Rites of Passage: The Voyage to Convict Australia and the Creation of the Penal Labourer

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which convict labour was simultaneously regulated and co-opted on the long sea passage to the Australian penal colonies. It uses linked longitudinal data for over 39,000 male convicts transported between the years 1817 and 1853 to Van Diemen’s Land, to explore on-board recruitment of convicts by surgeons. A particular focus of interest is the way in which the organisation of the convict vessel shaped subsequent experience in the penal colonies. The article concludes by arguing that a transport ship was not one, but a series of institutions operating under one deck – part of a wider carceral archipelago that served to link metropolitan and colonial institutions.