James Martin (ca. 1760 - ?) was a convict transported to
New South Wales
New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...
, notable for being the author of the only extant
First Fleet
The First Fleet were eleven British ships which transported a group of settlers to mainland Australia, marking the beginning of the History of Australia (1788–1850), European colonisation of Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy vessel ...
convict account of life in the colony, known as the ''Memorandoms by James Martin''.
Early life
James Martin was born ca. 1760 in
Ballymena
Ballymena ( ; from , meaning 'the middle townland') is a town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 31,205 people at the 2021 United Kingdom census, making it the List of localities in Northern Ireland by population, seven ...
,
County Antrim
County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, County Antrim, Antrim, ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, located within the historic Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the c ...
,
Ireland
Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
. He had a wife and son in Exeter and had worked in England for seven years when, at Exeter Assizes on 20 March 1786, he was sentenced to transportation for seven years for stealing eleven screw bolts and other goods, valued at 11 shillings, from Powderham Castle. He was held on the Dunkirk hulk for almost a year. His official report from Dunkirk hulk was that he was "tolerably decent and orderly". On 11 March 1787, Martin was placed upon the ''
Charlotte'' and sent to New South Wales as part of the First Fleet. Martin was a useful tradesman in Sydney.
Escape from New South Wales
On the night of 28 March 1791, Martin,
William
William is a masculine given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman Conquest, Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle ...
and
Mary Bryant and their children Charlotte and Emanuel, James Cox, William Allen, Samuel Bird, Samuel Broom, Nathaniel Lillie, and William Morton stole the colony's fishing boat, and rowed out of Sydney Harbour and into the Pacific Ocean.
During the voyage back to England, William, Charlotte, and Emanuel Bryant, James Cox, Samuel Bird, and William Morton died. The survivors, rather than being prosecuted on the capital charge of returning from transportation, were instead ordered on 5 July 1792 to serve out the remainder of their respective sentences of transportation in Newgate gaol. The lawyer and biographer
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of the English writer Samuel Johnson, '' Life of Samuel ...
interceded with the government on their behalf, and on 2 May 1793 Mary Bryant was given an unconditional pardon, and the four men were discharged from Newgate by proclamation on 3 November 1793. Martin's fate after being released is unknown.
Portrayals
Martin was portrayed by
John Ewart in the 1963
Australian Broadcasting Commission
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is a ...
serial, ''The Hungry Ones''.
The ''Memorandoms''
As well as being the only extant first-hand account of this famous escape, ''Memorandoms by James Martin'' is the earliest Australian convict narrative. The original manuscript is part of the vast manuscript archive of the philosopher
, held by University College London Library's Special Collections. The ''Memorandoms'' was first discovered by the Bentham scholar Charles Blount in the 1930s, who published a short edition, limited to 150 copies. A second edition of eleven pages, by Victor Crittenden, was published in 1991.
A new edition, ''Memorandoms by James Martin: An Astonishing Escape from Early New South Wales'', edited by Tim Causer, was published in open access in 2017 by UCL Press. This new edition makes available, for the first time and for free, facsimiles of the original manuscript alongside an annotated transcript, and features a scholarly introduction which puts the escape in context, and challenges many of the myths and legends which have grown around the Bryant party's escape.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, James
Convicts transported to Australia on the First Fleet
Convict escapees in Australia