While this happened, fifty convicts seized and bound their overseers, robbed the stores for provisions and put three boats to sea.

The Chief Justice said when passing sentence on John Goff: You... have detailed to the Court a long complaint of the hardships you have undergone, of your love of liberty, and of the degree of violence which you thought yourself justified in using to obtain it.

It is within the recollection of this Court, how near you were, at no distant period, to have been consigned to the grave, and happy would it have been for you had your career then terminated without the additional crime of the blood of a fellow creature being added to the list... With respect to the general harsh treatment of which you complain on Norfolk Island, what are men sent there for?

It is within the knowledge of the Court that they are never sent except for crimes of the deepest dye; and is it then to be supposed that they are sent there to be indulged, to be fed with the fruits of the earth and that they are not to work in chains?

No, the object in sending men there is not only as a punishment for their past crimes, but to serve as a terror to others; and so far from it being a reproach, as you have stated it, it is a wise project of the Government in instituting that settlement for the punishment of the twice and thrice convicted felon, as a place of terror to evil doers, and in order to repress the mass of crime with which the Colony unhappily abounds.

[18] Lt Borough took charge of a boat and took off after the felons but was forced to turn back as darkness began to fall and the rough seas.

After a short struggle during which two or three muskets were wrested from the soldiers, six of the mutineers were killed or wounded and the guard “succeeded in dispersing and finally in securing them”.

[24] On 10 September 1834 two clerics and the New South Wales hangman left Sydney for Norfolk Island aboard the brig Governor Phillip, to carry out the executions of the thirteen convicted mutineers.

[25][26] On the morning of 21 June 1842, a convict work party aboard the Governor Phillip at Cascade were let out to start unloading the launch of the brig, as they had to make way for a ship that had arrived from Sydney.

Three of the soldiers that were initially confined below deck were also scalded badly when the convicts poured boiling hot water through gaps in a hatch that they had bolted shut.

The Australian reported, "We heard several of those employed about the gaol remark that they had never witnessed men come to the scaffold so firm, yet in so resigned and devotional a state of mine.