Apprehensions of mutiny were much more common, when transportation to New Holland was recent, than experience has justified. On the slightest alarm, the prisoners were loaded with chains, fastened to ring-bolts attached to the ship's sides. Perhaps, no vessel ever crossed the Line without some plot, rumoured or real; but the most ordinary precautions have been found usually sufficient to detect and explode them: their inventors have often been their discoverers. The prisoners, commonly distrustful of each other, shrank from the confidence required to plan and execute a revolt. But when timid officers were in charge, they sometimes adopted restrictions severely oppressive; and which men of more courage and experience perceive to be needless.
During the war, the deportation of prisoners was attended with special difficulties: no ship's company were less likely to support the flag of their country. They were often delayed until a convoy could attend them. These hindrances were frequent, when this colony was founded. Both male and female prisoners were commonly forwarded together: the officers and soldiers selected companions for the voyage, and a sentence of transportation included prostitution. It is not incredible that modest women rejected life on such terms, or preferred a public execution to the ignominy of a floating brothel. These practices were first tolerated as inevitable, and afterwards justified as politic. No conspiracy could be concealed, while the women were paramours and spies; and, when long detained, the population of the ship considerably augmented before she dropped anchor. The government of the vessel was not less severe than its aspect was licentious.[67]
Thus the abuses which, during the war, penetrated every branch of public business, rioted in the convict ship; whilst the contractors, who engaged to convey the prisoners at a price, snatched a profit from the subsistence stipulated by the crown. Malignant fevers, brought from the hulks or prisons, propagated in the stagnant atmosphere, and, when combined with low and crude diet, more than decimated the list. These effects of official negligence were early apparent. The second fleet lost nearly one-fifth of the whole, either on the voyage, or shortly after the arrival. Of the previous expedition, the loss was trifling.[68] It was fitted out with integrity, surpassing the custom of the times, or the pioneers of the colony might have perished on a barren shore.