SUCH A RIOT AND RUMPUS

Wednesday, February 6, 1788

Governor Arthur Phillip: We issued convict women clouts and clothesAnd disembarked by six at even-tide.The ground is hard but cleared of trees and growth.All hands have hunted, fished or sawn and grubbed.My canvas house is standing fifty yardsFrom water’s edge. Marines shall build the barracks,Stores and hospice, yet, dash my wig, won’t guardThose lags who lose their tools and hold the slack.I’ve rationed salted meat, biscuits, flourAnd peas with sometimes fish and congaroos.A town of tents and huts of wattle and clay is ours.Though weather breaks, I’m in the altitudes!We’ve found the finest harbour in the world,Wherein a thousand sail might safely ride.

Surgeon Arthur Bowes: We frisked the women double diligentFor nick-nacks they’d pilfered,But the huzzies were sly-boots.Some scrubbed up well-rigged frigates.

Midshipman Daniel I fear Bridewell birds are frigates on fire,Southwell: Burnt with bone-ache.

Brisk as bees, the coves, no malingerers.Boarded them quick.

Surgeon Arthur Bowes: Our seamen begged for grog to cheer the women’s leave.The captains, glad at theirSafe deliverance, complied.Bang, Sodom and Gomorrah!

Midshipman Daniel Been at Haddums and come home by Clapham.Southwell: Gad, corruptions!

Cavaulting, chauvering, the old Adam,Hammer and tongs.

Surgeon Arthur Bowes: The deuce take it! The devil’s among ‘em. Like Eve’s custom-house, which

Adam unshamed first broke into.Commoners in Corinth!

Midshipman Daniel Demure as whores at a christening, these Southwell: Sorry slatterns.

They’d a mind for first-chop frolics and sprees,Bawdy concerns.

Lieutenant Ralph Clark: Dear Betsy, I hold steady in my eyeA picture of my pure Alicia.To spare your modest blushes, I scarce durstSpeak of this den of vice! Those dammed whores thatBroke the bulk heads to connect with dotingSeamen, such as Elizabeth Dudgeon,I would have flogged. Sauce-boxes that stir still,Eat up with the pox. How hard is my fate! Brass lamentables dress out lamb-fashionAnd paint a bit! O abomination!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Lumbered seven moons not taking a flourish. ‘Sblood!Ironed and quodded in a hell-hold, I’m badger-legged,A thornback on old toes, long-tongued as Granny.Rat it! I might as well’ve ploughed with dogs.I’ll give my diddies an airing in this loose nugging dressAnd grab some gully-raker’s nutmegs for earrings.What be you hankering and slavering for, Frances?

Frances Hart: A choice bit o’ meat. I have an itch in the belly! A sweet-humoured cully, donkey-rigged, a plaster o’ warm guts.

Elizabeth Dudgeon: There’s many a rake-jakes for rantum-scantum.Hie thee, hither, Nimrod!

Charlotte Ware: Fancy, you two’ve made yourself prinked.Here’s me, clappin’ on rags out of twig.Liz tries to cut a splash, Fran’s a spank,I’m but poorly rigged.

Elizabeth Dudgeon: You’d find fault with a fat goose! Rub on some additionFor your greens, Charlie, and redden your cheeks and gills.

Mary Watkins: I patch a bit too.

Sarah Bellamy: Gone mad? Kidded.Cow with calf, cow-cunted.Sticky darks what cling to skin,Stinking heat, red ants sting, fat flies din.

‘Fraid my chance childWhat’s due will ride the wildMare, being born on Newgate Steps. Back ‘ome. Pa’s a tar. The bull won’t prate.

Charlotte Ware: O for a leg o’ mutton and smash!Then a bowl o’ sweet sugar ‘n’ sago.

Mary Watkins: When this great sky falls We shall catch larks in the woods.

Frances Hart: Amaker

of mantua, mitt and muslin I was,no dresser of canvas.

Why pitch our tents east side of the stream?

Robert Sedway: By the living jingo! Look yonder, Jim!Those strums in a struggle to strike their tent,Awkward as milch-cows in a cage.Ho, there’s the dragon, Liz Dudgeon.I’ll dub it up aright for this even.

James Baker: I’m hungry for buttered buns.They’re gaily dressed as carrots.I hopes they sport their blubberWhen I pass round the rot-gut.

The young’un’s quite the dasher.Who’s the double-diddied sow? She’s had a rough Hobbes’voyage.Blowzabella’d claw you.

Robert Sedway: Not with the pox. Liz is too shrew to tip me the token.Liz ‘n’ me, we was chums on the Mercury With a couple o’ hundred lags bound for America,When in the Channel up we rose an’ takes the ship.Said ship we sailed to Torbay oursen,Then bolted as hedge-birds in ‘mong the lanes o’ Devon.Liz was narrow a one to give the end of a rope-yard,

But I was scratched i’ the arm. When we was rounded up, The caterpillars marched us all in chains to Plymouth.There we was rowed out to the Dunkirk. In that foul holdWe rotted and repined for three long years,Afore we was ta’en on the transport Friendship.A trader she may be, but Liz’s got plenty o’ pluck.Come, let’s bitch. My pikestaff’s raised.

Peter Bond: D’yer mean to go a-girlin’, Bob? Or a fightin’?

Robert Sedway: Two fools, patch.Liz! Sweet Lizzie! What cheer, my tulip?

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Why, Bob Sidewind! Bugger your eyes!I heard how’s you’d been brought to this jakes.Dearies, be leery to this screw-jawed punker.

Charlotte Ware: A whore-monger, a saucy boxAnd a pin-buttock nursed in cotton.Three pimp-wisks prowling for princox.We don’t care a brass button.

Mary Watkins: No more than two leeks.We shall all be sailing homeWhen Old Nick goes blind.

Robert Sedway: Keep in with that spring pullet, Jim. She’ll give juice for jelly.

Frances Hart: Thisrain’s pissing!

Don’t sail about. Squeeze in or go scrape!Our lean-to’s not ship-shape.

Lend a hand. Have you tack and tipple?

Robert Sedway: My palls and me, we wish to scrape acquaintance.We know the art of squeezin’ in a crowd.

Elizabeth Dudgeon: In partikler at a scrag ‘em fair.The scragger showed you the squeezer for your screws.

Mary Watkins: Rogues is worst in crowds.

Charlotte Ware: I’ll catch the fleas for this Tyburn blossom.Is he foolish or flash?

Peter Bond: My fams are too fast for you, missus.

Charlotte Ware: You have more sauce than pig, hemp!

Peter Bond: I’m St Peter’s son. Every finger a fish-hook.Pass the nog!

Charlotte Ware: I’ll have your guts for garters,Nancy-boy! Caterwauler!

James Baker: Snug as a duck in a ditch.This be as close as God’s curseTo a whore’s arse. Molls, you’re allBusks and clouts, hose and drawers . . .

Charlotte Ware: Eh, keep the line with those divers!Don’t maum and gaum!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: No carrion will kill a crow, Charlie.

Mary Watkins: If she won’t lie with a manfor a penny, let her hang for a half-penny.

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Then ware the pullet-squeezer’s plug-tail, goose.

Mary Watkins: Leave me be, Jack Nasty-Face!

James Baker: What you need is a bracer.Where’s my lubrication?What say a flash o’ lightning?

Elizabeth Dudgeon: May your prick and purse never fail you!Knapped from a lobster’s sack, I’ll wager.

James Baker: S’elp me God, upon the square! The admiral of the blue.

Robert Sedway: Here’s to both ends of the busk!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Kiss my tail!

Robert Sedway: Kiss my blind cheeks!

James Baker: Bounce it off, cheery chums!

Robert Sedway: Have it with you, blades and morts!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Ah, topper! Gin is mother’s milk.

Robert Sedway: Flash me the milky way, my myrtle.

Elizabeth Dudgeon: You have a nose to light candles, brandy-blossom! One more flash o’ lightning will show you the Milky Way.

Sarah Bellamy: Dream of down beds,Got maggots i’ the head.Joe’s too honest a master stores.Won’t lift nothin’ to ‘elp his baby’s cause.

Charlotte Ware: Not so bony a drain as cock-my-cap or double stingo.

Frances Hart: A good splash o’

gin warms yer pins, tickles yer cockles.

Robert Sedway: Let’s play at hot cockles.

James Baker: Buzz the bottle, my gill-flirt.Do you know pickle-me-tickle-me?

Mary Watkins: Beef tea’s a fair treat.

Frances Hart: Come away, Mary. Let’s pluck a rose.

James Baker: That were our intended too.

Mary Watkins Where we be going?

Frances Hart: Leekshire.

James Baker: Ride the riggen’, sweet Shalotte?

Surgeon Arthur Bowes: Gale’s playing Old Harry in the rigging.

Midshipman Daniel More like the Devil’s leading the jigging.Southwell:

Surgeon Arthur Bowes: Drink to the new country in two bumpers?

Midshipman Daniel Claret? Why not?Southwell:

Lieutenant Ralph Clark: My beloved Betsy. Never slept worse!Blowing hard this horrid night of thunder,Lightning and torrents. Was obliged to quitMy tent with not a stitch on but my shirtTo slacken tent poles. My pouch, my pillow.Spiders, ants, every kind of verminDo crawl over me. Fond Alicia,I dream of our riding in a post-chaiseAbout Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight. Oh but what a scene of wicked whoredomIs played in the women’s camp! I hope thatThe Lord Almighty will keep me from them.

William Robertson: And what’s your game, young shaver?Skulking around like you’re about to elope to Mr Perouse.I’ve had my peepers on you.Do you patter the palaver?

John Pettit: The prince o’ lurkers ‘mongst the priggin’ gangIn Seven Dials, ole London Town. Bang,Menabs gets nabbed for nickin’ pewter plates.Seven stretch straight!I damn near copped the Newgate drop and hoppedTo hell. That Bailey beak was second-chop.

Orphelin at six, I got upon the sneak.Did cut the streets ‘n’ starved wiv cold. Then seekedBrass beggars that’d learn me capers, faking clysUpon the sly.I got nuff licks for cheekin’ beak ‘n’ beadle.What’s left of life ‘n’ lurks ‘cept cut a wheedle?

William Robertson: Nay, shake off this black dog, hang-dog look.At Ex’ter sizes I should ‘a kicked the airFor riding the high road to Needham devil-may-care,Padding two pops and galloper, my goose was cooked.

I wasn’t noozed, but might yet tie the noose.Aye, join giblets. Now’s the chance to wife.Which wench will lead this scamp a merry dance?Swig on, pot-boy! ‘Tis time to swyve.

John Pettit: A bawdy banquet o’ cherry-merry mudlarks.Right, let’s take a turn in Bushy Park‘Mid these haybags and hedge-docked hens,

Firkytoodling.Wiv the parson’s mouse-trap, I’ve no truck.Never marry the mixen for the sake o’ the muck.

William Robertson: ‘Tis raining rods of seven-water grog.These whisky-frisky wenches whip the catWith wild-fire or water bewitched. Drat!A whistling-shop, a cunny-warren bog.

Frances Hart: Who’sthere? Two moon

rakers. Take us to the lush and pipes.Reel, hop, stretch your tripes.

Come, let’s tip a stave and sport a toe.

William Robertson: I hope to raise a gallop, if not reel and hop.I shook a nag, got bowled and lagged with the prad.Prithee prance with a knight of the pad.I’m feeling tip-top, but wet as a mop.

Frances Hart: You’ve tongue enough

for two sets of teeth! Hark! How’s your pins?Grabble me with your fins.

What a jaunty jig! What strong stampers!

James Baker: Ahoy there, chums! Get unrigged! Shake heels with the Miss Horners!Come and sway on all top ropes!Shoot betwixt wind and water!

Joseph Bishop: ‘Tis a fine night to catch sprats on the heath.

Mary Watkins: True as the cat crewand the cock rocked the cradle.I can hear a silent flute.

James Baker: Come and join the feather bed-jig.We can have a bit o’ fun.I prance like a stallion,Mary, merry as a grig.

Mary Watkins: You be mad as May-butter!

James Baker: I’m three sheets i’ the wind!Pass the strip-me-naked.

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Stow it, Bob! Nits will become lice.Here, swig a drop o’ kill-devil.You’re as surly as a butcher’s dog,Though I’ve cured your horn with tasty treacle.

Robert Sedway: Aye, but you have an oar in every man’s boat.

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Hath not a standing prick no conscience then?

Robert Sedway: Dammit, you’ve gone twice round the fleet,Flashing your French tricks!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: A prowling pole-cat p’raps, but I’m free to ride St George!Not fawn as whore-monger’s fancy-woman flashing fawneys.‘Twas not my intended to make your nose warp,But I’ll not be your boot-catcher!

Robert Sedway: You’ve poxed me, you clumsy poke!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: You’ve got corns i’ the head. ‘Tis you that’s pissed pins ‘n’ needles! I’ll smack smooth your coxcomb till you’re two stones wanting!

Robert Sedway: Cacafuego! Who’s your twat-scourer?

James Baker: Why do you stare marlin-spikesAnd hang your jib? Pity’s sake,Bob, steer my windward passage.

Robert Sedway: None of your jaw, you swab!

Joseph Bishop: Still raining cats ‘n’ dogs ‘n’ rag-water.

William Robertson: What a nymph of darkness in this School of Venus!I kiss like a horse, I’ve kissed clink so long.‘Scuse my whiskers. Tie a knot with the tongue.I feel my way to heaven ‘gainst your heavers.Let me brush the rain-drops from your sparklersThat give me comfort and cheer in the darkling.

Frances Hart: Knight,this strange night,

rough rider that pricks my hardened heart. Feel so topsy-frizy.

Is’t lust or lush that turns me dizzy?

Joseph Bishop: You’re a very pretty fellow, Moll Irons.Care to dance and fiddle an’ toy to jigging music?Ain’t I a ‘andsome enough pomegranate for your likes?

Peter Bond: Aye, you’re a bold face.I used to be fetched to companyWhen I was a glim-jack in Moorfields.

Joseph Bishop: Ah, those molly-houses pleased me wonderfully.You dear little toad,Prithee, jig backwards.

Mm. Pass the twist!

Come, buss me and stroke me over the face,Oh, you bold pullet, I’ll break all your eggs.Pull down your breeches. Do you despise the fair sex?

Peter Bond: Whoa, Dip-Candle, ‘tis not possible to make a bargain.I must go to Battersea to be cut for the simples.I mean to be cured of my folly.

Aye, I have an injury to my bobstayAnd cannot sit bare on your lap and kedger.Go marry other husbands!

Joseph Bishop: Battersea’d?Clapped?Treacherous, mollying bitch! Piss-fire!

James Baker: S’blind! A pot i’ the pate. WasSwimmered by the ‘missionersFor marines. Got mittimusAt Rio. Smashed a dollar

For one o’ yer lags. Rib-roast two Hundered tickles ‘n’ slanged. What’sA chum to do? Rob the stores!Aye, I’ll plot to pay that shot!

Muddle on! Pass the misery!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: The pot calls the kettle black arse.Humbugs, that’s all on us tarts and rogues an’ traps.Stap me, if we can’t be jolly dogs too!

A whoring pall o’ mine in London, Susannah Garth,She was holed on the Charlotte alonger me,She gorged eight guineas down gutter-lane,Bunce we’d flushed from this gull. Blood ‘n’ ouns, what a blowen!Sold a sevener, we fell about the Bailey in fits.Pass the strike-fire!

Charlotte Ware: What a gigg! Served out the nobs.

Joseph Bishop: Ay, that’s as may be, but how do you stand the grinWhen you pay seven years for seven clys? That’s old Mr Grim.

Mary Watkins: May-bees don’t fly all year long.

James Baker: What was your trick, lady-bird?

Mary Watkins: I lifted some lawns . . . a gown . . . Ma catched cold and diedafter I’d turned five.

James Baker: I’d ha’ given you a green gown.Pass the knock-me-down!

Sarah Bellamy: You thieve to live.Live hard? You live to thieve.Our lives aren’t worth a stiver.Strive hard here, there’ll be nicks to die for.

Pass the white tape!

James Baker: Afore boarding the Charlotte,I touched my sweetheart’s bun.‘Tis the custom ‘mong rough-knots.See, touch-holes bring fair fortune

To a voyage. Pass the slug!

Lieutenant Ralph Clark: I dream of my tender AliciaIn her fanciest gown and new gauze cap.Oh that if you was here and our dear boy!For I am immense charmed with Port Phillip.Saw the most beautifullest birds – parrots.Shot only one. Without you, I should goMad. Morn and night I say prayers for my

Betsy. I bless your health with lemonade.Your affectioned Ralphie

Surgeon Arthur Bowes: The heavens discharged such a cannonadeThat raked the topmost trees,Struck dead five sheep and pig.The amorosos knew nix.

Midshipman Daniel Eight bells, the graveyard watch. The witching hour.Southwell:

Robert Sedway: I’m flustrated. Wass the time?

Charlotte Ware: The devil’s dinner-hour.I’ve a wolf in the breast.

John Pettit: ‘Our ‘fore hangin’-time.

William Robertson: One hour past kissing-time.

Robert Sedway: ‘Twash the devil’s day of it. Passh the reviver!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Speak of the devil and you’ll see his horns.

Robert Sedway: Like you clapped mine. Nay, mum your dubber, Liz!What sheems an age ago, afore being marked with a T, I were a maker of watch-cases, taking time’s measure. Now, s’elp me, in thish barren boneyard, so immensh wide,‘Tish arsy-varsy. Montras ish uselesh as monkey’s greaseFor us lifers ‘cos we be servants of time.

Sarah Bellamy: Seven seems life.My baby born in strife.I’ll be toes up in a week.Or my merry-begotten be born sick.

Mary Watkins: The heavens weave stars,Scatter such strange, stark patterns.Are we abandoned to fate?

James Baker: Trust the twinklers, if not men.Didn’t Cook read the skies?‘Twas the stars and moon steered ‘imTo Botany. They told no lies.

Mary Watkins: We’re topsy-turvy!

Pass the booze!

Joseph Bishop: Aye, miss, natur’ can be cruel curious,Harum-scarum, but there be a jot o’ sense in it.All my natural I’ve followed the fishes.

Charlotte Ware: ‘Od save’s! Where’s yer pluck that got us ‘ere pat?Neds, kick up a lark! Fight cunning or be fly-flapped.On the Friendship I clawed ‘n’ spat like a Kilkenny cat.The guards ironed me ‘cos I crabbed and scrapped.

Pass the rum nantz!

James Baker: Bravely spoke, Shalotte. Yet whoCan tell the heavens’ anger?

Joseph Bishop: Day-times the woods prickle with silence.In the twinkling of a bed-post,They burst into the wild cackles of a wicked witch.

Sarah Bellamy: Spirits rustle.I heard spirits rustling.

Joseph Bishop: The dead souls of them Indians.

Charlotte Ware: But they ain’t no Christians!

John Pettit: Is ournobs?

Peter Bond: Nay, ‘cos we’re banished to badlands for a ‘ternity.

Mary Watkins; If this be Eternity,where is Kingdom Come?Or be we souls in limbo?

Robert Sedway: Jeeshush Chrish!What do the shoul doctor shay?

James Baker: He’d say we are souls in soak,Familiars of Old Squaretoes,Dammed afore we pitch the perch.

Robert Sedway: A poor man’s blessing is quaint.

Elizabeth Dudgeon: Aye and a poor wench’s crust and tot!Chop up the whiners if you will,

But put not your trust in pudding-sleeves and devil-drivers.‘Snails! I’m up to all their rigs.They sit at the nobs’ high table and promise the earthAnd put the fear of God up us lags with fire and brimstone,Sneering at our fight and scramble for their crumbs.Sydney Cove may be hell-fire itself. Or our last hell. Even our last chance to fake and scrape. Any rate, I’ll have none of your black coats. I’d rather lead apes in hell.

Lieutenant Ralph Clark: O my Gracious God, grant health and welfareTo all that Your servant’s soul holds dear:The best of women and the sweetest boy.I put my whole trust in God. Without Him,There can be no happiness in this world.

William Robertson: Frances, would you become my lawful blanket?No longer will you pray with knees upward.I drive hogs to market, I snore so hard.But will you adam me? You’re such a spanker!

Frances Hart: Shoosh!We’ll get swished.

I’ll take the sheet and napkin with you.You’ve turned Nick’s black skies blue.

Now give me a horse-buss flush on the lips.

William Robertson: Pass the heavy wet!

Elizabeth Dudgeon: What a shindy! We muds are all in a muck of sweat and wet,‘Cos we dossed this first night in the Star Hotel, Tipperary.But at lightmans we turn our lugs to the Capt’n’s roration.What I says is, Don’t say Aye and Amen to trifles, nor cry you mercy.Don’t hang your head, ‘cos the reds’ll do that in two shakes.Them that’s in the dismals, remember, all on us leaped o’er the hards -The shame o’ being a slavey on the chain-gang,Traipsing through the bilge-water o’ the hulks like drowned rats,Darbied for twelve month or more in stinking holds,Some on you ironed to rotting corpses for days, nights worser.How did we breathe that stench? Fighting for air nigh killed us.Doesn’t bear thinking, but it always gets my dander up. I’m sore yet.And pecking on tack hard as nails or crawling with vermin.Prithee, Sarah, we knows you have blue devils On account o’ goose-month with Jack in the cellar, but hold fast!Don’t go off your napper. Those nobs are not worth a brass fart.And them as had your navels together can be shut up in the parson’s pound.

I hopes you darbies and joans will be rosy for ever when ‘tis lawed.

Surgeon Arthur Bowes: Phillip will not spare us on the morrowWith his speechifying,Head full of proclamations.Crimes of the blackest dye

Committed by scurviest scumHe condones, yet marinesAnd seamen seethe with shame when Charged and flogged upon the breech.

Midshipman Daniel A humble-bee in a cow-turd doth deemSouthwell: Himself a king.

Arthur Phillip dances to fife and drum,Not the goats’ gig.

Captain Arthur Phillip: A night of such debauch and riot not seenSince Ancient Rome! Disgraceful haviour minesEndeavours civil. Mob rule is disease.A canker must be cured to keep the line.I will be harsh in word, if not in deedTo convicts most abandoned. MutinousMarines must face the force of law decreedAnd tars that front the women with abuse.These idlers must be married up directAnd break this barren earth with bending backs.To live in amity, ‘tis my intent:Amend the convicts, civilize the blacks.And thus repair the trust reposed in me.There is no slavery in lands longed free.

Michael Small July, 2004-January, 2005July 1, 2005-January 3, 2006 (research)January 4-February 1, 2006