This is a story lost to history for over two hundred years; a dirty secret of failure, fatal misjudgement and desperate measures which the British Empire chose to forget almost as soon as it was over. In the wake of its most crushing defeat, the America War of Independence, the British Government began shipping its criminals to West Africa. Some were transported aboard ships going to pick up their other human cargo: African slaves. When they arrived at their destination, soldiers and even convicts were forced to work in the region's slave-trading forts guarding the human merchandise. In a few short years the scheme brought death, wholesale desertions, mutiny, piracy and even murder. Some of the most egregious crimes were not committed by the exported criminals but by those sent out to guard them. Acts of wanton desperation added to rash transgressions as those whom society had already thrown out realised that they had nothing left to lose. As jail and prison hulks overflowed, and as every other alternative settlement proved unsuitable, the British Government gambled and decided to send its criminals as far away as possible, to the great south land sighted years before by Captain James Cook. Out of the embers of the African debacle came the modern nation of Australia. The extraordinary tale is now being told for the first time - how a small band of good-for-nothing members of the British Empire spanned the world from America, to Africa, and on to Australia, profoundly if utterly unwittingly changing history.

Table of Contents

1. Bound for America; 2. Mr Jefferson and Patrick Madan; 3. London in Flames; 4. The "Best Sacrifices for Death"; 5. Africa; 6. The Battle for the Coast; 7. Deserting to the Enemy; 8. A Plantation with Slaves; 9. A Mutiny and a Most Peculiar Murder; 10. Trouble at Goree Island; 11. 'Naked and Diseased on the Sandy Shore'; 12. Trying America Again; 13. The Once Mighty are Fallen; 14. Lemane Island

Reviews

riveting account ... fascinating book Times Higher Education Supplement a beautifully crafted endeavor...excellent writing...Thoroughly researched, brilliantly written, deeply humane H-Net well worth an afternoon or two of your time The Spectator the most remarkable story, and she should be commended...for bringing it out of the archives and into the light.' Sunday Times