Australia
Manuscript produced by convicts on the transport Clyde, 1863
£16,380
Auction: 19 September 2024 from 10:00 BST
Description
Titled ‘The Clyde Journal, Literary and Miscellaneous … Published under the Patronage of Dr Wm Crawford R.N., Surgeon Superintendent, and H. S. Rosser Esqre, Religious Instructor. Edited by John Keeling, Published every Thursday Morning onboard the Ship “Clyde”’. Manuscript fair copy, containing 6 weekly numbers in 1 volume, folio (32.6 x 20.4cm), 42 ff., light blue wove paper with royal arms blind stamp to head, written in black ink in a single hand (possibly that of the editor John Keeling), calligraphic title-page, remaining text in double column, bound in contemporary green half roan, marbled sides, binding worn
Footnote
A rare primary source for the recreations and inner lives of transported convicts, dating from the relatively brief period of direct transportation to Western Australia, and a few years before the end of penal transportation in its entirety in 1868. The Glasgow-built Clyde left Portland in March 1863 carrying 320 convicts bound for the Swan River colony, Western Australia, arriving in Fremantle on 29 May. The editor and possible copyist John Keeling is recorded as a bookseller convicted for forgery at the Old Bailey in 1862. Contents include poems, stories, humorous vignettes, sanitary reports, jauntily-written accounts of onboard recreational activities (or the lack thereof), a register of births (and one death, the wife of one Corporal Webbe), and various miscellaneous pieces including ‘A Glimpse at the Ladies in the after part between decks. By one of themselves', ‘London and some of its Lights & Shadows’, and similar. The journal kept by the ship's surgeon William Crawford is held at the Public Record Office in Kew (accessible online via the National Library of Australia File 6. AJCP Reel No: 3181).