treat
Pay wedding	Wedding at which each guest pays share
To Pelt	To thrash/skin
Pommit	Sea name for a rabbit
Power	A large number
A Raddling	A beating
Rank	Keen/eager
Refreshments (give)	To beat
Rile	To beat/to salt and shake herring
Sainty	Saintly/Sanctified
Scanky	Shrill
To Scelp	To smack
Scotch Grey	Louse
Scran	A scrap/any caught fish not herring
Scranch	A rending sound
Scrape	A miser
Scrapings	Savings
Scrawley	parsimonious, mean
Screeb	Scrape, scratch
Scriss/Scrissag	A mean person/scolding woman
To Scutch	To whip/lash
Shliawn	Smooth, slippery, sly
Slampy	Flabby
Sleetchy/Sleetch	Slippery or deceitful/slippery person
Slewed	Drunk
To Snurl	To turn up your nose in disgust
Soo	Juice, energy, substance
Spiddagh	Small, sharp person
Stink	Pride
Stob	Short fencing post/stumpy figure
Swiney	Sea name for a pig
Thrail	Walk slowly
Throng	A crowd/to crowd
Yernach	Irish
Yernee Yeirk	Irish beggar

MATTHEW KNEALE

English Passengers

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Epilogue

The Anglo-Manx Dialect

Anglo-Manx Glossary

Acknowledgements