Elizabeth Pulley Sets Sail II: first stop Santa Cruz, Tenerife

Introduction and Contents

            Descendant: A. Maie

the first leg to Santa Cruz (Drawing A. Maie)

By 3rd June the first stopover, the port of Santa Cruz, a Spanish colony on the Island of Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, was ‘in Sight distance 12 Leagues.’ [1]  At this and every subsequent stop the convicts were put out of irons and the officers and seamen went ashore.  The ships were watered and fresh provisions were brought on board.  At Santa Cruz the convicts were given ‘wine and fresh Beef for the whole of use while we remained here’; quite a change to the salted meat and beer which were the usual provision while at sea.  That however was the limit.  Unlike the seamen and officers the convicts were not allowed to disembark.

Freedom did not last long for Elizabeth.  On 9th June Elizabeth Pulley and three other women were put in irons for, in Lt. Clark’s words, ‘fighting ther was never three great whores living than they are, the four of them that Went throu the Bulk head while we lay at the Mother Bank’.  Whether they were, in fact whores or not, is immaterial.  Lt. Clark called all the women convicts ‘whores’. [2]

…and the second leg

Two weeks after arriving, the First Fleet was on its way again.  In contrast to the May rains experienced on leaving England, there was little wind and the heat made its presence felt.  The second leg of the journey was not without incident.  On 18th June a gale broke and the Fore Top Sail split.  The next day Elizabeth and the others were allowed out of their irons, with the comment by Lt. Clark,

I am convinced the[y] will not be long out of them the[y] are a disgrase to ther Whole Sex B.....s that they are I wish all the Women Wair out of the Ship

Sure enough one month later, on 3rd July, it was reported that the day before some of the ‘men [seamen] had brock throu the Womens Convicts Bulk head again and that he had caught four of the women in the mens place’.  Elizabeth Pulley was one of them.  The men were flogged and the women ‘to be keep in Irons all the Way -- if I [Lt. Clark] had been the Commr. I Should flogd the four Whores also’.

Captain Phillip had tried to stop at Porta Praya in the Cape Verde Islands to take on more water and fresh vegetables but the surf was too strong and the winds tricky.  In the end he was warned off by gunfire from the Fort and he decided to keep going.  So, by 5th July the whole fleet was placed on water rations.  Later that same day one of Elizabeth’s ‘crowd’, Elizabeth Dudgeon, was flogged for impertinence.  Lt. Clark then ordered her ‘tied to the pump She has been long fishing for it which She has at last got untill her hearts containt’.

On Saturday 14th July the fleet crossed the equator.  Soon after the wind picked up and they began to make headway.  Midway through the next week Elizabeth Barbur, another woman mentioned in the same breath as Elizabeth Pulley, ‘was very much in liquor’, first abusing the ship’s doctor and then anyone else who came near her, except for Lt. Clark.  His comment was, ‘I wonder how She come to forget me amonst the number’.  She was promptly put in leg irons, had her hands tied behind her back, and was gagged to keep her quiet.  The next week Elizabeth Pulley was in irons again although the irons must have been taken off at some stage previously as she was taken out of handcuffs for it.

This leg had been a long one and it showed in the restlessness of the women convicts.  As well as Elizabeth Pulley and the two women already mentioned, another two, Margaret Hall and Mrs McNamara, had caused problems, and on the 24th July there had been quite a bit of shuffling between the handcuffs and leg irons.  There also had been a problem with bed bugs ‘the Ship is Swarming with them every body complains of them Except Capt. Meredith and Self who Sleep in cotts’.

Elizabeth Pulley was not in irons for long this time.  By the 26th ‘the doctor desired that Eliz. Pully might be put out of Irons She being very ill having a blister on her’.  It must have been some blister, but not bad enough.  Six days later she was back in irons with Elizabeth Dudgeon - ‘the doctor having reported them well again...--the damned whores the moment that the[y] got below fel a fighting amonst one a nother and Capt Meridith order the Sergt. not to part them but to let them fight it out which I think he is very wrong in letting them doe so’. 

During this leg both the male and female convicts had been kept occupied sewing clothes for the officers or mending or washing.  The seamen had been catching shark and dolphin, which augmented their diet, as well as cleaning barnacles off the sides of the boats.

c. Annette Maie, 2019

NOTES.  

[1] Tenerife was conquered by Spain in the 15^th century, defeating the inhabitants, the Guanches, who are thought to have descended from the Lybian-Berber peoples of North Africa.  By the 18^th century Tenerife was a flourishing port and popular stopover on the trade route between Europe and the Americas, as well as an exporter of plantain, cochineal, rum and sugar cane, which was grown after the original pine forests were cut down and used for fuel.

[2] According to Karskens, The Colony, p. 316, 317 “The term (ed. damned whores) had to do with defiant behaviour, with rebellious working-class women possessed of short tempers and big mouths, women who effectively used language to retaliate against and humiliate men.  Many of these women became wives and mothers in New South Wales…though they were not meek paragons of respectability and wifely subjection.”

Introduction and Contents