Chapter 2 In Town Tonight; The Chook; "Lizzie" is in; Before Waterloo;

THE CHOOK (HMAS Waterhen)

NEVER was ship more aptly named. Out in the combers of the Pacific or down among the thrashing waves of the Bight, she maintained an unenviable reputation of being more often under than on top. It was His Majesty's Australian destroyer Waterhen, known throughout the fleet as "The Chook".

Early in 1940 Waterhen cleared Port Said and breasted the calm blue of the Mediterranean; not for the first time, but now on grim work bent. She took up station under the redoubtable Cunningham and soon her work commenced. For eighteen months she continued to give grand service in the Mediterranean, ferrying to Tobruk, anti-submarine patrolling, screening the Battle Fleet on its sweeps of the inland sea, at sea six days in the week; taking punishment in the form of rocking near misses, nerves strained almost to snapping point, minds wondering dully when all the hellish uselessness of it would end; and dishing it out in the shape of falling dive bombers, depth-charged submarines and broadsides flung at shore fortifications.

Through all this pattern of high adventure, periods of intense nervous excitement mixed with the savage exultation of victory, was woven the ugly fibre of those runs to Tobruk when, with helpless wounded crammed aboard, the enemy's bombing attacks developed with the certainty of the sunrise which presaged their commencement. It was on one of these runs to the immortal Rats that "The Chook" met her fate.

Time was about 7.40 of a calm evening on 30 June. Although the sun had set plenty of light lingered in the immensity above. Waterhen slipped easily through on her way to Tobruk, this time carrying, in addition to the usual supplies and ammunition, the Provost Traffic Control Branch of the Sixth Australian Division. She was in company with a British destroyer, disposed to port, both ships cruising at a steady twenty-five knots.

"The Chook" was closed up in the fourth degree of readiness, A.A. and anti-submarine lookouts posted. Lounging on the upper deck after supper, yarning with the Diggers, most of the ship's company were enjoying the cool of evening before snatching a few hours' sleep before the work started. Eyes subconsciously noted the visibility in the sky, for with blessed darkness their worries were lessened by about eighty per cent. It seemed that the Sixth Australian Division members would have to wait for their own element to provide their baptism of fire. But at 7.45 the action bells shrilled out their summons. They came over, Stukas, forty-two of them, flying very high in the clear sky.

Leading Seaman Orken was quartermaster at the wheel, and his first intimation that the attack had commenced was the First Lieutenant's shout reaching him down the voice-pipe. "Duck! "

The Q.M. obeyed. Fifty yards off the ship's side the sea was convulsed into spouting columns of climbing white, discoloured at the base with bursting high explosive. Missed. The first flight swept up into the sky again, where the rest circled round, waiting their turn. Then, in position again, they fell off on one wing and dropped headlong upon her.

Twisting and weaving at full speed the gallant little craft strove to escape the downpour. The fourth black shape streaked in for the kill. He was further behind his predecessors and by the time he got in range of the point fives and captured Bredas the smoke and spray had cleared away.

Teeth clenched, fingers curled round triggers, in their hearts a savage hate, the gunners waited. Even in this holocaust their superb training asserted itself. They knew the range of their weapons and not a round was wasted. The whole port of the destroyer burst into flickering stabs of orange flame at once.

Met by the concentrated fire the Nazi turned away, his big bomb clearly visible under the oil-streaked belly. As he turned a stream of Breda shells ripped into his guts. There came a flash of brilliant light, a thudding explosion, and bits of Nazi bomber drifted swiftly seaward.

Petty Officer Durham was manning a Breda on the quarter deck. His Number 2 had been knocked out by a splinter and as the cartridge belt was too heavy to feed in without him the gun was useless. Durham saw a Stuka come in astern. The two bombs were plain under his wings. He let go. They flashed over Durham's head and exploded at the base of the foremost funnel. Motorboat, fenders, tinned fruit, all rose into the air in a splintered mass. A burst tin of best Bartlett pears landed on the gunner's mate's head, and in great trepidation, as the sticky mess oozed over his face, he pulled off what he firmly believed to be his nose!

The destroyer heeled suddenly to port, over, further, until her lee gunwale was almost awash in the creaming sea. Down they came, a stick of four and all lobbed over, except the last. The bomb struck near the exposed ship's side and, its fuse started, exploded abreast the engine-room with shattering effect. A hole big enough to sail the whaler in was blown in her side and what with crippling near misses the brave little ship had had enough. She slowed down and listed to port as the water poured in, a black scum of escaping fuel oil spreading from her wound.

The bombers had drawn off, their loads exhausted, and the British destroyer nosed her bow in to take off "The Chook's" crew. It was then the First Lieutenant uttered his famous "last words". Someone had suggested souveniring the ensign before she went.

"Pipe down you b--!" came the Jimmy's shout. "We aren't sunk yet!"

Every man was transferred and they drew off to watch her go. She made a sad picture, rolling sluggishly on the oily sea, guns pointing at all angles in the direction of their last target, boats smashed to splinters, jagged holes in her funnels and upper works.

At dark she was still afloat and it was decided to attempt a tow. The First Lieutenant with volunteers pulled over in a whaler and crawled up the sloping side on to her fo'c'sle. Suddenly he whispered: "Quiet. There's somebody aboard!" They drew pistols and crouched there, eyes striving to pierce the blackness. There was no sound save the occasional clink of empty cartridge cases and the flap, flap of a tom canvas screen. A smell of burnt cordite was heavy on the air. Then abaft the capstan a torch flashed on, and off. The First Lieutenant shouted: "Who's that? Answer or I fire." No answer. Quickly he fired four times at the light. The only result was another flash. With drawn guns the party scrambled over the tilted deck, guided by the light: to find the interloper was only a torch, flicking on and off as the roll took it over the button.

They set to work swiftly and soon the tow was passed. The boat returned, was hoisted, and the British captain ordered slow ahead. "The Chook" once again moved through the water, but only for a moment. A sudden tautening of the tow wire till it quivered like a bow string warned them to slip. It was too much for her. Weakened bulkheads had given in. Her slim bow rose in the air, then quietly and gracefully she slipped under. Silently her men watched her go.

Followed three weeks in a base camp in Alexandria, and finally word got round that they were going home. One rainy afternoon a merchantman pulled in to Prince's Pier at Melbourne and a line of sailors filed quietly ashore. There were no bands or plaudits awaiting-only the eager arms of wives and sweethearts.

J. E. MACDONNELL, R.A.N.

THE "LIZZIE" IS IN

IT was only thirty-six hours ago! With the last, probably fiftieth, descent of the gangway of the deserted liner, it seems an age since setting out to meet this floating hotel whose paneled labyrinths are now more familiar than the city streets.

It was just before dawn yesterday that we shivered on the wharf trying to ignore the lingering aroma of hot bacon which taunted our awakening appetites, and enviously watching the sleepy-eyed crew of our boat draining that hot, sweet, strong tea which is almost as much a tradition of the Royal Navy as the White Ensign.

As the boat shudders into motion the blue-white spotlight carefully picks our way under the bows of a carrier and around the stem of a battleship whose scuttles successively wake with yellow light, like a sleepy monster slowly blinking at the coming day. Dawn's cold fingers tint the water a grey pink which reddens and becomes a sheet of gold, broken only by the silhouettes of the fleet units at buoys and dolphins.

The sun melts the taciturnity of early morning. Cold fingers produce the programme. Born of a long Admiralty embarkation signal, which had passed through the labours of cipher, code, mutilation and cryptic abbreviations, the plans for disembarkation have survived the blows of vacillating staff officers, the traps of transport shortages and are now ready to wrestle with nearly five thousand bodies who require to be sorted and despatched direct to various parts of the Commonwealth, complete with baggage.

Through the Heads and to rest inside the boom, glides forty-five thousand tons of grey marine majesty, whose tightly packed human cargo is oozing, through the scuttles and spilling over the decks like a navy-blue rug, patched in places with white, khaki and royal-blue caps of home-coming Australians.

To the outspoken disappointment, and with the concerted advice of, the passengers the disembarkation officers successfully negotiate the ladder to a port which seems half-way up to heaven.

And then the fun starts. It appears that the first point is won by the Communications Branch who successfully delivered a signal different in detail from that originated in the United Kingdom, and that Admiralty have also gained points by arranging that the ship's records be kept in dissections different from those signalled. Imperatives and impossibles on both sides are feverishly debated and adjusted as the ship moves up harbour.

By the time the tugs are slowly nosing this sea-going skyscraper into the wharf with its waiting vehicles, the few hundred Australian personnel are ready to disembark, the chief steward is re-organizing his meal plans, and the ship's staff are re-sorting the rating passengers. The broadcasting speakers are ceaselessly talking, each instruction being twice prefixed with an unfamiliar accented "D'you heah thah? "

The personal briefing of two hundred human interrogation marks disguised as officers is a maddening process, particularly as most of them have independently decided about their different personal disembarkation arrangements, on which they expect the programme shall be pivoted. Following a firm line of disillusionment, delivered as gently as practicable, the disembarking transport officer tries to look like a passenger and evade the "When? How? Where? What? Why?" quiz session of the crowd as he struggles to the gangway to get the altered transport requirements ashore.

The Australians cannot leave fast enough and are quickly clear of the wharf. As soon as the hatches are open and discharge of the heavy baggage under way, the extraction of the problem passengers-officers, female personnel and civilians-is painfully effected. Without the highly desirable assistance of manacles, lead ropes and a shotgun, they are patiently led and bullied into completion of the loading of their different vehicles for their many separate destinations, in order that the main disembarkation may later proceed smoothly without interruption.

Sling after sling of heavy baggage pours on to the wharf at most uncivilian speed as the working parties from the ship's passengers burrow deep down into the lower hold, their bare backs gleaming in the dim electric light as they revel in physical exertion after four weeks' inactive congestion at sea. As fast as it hits the wharf the baggage is dumped into the cargo shed, where still another team of human ants sorts and stacks it ready for loading on the motor transport vehicles.

By midnight the holds are bare and ten thousand pieces have been landed. The sorting is still in progress and the big trucks and trailers which have been roaring in and out since dusk are steadily reducing the sorted stacks. The Royal Marine truck drivers gleefully compare each trip time with the official speed limit. With change of watches every four hours, cocoa and thick sandwiches appear and more quickly disappear.

One of the highlights is the pleasure of letting, the jeep have its head through the desolate and deserted city streets across to the rail sidings to check the loading of the luggage vans, which are to be attached to the long distance trains departing early next morning.

BY 5 a.m. morale is rather low and feet are seen rather than felt, but sorting is finished and all baggage is clear excepting that of the problem passengers whose hotels are not enthusiastic about receiving baggage in the very early hours.

A wash, shave, brush-up and quick breakfast make the world seem much brighter as the first trainload clatter down the gangway and snake away to the waiting ferry which will deposit them at the train wharf.

The ship's master-at-arms has been as good as his promises and at a steady rate of six hundred per hour and in correct order, the ratings stream off the ship until 2 p.m. At 3 p.m. the last train is away to time, the entraining guides collected and the jeep, which now knows its own way between the ship and the rail siding, heads back for a session of mutual congratulation with the master-at-arms and O.C. Troops.

The inevitable dozen unlabelled and unclaimed baggage items are despatched to R.N. Barracks Baggage Store for identification, the retard ship-cleaning party are packed into buses, personal gear is collected and another cycle of inward troopship routine is completed.

F. F. DERRETT, R.A.N.

THE ARMY IN AUSTRALIA BEFORE WATERLOO

THE early history of the Australian Military Forces offers engrossing reading to the student whose interest takes him back to those turbulent days of the late 1780S. What is considered by many to be the first chapter of the military history of Australia begins then and extends into 1870.

In this phase is given an early microcosm of things to come-immediate conflict between civil and military authority; what happens when a garrison has not enough work to do; the first mutiny and its consequences; the first volunteer militia (on the whole a creditable phase in an otherwise disgraceful record); the first veterans corps; the first land settlement plan for soldiers; and the first pensions claims.

When Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N., arrived in 1788 with a commission as Governor and Governor-General to plant a penal colony in New South Wales he brought 564 men and 192 women, all convicts, packed in six sailing ships; also 168 marines and ten officers to maintain order. From the beginning to the end of his term he encountered more trouble from the Marines than from the convicts.

These Royal Marines comprised four companies under the command of Major Robert Ross, having as subordinate officers Captains James Campbell and John Shea; Captain Lieutenants James Meredith and Watkin Tench; Lieutenants George Johnston, John Creswell, John Kellew, John Poulden, John Johnston, James Maitland Shaipe, Thomas Davey and Thomas Timmins; Second Lieutenants Ralph Clarke, William Dawes and William Faddy; Adjutant II John Long, Quartermaster-Lieutenant James Frazer; Judge-Advocate David Collins; as well as five medical men (probably orderlies), a few mechanics, and forty wives of marines (free citizens) and their thirteen children.

There is nothing in the early records to show that the Marines were given any real work of survey, construction, or exploration beyond supervision of chain gangs and the general chores of prison warders. Their morale deteriorated rapidly. Friction arose immediately among the officers; there was discontent in the ranks and numerous thefts from stores.

Within three months Major Ross was openly defying the authority of the Governor, whom he informed that officers of the Marines must refuse to sit on the Criminal Courts, which appear to have acted as a quasi-military jurisdiction. The Marines, Major Ross declared, recognized only the authority of the Admiralty. In a letter dated 27 October 1788, Phillip reported the facts to Lord Sydney, Secretary of State, who, having already heard rumours of insubordination, acted promptly and advised Phillip that the recalcitrant Marines would be recalled and replaced by a special Corps raised in England for service in Sydney. Any rank and file of Marines who could be induced to enlist in the New South Wales Corps would receive a bounty 0f £3 each and were assured after five years' service of a grant of land, tools from the stores, seed, and sustenance for the first year.

It is not clear exactly how many availed themselves of this offer but a parade on 24 July 1790 showed eleven officers and 117 men present. A War Office order five years later directed that the Marines then remaining should be incorporated in a company of the N.S.W. Corps under Captain-Lieutenant George Johnston and Ensign T. Davis.

Pay was-
- captain 7/6 a day (75 cents)
- lieutenant 3/6 (35 cents)
- ensign 3 /- (30 cents)
- sergeant 1 /- (10cents)
- corporal 8d. (8 cents)
- drummer 8d. (8 cents)
- private 6d. (6 cents)

This, presumably, was the pay of the N.S.W. Corps also and might in a small degree excuse the trafficking in liquor by which they set about augmenting this meagre income.

The first companies of the N.S.W. Corps, having arrived with the Second Fleet on 28 June 1790, soon became implicated in wholesale trafficking in "rum", as all wines and alcoholic spirits were called.

Phillip informed the Secretary of State that the behaviour of the Corps was worse than that of their predecessors, the Marines.

They quarreled among themselves and with the emancipated settlers; they persistently defied authority. Efforts to quell the rum traffic, which superseded all other forms of currency and trading and gave rise to chicanery and debauchery, proved too much for Phillip's efforts to maintain a semblance of order. At his own request he left for England on 21 November 1792 seeking "a change of air, at least for a time". He resigned formally in July the following year, having given his best efforts in an extremely difficult assignment.

Controversy has existed as to the qualifications of the officers of the Rum Corps, as it became colloquially known, but the records refute the suggestion of many writers that these officers had no previous military training. The order in the London Gazette of 24 October 1789 creating the Corps and appointing its officers shows that all except Ensigns John Thomas Prentice, Francis Kirby and C. de Cotterel were officers of regiments of good repute, including the 6th, 50th, 60th, 68th, 73rd and 96th Regiments of Foot. These original officers were: To be major commanding: Captain Francis Grose; to be captains in command of companies: Lieutenants Nicholas Nepean, William Hill and William Paterson; to be lieutenants: Edward Abbott and John Townson and Ensigns John Macarthur and Joseph Foveaux. Much more was to be heard of Ensign Macarthur.

The rank and file of the N.S.W. Corps were recruited from the military prisons of England. For two years between the departure of Phillip and the arrival of his successor, Captain John Hunter, R.N., in September 1795 the facade of military law was preserved in Sydney by this unlikely material, first under Major Grose and later under Captain Paterson. Behind this facade the Corps established a monopoly in the rum traffic which was a curse and a calamity to the expanding colony. The effects took many years to mitigate and ultimately led to rebellion.

As detachments were sent to Parramatta (two officers and fifty men), Hawkesbury (two officers and ninety-two men), Norfolk Island (four officers and seventy-one men), and South Head (seven men), so also went the illicit imports and stills. Rum was forced on the soldiers in lieu of pay and as intermediaries; they in turn established it as currency among the free settlers, emancipists and convicts. A few of the officers sought to maintain some semblance of discipline, but without effect.

Hunter took over in September 1795, but he had not the ruthlessness or resources necessary to restore discipline and establish order. Honest, sincere and conscientious he undoubtedly was. He did his best, but the Corps, working openly and secretly, was too numerous and too cunning for him. Four months after his arrival he addressed a sharp reprimand to Paterson, who was still in command of the Corps, declaring:

"The conduct on the part of the New South Wales Corps has been, in my opinion, the most violent and outrageous that was ever heard of in any British regiment whatever, and I shall consider every step that may go further in aggravation as rebellion against His Majesty's Government and authority, of which the most early notice shall be taken and those concerned be in due time obliged to answer for it, most probably with their lives."

This communication Hunter reinforced three weeks later by an order published in the Government Gazette assuring all persons in the Colony of his "determination to preserve order and tranquillity by every means which the law can furnish". But it was of little use. Within another six months he was obliged officially to bring to the notice of the British Government the "violent and extraordinary conduct" of the N.S.W. Corps, and to remark that the manner in which they had been recruited "does in a measure weaken the effect on service which one would expect to derive from the assistance of the military". Some of them he declared "the most atrocious characters that ever disgraced human nature".

The response from England was to augment the Corps, partly from the same unlikely material-men who were in military prisons because they were considered to have disgraced their regiments-and partly from emancipated convicts. The strength of the Corps was to be raised from three companies to ten. An accompanying order contained the first proposals for an expeditionary force based on Australia. Four companies of eighty-five rank and file each were to be "held in readiness for active service overseas" under Major Paterson. Where they were intended to go was not stated, but there is a presumption that an expedition was projected against the Spanish settlements in the Philippines. It did not go; the grip on the Colony by the Corps intensified. Hunter had failed. He was recalled to England and Captain Philip Gidley King, R.N., who was deemed by the Admiralty to be a much stronger man, took over as Governor with stringent orders to suppress the rum traffic and restore discipline.

King proceeded at the outset with vigorous measures. He imposed stringent restrictions on the sale and importation of spirits, issued permits and licences, and fixed maximum quantities. Importers and traders raised a storm of protest and the embittered and disaffected office of the Corps allied themselves more compactly against the Governor.

After six years he, too, was forced to admit in despatches that every step which he took clashed so much with the interests of trading individual's, both commissioned and noncommissioned officers, soldiers and private persons, that all set their wits to work, not only to thwart his exertions but to use every measure that art, cunning and fraud could devise to impede his efforts. Worn out by the
struggle, he was superseded by Captain William Bligh, R.N.,-"Bligh of the Bounty"- who was held in very high esteem at the Admiralty as one of the heroes of Copenhagen, an intrepid navigator and a disciplinarian.

King's term did contain two noteworthy events. In 1802 during a lull in the wars against the French, the British Government decided upon drastic retrenchments of the military forces. King was instructed to induce as many men as possible to accept discharge from the Corps and settle on the land as an alternative to being sent back to England. The offer was for a grant of 13o acres to N.C.Os if single, 15o acres if married; eighty acres to each private if single and ioo acres if married; every married grantee to receive an additional ten acres for each child. These grants were free of taxation, quit rents and other dues for ten years, and thereafter liable to a nominal rent of I/- to 2/- per fifty acres.

In addition the grantees were to be fed and clothed for a year, to receive tools and seed from the public stores for the same period and to be allowed the service of such convicts as the Governor thought fit. It is not disclosed how many availed themselves of this, the first soldier settlement proposal in Australia, but many undoubtedly did with varying fortunes. The weakness of the scheme lay in the fact that no consideration was given to varying quality of land. There was wide scope for patronage and favoritism in the selection of land and the allocation of convict labour.

About this time the first equivalent of the Australian militia came into existence. The idea seems to have been King's. He stated that the object of the Loyal Sydney and Parramatta Association, as it was called. was to assist the civil and military powers in the preservation of good order and the protection of public and private property, and to meet any attack by the French upon the Colony in event of resurgence of war. This embryonic citizens' army was to be recruited from young men of good record in the Colony,, including some born in the Colony - free men themselves, though their parents might not have been.

There is more than a hint that King hoped that these young men would have a good influence upon the soldiers of the Corps. They formed two companies of fifty men each, one under William Balmain at Sydney, the other under Richard Aitken at Parramatta. They were drilled once a month, uniformed, had field pieces assigned to them for training and were allotted duties in event of any emergency. According to King, they were "disciplined in a manner that did them the utmost credit". Eventually these units were incorporated as part of the military forces of the Colony and trained in the use of cannon under Ensign Minchin, an artillery officer.

There seems little doubt that they impressed Major Johnston at that stage, because on 14 July 1805 he recommended that the N.S.W. Corps be augmented by " 150 lads born in the Colony free and of good character". This was ultimately approved by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. There was need for young free men of good character in the early years of the century. Conditions were so bad at one stage that King was obliged to proclaim a curfew, prohibiting persons from being seen out of their houses after sunset on pain of being shot by the patrolling constable.

A serious convict revolt occurred on 4 March 1804. The more tractable of these were assigned as servants to the settlers, but the more reckless characters, made desperate in many instances by the treatment they received, were worked as chain gangs. One party of little fewer than 300 were working on the road between Parramatta and Windsor. These men overcame their guards, removed their irons, seized some firearms, and marched towards the Hawkesbury. Major Johnston of the N.S.W. Corps pursued them with only a score or so soldiers. Coming up with the rebels he went forward accompanied only by one trooper and called the convicts to send two of their

leaders forward to parley. This they did, but as the convicts refused to surrender, Johnston and the trooper pulled their pistols and placed them at the heads of the rebel representatives, at the same time calling his force forward. Some fire was exchanged, twelve convicts were killed, six wounded and the "ringleaders" hanged. The remainder went back to work promising to be of good conduct in the future.

Such was the general state of affairs on the arrival of Bligh on 13 August i 8o6. He had all the qualities that Hunter and King lacked. The period from his arrival until the mutinous N.S.W. Corps arrested and deposed him on 26 January i8o8 has become the most controversial phase in the early history of Sydney.

Bligh's insistence upon discipline was indeed sufficiently stiff, but unfortunately he was also a quarrelsome, ill-tempered, coarse-speaking man. His manner of doing business with those who had to see him was repellent. He would, with no regard to the dignity of his office, pour forth a stream of personal abuse and threats and, if he felt angry with anyone, he would announce his displeasure no matter where he was. He was a law unto himself, and he boasted so.

The man who hated Bligh most was a former lieutenant of the Corps, John Macarthur, one of the officers who had profited most by private trading in rum and general merchandise. Macarthur was a strong-willed, hot-tempered person, affectionate in his circle of friends but equally strong in his antipathies. He would strain every nerve to get his own way. He had already quarreled with King and Hunter whose power he had endeavoured to undermine. The richest man in N.S.W., he was fully conscious of the power which his wealth gave him.

The personal quarrel between these two men is cognate to this early military history because it led to mutiny by the military against the civil power. Events were brought to a crisis by circumstances which had no direct connection with the barter in spirits.

Macarthur had been part owner of the schooner Parramatta which traded to Tahiti for salt pork and other supplies. This ship was lying in Sydney harbour and the Judge Advocate summoned Macarthur before him to answer a complaint by the crew that they had "broken ship" and come ashore without leave because the owners had withheld their wages. It was suspected also that the ship was bringing two illicit stills, one for Macarthur, the other for Captain Abbott. Macarthur sent a note of explanation, but did not obey the order to appear in person. This was construed -as an act of contumacy. Macarthur was arrested on 25 January i8o8 and brought before the Judge-Advocate and a military jury of six officers. He objected to the Judge-Advocate hearing the trial, alleging personal malice. There appears some ground for this charge, especially as Atkins's adviser throughout the proceedings was one George Crossley, a convicted attorney, who was believed to be an enemy of Macarthur. The jury upheld the objection. The Judge-Advocate refused to abdicate and the Governor refused to supersede him, pointing out that as the Judge-Advocate was an appointee of the British Government, only that authority could remove him.

There seems to be some casuistry about this, since Bligh's whole record shows that he would not have hesitated to have suspended Atkins and sent to London for confirmation had such a course suited his book. The six officers then refused duty as jurors. Bligh summoned them to appear before him. They refused to obey. He sent several times for their commanding officer (Major George Johnston) at his residence at Annandale, requesting him to come to Government House to confer with him upon the conduct of his subordinates. This officer asked to be excused on the grounds of ill-health-a palpable subterfuge for between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. on the same day he appeared suddenly at the barrack square a very fit and active man indeed.

Here Johnston claimed he found ferment and confusion, while a number of leading (but anonymous) citizens, civil as well as military, clamored for him to put the Governor under arrest. He yielded to this alleged clamour, and on 26 January i8o8 marched at the head of his regiment with drums beating and colours flying to Government House, put Bligh under house arrest, proclaimed martial law, usurped
the functions of Governor to himself, and suspended the Judge-Advocate, the Chaplain, the Provost-Marshal, and other officials. Then followed a salute of twenty-one guns from Dawes Point and the hoisting of the standard of Great Britain.

Johnston's term of office was very brief. Lieutenant-Colonel Foveaux, the senior military officer in the Colony, superseded him, until Colonel Paterson came from Tasmania to assume direction of affairs. Johnston was cashiered in the court martial which followed, but returned to the Colony as a private citizen and died on his estate at Annandale.

Macarthur, who had gone to England to give evidence, dared not return to Australia until 1817. The Rum Corps was disgraced, disbanded and superseded by the 73rd Highland Regiment, whose commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, be came Governor. He had instructions to reinstate Bligh as Governor for twenty-four hours but owing to the latter's absence from Sydney this could not be done. Upon his return to England Bligh was promoted to Admiral of the Blue.

Macquarie's term, 1809-1821, brought a new era of order, exploration, road-making, expansion of flocks and of settlement. Finding that many of the old soldiers of the Marines and the N.S.W. Corps were no longer fit for active service, he established an "Invalid and Veteran Company" of ioo men and incorporated it with his own regiment for light duty. In 1816, following the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo, he approved of a meeting in one of the wards of the general hospital at Macquarie Street to raise a fund for a pension for the widows and children of those killed in battle. Thus was initiated the germ of repatriation and pensions in Australia.

Acknowledgment is freely and gratefully made for use in the foregoing article of material
which was gathered together by the late Mr. R. K. Peacock, for many years Defence
Librarian. He put the result of years of research into some notes entitled The Imperial Troops from 1783 to 1870, now preserved in the Australian War Memorial at Canberra.

CRAYTON BURNS, First A.I.F.