Transportation to Australia

• After 1783, as a result of the American War of Independence, Britain lost its American colonies and prisoners could not longer be transported there.
• Instead, convicts were transported to Australia, which had been claimed as part of the British Empire in 1770.
• About 160000 people were transported to Australia, of whom about a sixth were women.
• Transportation was popular with the authorities because it was an alternative to building new prisons and it would help populate the new colony of Australia.
• Convicts would be held in prisons or in hulks before transportation. Hulks were disused ships used as floating prisons just offshore.
• During the journey to Australia, convicts were kept below deck in dirty, cramped condition. The journey could take three months.
• When their seven year sentence had been served, most convicts could not afford to return home, so remained in Australia.
• Transportation started to become unpopular in Australia because people there believed ex-convicts were responsible for high crime levels, and free settlers argued that convict workers took work away from them.
• Some people in Britain started to campaign against it because they said it was inhumane. Some people said that it was too expensive, and, as Australia became more desirable once gold was discovered there, it became less of a deterrent.
• New ideas about prisons led to more being built in Britain, meaning there was less need for transportation.
• Transportation to Australia ended in 1868.