William Redfern (1775 – 17 July 1833) was the Surgeon’s First Mate aboard HMS Standard during the May 1797 Nore mutiny, and at a court martial in August 1797 he was sentenced to death for his involvement.

It was also a period when naval seamen were protesting about low pay, bad food, poor health care and harsh discipline.

Such issues had always existed in the navy, but the inability of sailors to support their families at a time of significant social unrest in Britain fuelled their dissent.

Of particular concern to the crews on warships of the North Sea Fleet, to which HMS Standard was attached, were the virulent diseases plaguing the lower decks.

Petitions to the Admiralty for better medical care were ignored and in May 1797 10,000 common seaman took control of the North Sea Fleet and sailed the ships from the Yarmouth to the Nore sandbank on the Thames.

At his court martial on 22 August 1797 he strongly refuted the accusations of Thomas Parr, captain of HMS Standard, claiming that he had acted as surgeon against his wishes, and had resigned his commission twice.

At an interview with Fitzpatrick, prisoner William Redfern requested transportation as soon as possible, and to be allowed to work on the convict ship as a surgeon.

This was a critical loss and Lieutenant Governor Joseph Foveaux temporarily put Redfern in charge of the hospital until a free surgeon could be brought to the island.

By this time Redfern was also active on the island as a farmer and trader in agricultural produce, and remained so until his return to Sydney in June 1808.

Macquarie considered hardworking well-behaved emancipists to be among the most useful members of the colony, and he prioritised rehabilitation over punishment, seeing personal repatriation into the society of freemen as an ultimate goal for convicts.

To emphasise this commitment, Macquarie invited prominent emancipists to dine at Government House and these occasions often included William Redfern.

In 1814 the three convict ships, General Hewitt, Three Bees and Surry, arrived in Sydney with major outbreaks of scurvy, typhus and dysentery.

It was greatly feared that the typhus rampant on the Surry would affect the colony and Australia’s first quarantine camp was created on the north shore of the harbour opposite Dawes Point (today in the vicinity of Jeffreys Street, Kirribilli).

[13] Later Redfern was appointed to lead an inquiry into the infections and high death rate on the three ships and he recommended major reforms to sanitation, diet, air circulation and medical assistance on convict transports.

In 1815 the British Government adopted most of these reforms and they improved conditions aboard all subsequent transport ships, significantly reducing convict morbidity and mortality.

Macquarie’s egalitarian policies, and his efforts to convert the penal colony into a free and prosperous settlement, were strongly resisted in Britain by the Tory conservative government.

They claimed that not only was improving the lives of convicts and emancipists eroding transportation as a deterrent to crime, the residents of the colony were now on the whole better fed, dressed and more securely employed than most of the poor in Britain.

On 5 January 1819 Lord Bathurst appointed John Thomas Bigge as the Commissioner of Inquiry to examine the functioning of the New South Wales colony.

Redfern was devastated by his rejection and promptly resigned as the senior hospital surgeon, closed his private practice and moved immediately with his family to their Campbellfield farm in Minto.

[16] In conducting his inquiry into the colonial governance, Bigge mostly interviewed ‘exclusive free’ residents who opposed Macquarie’s social reforms.

The Commissioner interrogated Redfern several times, seemingly to unearth irregularities in the doctor’s medical administration of the hospital and his close relationship with Macquarie.

A major assembly was held in Sydney in January 1821 and William Redfern and Edward Eagar were elected to petition the British Parliament on restoring the legal and civil rights of emancipists.

The case was abandoned when Bigge agreed to withdraw earlier accusations, and not slander Redfern in two future inquiry reports.

Even John Bigge admitted that Redfern’s properties were among the colony’s eight farms ‘in the best state of cultivation and exhibit the greatest improvement’.

On his return trip from England in 1824, Redfern had brought vine cuttings and a Portuguese winemaker from Madeira to start a vineyard at Campbellfield.

In 1961 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) televised The Outcasts, a historical drama in twelve episodes, in which William Redfern was the central figure.