Convict ships were required to carry a naval surgeon to keep conditions minimally hygienic, but what did these passengers do all day? What happened in storms and when ships stopped in ports?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our teenagers survived the voyage and disembarked. Many poor folks were eager at the opportunity to start a new life, even in a penal colony, and numerous who were transported made good and helped build the new colony. Nowadays Australians are proud to be able to say their ancestors were convicts. Shouldn’t the 2 million Brits with convict-ancestors be, too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We walk on streets not so different from those the thieves would have known: past handsome houses, prisons of Clerkenwell and Newgate and backstreets of the City before reaching the river that took them to their ship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n