[QUOTE=Aoibeann] From my understanding of the family, not everyone left Ireland to come to America because they wanted to, but because they had to. I guess they thought it was better than Botany Bay.[/QUOTE]
Hey Lillian,
You make an interesting point.
From what I understand, the English had been using the USA as a dumping ground for their undesirables (not many Irish where considered desirable by the English back then) for quite some time. This was in effort to address the problem of over crowded gaols and rising crime.
This became necessary because public hangings for petty crime were not proving to be a deterrent to the rabble, and this was evident in the fact that more pockets would be picked at the public hanging of a pick pocket than the accused could have managed to pick himself in 2 of his lifetimes.
So transportation to the USA became a comfortable symbiotic relationship which provided cheap convict labour to the pioneering cotton farmers and other agricultural concerns of southern USA. But then the Yanks went and had themselves a tea party in Boston without inviting the Poms and they had a falling out.
As a result of this little tiff, the Yanks decided to replace their once cheap but encumbered convict labour source with even cheaper, non-encumbered black slaves. This of course meant that the English now had to find a new dumping ground for this festering mob because their gaols started to overflow right out into the hulks anchored in their rivers.
Due to their past experience with the plague and other diseases igniting in overcrowded slums then spilling indiscriminately into the homes of those that matter, the pressure was on to do something quickly.
Well, it just so happens that back in 1770, way before the tea party even thought about putting the kettle on, a bloke by the name of Jimmy Cook mapped the (already discovered?) shores of eastern Australia and, this is the important bit, he also noted a climate suitable for farming flax, which was used in the manufacture of sail canvas, and also the existence upon Norfolk Island of an abundance of tall pines which looked ideal for use in the construction of ships mast.
Now when Jimmy Cook went back to England and told the powers that be of this great discovery, they where totally unimpressed as it was determined by them that Terra Australis (Stay with me, stay with me I'm getting there) offered no commercial or strategic incentive to justify the cost of colonisation.
Ahh, but then later came that tea party we were talking about. Now that tea party changed everything, because now, not only did the England need to find a new dumping ground for those pesky convicts, it also now meant that she who ruled the waves had lost her main resource for flax, which was grown in the southern states of USA and...you guessed it, straight tall pines used in the construction of ships mast which had been harvested from the north.
Couple this with the fact that their nemesis, the French, who had been invited to the above-mentioned tea party and had sided with the Yanks where now sniffing around down-under and threatening to take possession of that untapped resource for themselves, Australia gained new respect in England's eyes as an object of desire.
Grudgingly, the decision was made by the Home Secretary and the Lord of the Admiralty to establish a penal colony and later a garrison on Norfolk Island. As a result, first ships arriving at Port Jackson on the 26th of January 1788.
Ironically it turned out that our soil and rain fall were too poor to support good flax crops, and those Norfolk Island pines? Well, whilst they looking pretty impressive from the boat, they proved to be totally unsuitable for ships mast due to shortness of grain.
So, what the heck does all this have to do with Rod's book I hear you ask? Well noth'in, but I just thought I would buy a little time and bump the thread again so my mate Paul can see it and let us know what is happening.
Cheers
Kim
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) the book had to wait.