| Book Review | Labour History, 94 | The History Cooperative

BOOK REVIEW

Michael Roe, An Imperial Disaster: The Wreck of George the Third, Blubber Head Press, Hobart, 2006. pp. x + 294. $50.00 cloth.

Michael Roe has had a long and distinguished career as a teacher and historian at the University of Tasmania. Now in his late seventies, he remains, as this book shows, a formidable historian. This book establishes a curious symmetry about Michael's career. His first book, the highly regarded Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia published in the mid-1960s, was distilled from his doctoral thesis.

Quest for Authority included a footnote that refers to an 1835 shipwreck of the convict transport, George III, in D'Entrecasteaux Channel, south of Hobart, in which 127 male convicts, half of whom had scurvy, drowned when the ship's military guard prevented convicts held below from coming on deck. Roe explains in his introduction to An Imperial Disaster that he always thought there was more to say on the matter. On retirement from teaching he returned to the footnote and the book for review is the result.

The book is organised into four parts. Part 1 contains what Roe calls 'Basics': contemporary newspaper accounts, transcripts of evidence given to the inquiry into the shipwreck, information on the ship and its passengers, including convicts, and a brief introduction to the politics and society of Van Diemen's Land (VDL) at the time.

Part 2, 'Reasons', seeks explanations for the shipwreck. Roe discounts the official view that the shipwreck was an unavoidable accident. He argues that official negligence, including cost-cutting in London and Governor George Arthur's neglect of maritime safety in VDL, contributed significantly to the disaster. Through inadequate provisioning and poor conditions on board, London is held responsible for the rampant scurvy that persuaded the ship's captain to attempt passage through D'Entrecasteaux Channel at night. Arthur is held responsible for neglect of maritime safety in VDL in relation to hydrography, port management, pilotage and lighthouses.

Roe took no public part in recent disputes about Tasmanian Aboriginal History, but he does take the opportunity in his introduction to make circumspect if oblique reference to two issues that figured in those disputes. In seeking to provide reasons for the shipwreck, he writes that for him, as a practitioner of empirical and positivist history, historical truth's norm is rational explanation, not, one is left to assume, 'forensic' evidence. He has no qualms holding colonial authorities responsible for gross if not criminal neglect for the often cavalier way in which convict lives were risked in the process of transportation. This can be read as a corrective to recent claims by neo-colonial voices that British imperialists were Christians incapable of doing ill to others, and that apportioning fault, and the associated implication of moral judgment, is not the business of historians.

Part 3, 'Impacts', examines short-term political impacts in VDL and England. The shipwreck created an opening for Arthur's many enemies, especially commercial and merchant interests, to attack the governor for negligence, and there is some hint in the evidence that Arthur feared mutiny among his subjects. It seems likely that the wreck contributed to Arthur's removal as governor the following year. Debate in London was less dramatic, but important lessons were learned about maritime safety that had global repercussions.

The book's final part, 'Echoes', considers more long-term impacts. The politics and action involved in the subsequent reform of waterway management in southern VDL receive detailed consideration. A chapter called 'Survivors Lives' makes a valuable contribution to the extraordinarily rich field of Tasmanian convict studies.

The final chapter, 'Remembrance', explores how the sinking of George III has been remembered. The discussion about the role of Major Thomas Ryan shows how individuals in the service of empire can hold values and attitudes that run counter to the effect of imperial policy and action. Ryan was in charge of the military detachment on board and was complicit in closing the hatch on the stricken George III, which seems out of step with his liberal attitudes on matters of justice and common humanity. Roe wonders, without firm conclusion, about the apparent contradiction. Perhaps the circumstances on the stricken transport were such that the energy generated by the force of events was greater than the will of any individual. Perhaps not. Ryan's determination to put in place at Southport Bluff 'a mighty, tomb-like memorial' for the drowned convicts might have been a salve for his conscience, or it might have reflected genuinely-held values. Ambiguity prevails over the quest for certainty.

Roe's writing style is careful and sometimes archaic, more akin to the style pursued by nineteenth century stylists, which tends to fit comfortably with his subject. The prose flows well, especially where the focus is people rather than politics, and the book's publication values, as with all Blubber Head books, are outstanding. In all, readers interested in the history of VDL, its maritime affairs, and the experience of transported convicts, will find that An Imperial Disaster makes a substantial, authoritative and often fascinating contribution to Tasmanian historiography.


University of Tasmania	SHAYNE BREEN

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