William Bryant (convict)
He is remembered for his daring escape from the penal colony with his wife, two small children and seven convicts in the governor's cutter, sailing to Timor in a voyage that would come to rank alongside that of fellow Cornishman William Bligh as one of the most incredible ever made in an open boat.
In December 1783 he was apprehended at Bodmin and committed by the Mayor of St Ives for impersonating two Royal Navy seamen in order to obtain their wages.
Bryant was to serve 3 years of his sentence on the Dunkirk before departing for Australia on the first fleet of ships taking convicts to Botany Bay.
[2] The Dunkirk held women convicts as well as men, and in March 1786 Bryant's future wife Mary Broad arrived on board.
Mary Broad, who was a fisherman's daughter from Fowey in Cornwall but lived in Plymouth, had been convicted of highway robbery at the Lent Assizes at Exeter and sentenced to death.
[3] On the Dunkirk the quarters of the men and women were separated by an iron grille and it is unlikely that Bryant was the father of Mary Broad's first child, Charlotte, who was born on the voyage to Australia.
[7] A year later, when rations were dwindling and the colony was going hungry, Bryant was caught holding back some of his catch for his own use and to swap for vegetables and was sentenced to 100 lashes.
[9] Although supplies brought by the Second Fleet had warded off the threat of starvation for the time being, the long term prospects for the colony still looked bleak, and so the Bryants decided that escape was their only option.
[10] Bryant and his wife befriended the Dutch captain, Detmer Smith, and acquired from him the things they would need for their escape: a compass, quadrant, chart, rice, salt pork, flour, a barrel for water, two muskets and ammunition.
With no ship left in the harbour to give chase and the monsoon season fast approaching, Bryant decided to make his escape the following day when darkness fell.
There was a certain amount of sympathy and admiration for the convicts; John Easty, a private in the Marines, wrote: Today 8 men with 1 woman and 2 Children Convicts toke a kings boat of 6 oars with a large quantity of provisions... it was Supposed that they intinded for Bativee but having no vessell in the habour thare was no Pursueing them so thay got Clear of, but it is a very Desperate attempt to go in an open Boat for a run of about 16 or 17 hundred leags and pertuclar for a woman and two Small children... but the thoughts of Liberty from Such a place as this is Enough to induce any Convicts to try all Skeemes to obtain it as they are the same as slaves all the time thay are in this country.
[12]Bryant and his crew set out to navigate up the east coast of Australia, passing between the Great Barrier Reef and the mainland, through the Torres Strait and across the Arafura Sea to Timor.
[13] Before they reached the more sheltered waters of the Great Barrier Reef the weather deteriorated and they survived two storms, at one time being blown out to sea without sight of land for eight days.
Bryant took his wife's maiden name, calling himself William Broad, and told the authorities that they were some of the survivors from a shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef.
[17] When the Rembang arrived in Batavia a month later some of the convicts, including Bryant, were already suffering from fever and were moved ashore to the Dutch East India Company Hospital.
[19] At the Cape of Good Hope Bryant's widow and her daughter Charlotte and the remaining four convicts were handed over to Commander John Parker of HMS Gorgon, who was returning from Port Jackson.
[21]When Bryant's widow and the remaining four convicts finally reached London in July 1792, just over 5 years since the First Fleet had departed for Australia, they could have been expecting to face the gallows.
Mary Bryant received her pardon in May 1793 after spending nearly a year in Newgate Prison, where her conditions had been alleviated by money donated by members of the public.
[22] Bryant's voyage from Port Jackson to Timor in a small open boat has been compared to that of William Bligh and the castaways of the Bounty.
"In the last analysis, it is generally conceded that each of the groups performed an amazing feat entitling them to a secure place in the annals of human endeavour", concluded C. H.
[25] But in the 1930s a previously unknown account of the escape, James Martin's Memorandoms, was found amongst the papers of Jeremy Bentham at University College, London.
He was portrayed by Leonard Teale in the 1963 Australian Broadcasting Commission serial, The Hungry Ones, and by Alex O'Loughlin in The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant.
