Paul White - The Fettered and the Free: The Life and Times of Mary Bryant Broad, 2005

MLMSS 7689/Box 1X

fonds

2005

455690

0.09 metres of textual material (1 outsize box)
Textual Records - (typescript)

Mary Bryant nee Broad arrived in Sydney in the First Fleet on a seven years sentence. Shortly after landing in Sydney she married a Cornish fisherman named William Bryant who had also been transported for seven years. In 1791 they escaped in Governor Phillip's six-oared cutter. Accompanying them were their two children, Charlotte and Emanuel, and seven other convicts. Heading north they eventually reached Coupang in Timor after a voyage of nearly 5000 km. They passed themselves off as shipwrecked sailors but after several months were arrested and shipped back to England in irons. At Batavia William and Emanuel Bryant died of fever. Three of the remaining convicts perished at sea before reaching Cape Town and then on the last leg of the voyage Charlotte also died. On arriving in England Mary and the remaining four were committed to Newgate Gaol but were eventually pardoned.

An account of the life of Mary Bryant, the voyage of the First Fleet and the first five years of the colony of New South Wales (820pp., illus.)