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Updated: May 2, 2025
Order was kept with the lash, and mutiny was put down with the musket. On the ships conveying women there were no soldiers, but an extra half-crew was engaged. These men were called "Shilling-a-month" men, because they had agreed to work for one shilling a month for the privilege of being allowed to remain in Sydney.
The free men were thus enabled to grow rich by the labours of the bondmen vice was punished and virtue rewarded. Until all the passengers had been disposed of, sentinels were posted on the deck of the transport with orders to shoot anyone who attempted to escape. But when all the convicts were gone, Jack was sorely tempted to follow the shilling-a-month men.
Sealing was also pursued in small vessels, which were often lost, and sealers lie buried in all the islands of the southern seas, many of them having a story to tell, but no story-teller. Whalers, runaway seamen, shilling-a-month men, and escaped convicts were the earliest settlers in New Zealand, and were the first to make peaceful intercourse with the Maoris possible.
He quietly slipped ashore, hurried off to Botany Bay, and lived in retirement until his ship had left Port Jackson. He then returned to Sydney, penniless and barefoot, and began to look for a berth. At the Rum Puncheon wharf he found a shilling-a-month man already installed as cook on a colonial schooner.
If the voyage lasted twelve months they would thus have the sum of twelve shillings with which to commence making their fortunes in the Southern Hemisphere. But the "Shilling-a-month" man, as a matter of fact, was not worth one cent the day after he landed, and he had to begin life once more barefoot, like a new-born babe.
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