Charlotte Badger

In the intervening centuries, a number of writers have contributed to the fiction that she took an active role in the mutiny and she became known – erroneously – as Australia's first female pirate.

[1] In June 1796, she was convicted at the Worcester Assizes of breaking into a house and stealing four guineas and a Queen Anne's half-crown.

[6] The Venus was a vessel chartered by the colonial government to carry supplies of salted pork and other food to Port Dalrymple in Van Diemen's Land.

[7] A public notice in the Sydney Gazette on 20 July 1806 incorrectly described the two women, Badger and Hegarty, as convicts (they were both emancipated) and implied they were among the mutineers.

Charlotte Badger was described as "a convict, very corpulent, with full face, thick lips, and light hair, has an infant child".

[12] It was later reported that when Badger and Hegarty had been landed from the Venus in the Bay of Islands, the two women had been kept in their own quarters and the local Māori chiefs had declared them strongly tapu.

[16] On 4 June that year she married Thomas Humphries, a private in the Invalid Company, at St Phillips Church in Sydney.

The last record of Badger in New South Wales was on 5 July 1843 when she appeared before a judge in the Windsor court house in the Hawkesbury, accused of stealing a blanket.

The story of Badger's involvement in the mutiny on the Venus grew from the public notice in the Sydney Gazette in 1806 which implied she was one of the mutineers.

[32] As well as appearing in the public notice about the mutiny, her presence on the Venus in 1806 was cited by Captain Chace in his report in the Sydney Gazette.

[33] It was reported by Captain James Birnie of the Commerce in Sydney in 1807 that mutineers Kelly and Lancashire had been captured in the Bay of Islands though there is no further evidence to support this.

[34] Various claims have been made about the fate of the Venus, including that it was burned by Māori to retrieve its scrap metal, who then also cooked the men on board.