‘Dying in the right location was clearly considered to have some value to the country.’

Britain’s defeat in the American War of Independence (1775-1783) led to a search for alternative sites for the transportation of convicts. Many of us are familiar with the transportation of British convicts to Australia: the First Fleet left Britain on 13 May 1787, and arrived at Botany Bay on 18 January 1788. But what happened in between? Transportation to America effectively ceased in 1776, and consequently the British opted to send some convicts to its slave-trading ports in West Africa. In this book, Emma Christopher writes about this failed British attempt to establish a penal colony in West Africa and how it led to the establishment of a new colony in New South Wales.

Some of the convicts sent to West Africa were transported on board ships travelling to pick up their cargo of African slaves. When the convicts arrived at their new destination, some of them, together with soldiers, were forced to work in the slave-trading forts guarding humans intended as slaves. In this world, they are themselves slaves.

‘Standing on the battlements of Mori, half a world away from everything they know, the British legal system must have seemed more bizarre, and less just, than ever. Being sent into the army was odd enough but at least part of a long tradition, but sending men to guard a semi-dilapidated castle on a remote cliff face in West Africa watching slave ships sail by, was truly the most extraordinary punishment.’

It’s a story of one disaster after another: the Gold Coast was feared by Europeans as one of the deadliest places on earth. Dysentery was rampant, and typhoid and yellow fever were endemic. Many of the convicts (and soldiers) die within months of their arrival. The officers who survive often become corrupt. This is a story of flawed leadership, and government failure. But it is not an impersonal account of events - Dr Christopher tells the stories of some specific individuals involved. Those individuals include William Murray, a conman with many aliases who was transported first to Virginia and then to Africa. William Murray was murdered at Fort Mori by Captain Kenneth Mackenzie on 4 August 1782. But before he was murdered, Murray had once ruled the garrison at the fort at Cormantin. There is the story too, of Captain Joseph Wall, at Gorée, and his orders of 800 lashes.

I read this book in September 2010, not long after it was published in Australia. I heard Dr Christopher interviewed, and wanted to learn more about this episode in British penal history and how it led to the First Fleet. The combination of disaster and inhumanity means that this is not an easy read, but I found it a fascinating one.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith