The Story of Bet Carter, A Convict to New South Wales
A paragraph in Scottish radical T F Palmer's account of his voyage to New South Wales on board a convict ship in 1794 prompted Lucienne Boyce to look for the story of Bet Carter, who was transported on the same ship. At the end of April 1794 the Surprize convict ship set sail from Portsmouth bound for Botany Bay. Her master was Patrick Campbell and the first mate was Mr McPherson. On board were twenty-three soldiers of the New South Wales Corp, the regiment established in 1789 to serve in Australia. Amongst the ninety-four convicts were four men known as the Scottish Martyrs: radicals Thomas Muir, Thomas Palmer, William Skirving and Maurice Margarot, who had all been sentenced to transportation for campaigning for parliamentary reform. During the voyage the four men fell out and, in an atmosphere of spying and treachery, Thomas Muir and William Skirving ended up on charges of plotting to incite a mutiny. Several people were drawn into the affair, during which suspects were conf