![\"\"](\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/files\/2018\/07\/YoungSeaman_NMM-203x300.jpg\")
<\/a>‘Young Seaman’, National Maritime Museum, image PU8577<\/p><\/div>\n
As convicts worked together with free men on the dockyards, lines between them became blurred. Convicts, like seamen, were \u2018easily recognised\u2019 by \u2018their swarthy, weather beaten complexions\u2026[and] muscular well-knit frames\u2019.[v]<\/a> In the 1889 novel Ticket of Leave Man, convict Jem Dalton\u2019s time in Gibraltar allows him to \u2018pass\u2019 as a \u2018seaman on a cattle steamer\u2019, after he escapes the convict establishment, and return to England \u2018disguised by his sunburnt skin and seafarer\u2019s manner\u2019 to exact revenge on our hero. [vi]<\/a> This fictional portrayal speaks to wider fears about that released convicts could hide in plain sight, thanks in part by the trades learnt on the dockyard.<\/p>\n Cover of the ‘Ticket of Leave Man’ novel by Tom Taylor (1889)<\/p><\/div>\n The discipline on the penal settlement was also influenced by the naval department, who superintended part of the works. In the 1840s, for example, convicts were provided \u2018a half gill of rum\u2019 at 11 AM and 5PM, which they drank from a trough. [vii]<\/a> This mirrored the daily allowance of diluted rum, known as grog, to Royal Naval seamen in the Victorian era.[viii]<\/a> Convicts were also allowed to use part of their earnings, to buy goods, usually tobacco, which they were allowed to smoke in the evening in the barracks. Though official correspondence cited health reasons for grog allowance, it seems likely that the convict authorities feared insubordination if they were banned from drinking and smoking, which were provided to the sappers and dockyard workers whom they worked alongside.<\/p>\n Stoppage of grog was the most common form of punishment for minor offences, yet drunkenness caused more disciplinary refractions than it prevented. In 1854, the acting overseer, stated that he \u201chalf of the offences were committed when the men were excited by rum\u201d.[ix]<\/a> For more serious offences, convicts were flogged with a \u2018cat o\u2019nine tails\u2019 whip against the \u2018flogging mast\u2019, and during an investigation Dr William Baly concluded that the whip which was used was an old naval cat, which was \u2018much heavier than any now used in the government prison and hulks at home, or in the army.\u2019[x]<\/a> As the project continues, I will continue to investigate how the naval and military influence of the Gibraltar garrison effected how convicts experienced penal servitude on Gibraltar in the mid nineteenth century.<\/p>\n [i]<\/a> Arthur George Frederick Griffiths, Prisons over Seas: deportation and colonization, British and American Prisoners to-day <\/em>( \u2018History of Romance and Crime\u2019 edition, orig. c.1890s), pp. 155-6.<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> Jack Coggins, Ships and Seamen of the American Revolution, p. 183.<\/p>\n [iii]<\/a> Seems to be stipulated in 1891 regulations \u2013 mentioned in Simon Wills, tracing your seafaring ancestors: A guide to maritime photographs for family historians <\/em>(Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2016).<\/p>\n [iv]<\/a> Robert Wilson (Governor of Gibraltar) to Earl Grey, 2 Jan. 1849, Gibraltar, TNA, HO 45\/2929; Sir William John Codrington to Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies?, 12 February 1864, Gibraltar, no. 15, in BPP 1864, vol. 40, no. 3305, \u2018Annual Report of the Convict Establishment at Gibraltar for 1863\u2019, p. 13.<\/p>\n Sir William John Codrington, Governor of Gibraltar, 1 Jan 1864, Gibraltar Prison, BPP 1864, vol. 40, no. 3305, \u2018Annual Report of the Convict Establishment at Gibraltar for 1863\u2019, p. 13.<\/p>\n [v]<\/a> Arthur Griffiths, Prisons over Seas: deportation and colonization, British and American Prisoners to-day <\/em>( \u2018History of Romance and Crime\u2019 edition, orig. c.1890s), p. 163.<\/p>\n [vi]<\/a> Tom Taylor, The Ticket of Leave Man<\/em> (London: Aldine publishing co, 1889), p. 18.<\/p>\n [vii]<\/a> Statement of Alfred Pearce (convict), 7 May 1848, BPP 1849, vol. 43, nos. 1022, 1121, \u2018Convict Disicpline and Transportation. Further correspondence on the subject of convict discipline and transportation\u2019, p. 58.<\/p>\n [viii]<\/a> Richard Moore, \u2018\u201cWe Are a Modern Navy\u201d: Abolishing the Royal Navy\u2019s rum ration\u2019, The Mariner\u2019s Mirror, <\/em>103:1 (2017), pp. 67-79.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/carchipelago\/files\/2018\/07\/ToLMan-178x300.jpg\")
<\/a>