A CONVICT SHIP.

I received a short note from Sir Astley, informing me that he had procured for me the appointment of surgeon on board a ship, which had been taken by Government for the purpose of transporting a number of female convicts to Australia. I cannot say I felt particularly delighted by the information. In the first place, I had fixed my hoped on receiving a permanent appointment, and this would of course terminate when the voyage was ended; and beyond that it led to nothing. However, there was some occupation for me, which, if not remunerative, was better than idling my time away, and I immediately wrote Sir Astley a letter, thanking him for his kindness, and promising to call on the authorities to whom he had referred me without delay. I now began to make preparations for my voyage to Australia. I placed one hundred and seventy pounds of my little capital in the bank, and the rest I kept to purchase my case of instruments, outfit, and to provide for my current expenditure. My spirits were elated at the prospect of my visit to the antipodes, and I promised myself much pleasure and satisfaction in my new employment. Never was man more thoroughly disappointed. My voyage was one of continued misery from the time the ship left England till she arrived in Sydney. At the present time it would hardly be thought credible were I to relate the method of life on board a convict ship five-and-thirty years since, and then it was immensely improved, by comparison, to what it had been five-and-twenty years before. At that time nothing was more common on the caprice of a captain of a ship, or possibly on the complaint of a second or third mate, to lash an unfortunate creature up to the gangway, and flog her most severely, in exactly the same manner that sailors are flogged in the navy; and so common and so little thought of were these occurrences, that it was not even thought worth while to enter them in the ship’s log. Although, in my own time, an improvement had taken place in the treatment of these wretched women, heaven knows it was even then bad enough. When hey arrived at their destination, and were assigned to the different settlers, there was always one loud cry of horror at their degraded state. And yet there was little to be wondered at. If any good or modest feeling remained in them before the ship left England, it was almost certain to be destroyed before she reached her destination. After the treatment they had been subjected to during the voyage, and the examples they had constantly before their eyes, it would have been far more surprising, when they landed, if they had persevered one commendable attribute of womanhood, than that they had lost every principle which makes woman honourable. It would be impossible for me to lay the details of the general demoralisation of the ship before the reader; suffice it to say that my life, when on board, was made wretched by it. I endeavoured, to the best of my ability, to make things better; but as in those days the relative positions of the surgeon and the captain of the ship were but ill defined, my remonstrances had no weight, and my threats were laughed at.”—The Village Doctor, in the St. James’s Magazine.