Exiled to the Colonies: Transportation of Convicts

A Sentence of Exile

Transportation was one of the most feared punishments in English law. It removed the offender not just from liberty but from home, family, and country. Between the early seventeenth century and the late nineteenth, British courts sentenced tens of thousands of men, women, and children to be sent overseas. More than 50,000 went to the American colonies before the Revolution, and around 162,000 to Australia after 1788. Sentences were usually for seven years, fourteen years, or life. The crimes could be trivial by modern standards: stealing a handkerchief, poaching a rabbit, passing a forged note, or joining a riot. Many convicts were young, poor, and repeat offenders. Judges often chose transportation as a merciful alternative to the gallows. In practice, it was both punishment and a state-run labour scheme for the colonies.

The Journey Out

After sentence, convicts were held in county gaols, Newgate, or the Thames hulks—old warships moored in rivers and used as floating prisons. Hulks were overcrowded, filthy, and riddled with gaol fever. The voyage itself could be brutal. Ships to America took six to ten weeks; those to Australia took four to six months. Conditions depended on the captain, the contractor, and the surgeon. Convicts might be chained below deck, fed salt beef and biscuit, and plagued by scurvy, typhus, and dysentery. Women and children travelled too, often in separate quarters. Some ships lost a tenth or more of their passengers. Others, run with discipline and clean water, arrived with most alive. The journey was a penal sentence in itself, and many never saw land again.

Arrival and Harsh Labour

In the American colonies, convicts were sold as indentured servants. They worked tobacco fields in Maryland and Virginia, rice plantations in the Carolinas, and sugar estates in the Caribbean. In Australia, the system ran differently. Convicts were assigned to settlers, government farms, or public works. Women were sent to female factories or into domestic service. Masters held wide powers. Punishments included flogging, leg irons, chain gangs, solitary confinement, and transfer to notorious stations such as Norfolk Island or Port Arthur. Obedience was enforced by the lash and the constant threat of worse.

• Clearing scrub, felling timber, and burning brush
• Building roads, bridges, gaols, and public buildings
• Farming, herding, whaling, and mining
• Domestic service, laundry, and sewing for women

Separation and Starting Again

Transportation tore families apart. A seven-year sentence often meant permanent separation, because return was expensive and rare. Letters were slow, costly, and frequently lost. Spouses remarried. Children grew up without a parent. Yet exile also created strange opportunities. A convict who behaved well could earn a ticket of leave, allowing work for wages, property ownership, and marriage. Further good conduct brought a conditional or absolute pardon. Some emancipists became farmers, traders, publicans, and respected settlers. Others sank into drink, debt, or further crime. Exile could destroy a life or remake it, and often did both at once.

Shaping Colonial Societies

Convict labour shaped the colonies in concrete ways. It built roads, harbours, farms, churches, and towns. It supplied workers where free labour was scarce and expensive. It created societies with unusual demographics: men outnumbered women, though the imbalance was less extreme than legend suggests. Convicts brought useful trades—carpentry, weaving, baking, midwifery, and blacksmithing. They also brought resistance: escapes, bushranging, riots, and work stoppages. In New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, the stain of conviction divided emancipists from free settlers for generations. The colonies were built on coerced labour, and their social divisions reflected that inheritance.

The End of Transportation and Its Records

The American Revolution ended transportation to America in 1776. Britain turned to Australia, beginning with the First Fleet in 1788. Transportation to eastern Australia ended in 1840, to Van Diemen's Land in 1853, and to Western Australia in 1868. The records are remarkably rich. The Old Bailey Proceedings, convict indents, ship musters, assignment registers, tickets of leave, and pardons can reveal a person's crime, sentence, trade, height, scars, and behaviour. For family historians, they offer gritty, practical detail. For everyone else, they are a reminder that ordinary people were shipped across the world for small offences and large misfortunes. Every entry is a fragment of a life uprooted.