James Montagu Smith journals, ca. 1858-1868

MLMSS 7871

fonds

1851-1868

844228

Microfilm : CY 4916, frames 1-279

0.05 metres of textual material (4 volumes) - manuscript

James Montagu Smith was born in London in 1836 and went to sea in 1851, at the age of fourteen. By his twenty-first birthday in August 1857, he had made three return journeys from England to Australia, including two via Cape Horn and one via Hong Kong. At some time between 1858 and 1868 Smith wrote his memoirs of the period 1851-1857 in four notebooks, based on notes, diaries and journals he had kept during those years. Smith came into his inheritance on turning 21 in August 1857, enabling him to return to Australia as a man of independent means. He took up 50 acres on the Hunter River at Nulla Nulla, Hinton, near Morpeth, which were left to him by his uncle, William Burgess, on his death in 1861.

Smith’s four notebooks passed to his eldest daughter, Viola Smith, who bequeathed them to her niece, the granddaughter of James Montagu Smith, Jean Truebridge (née Smith). The volumes were in Jean Truebridge’s possession from 1940 until she presented them to the Mitchell Library in December 2008. During this time, the journals were transcribed by Truebridge and published as Send the boy to sea : The memoirs of a sailor on the goldfields, edited by Peter Cuffley. Noble Park, Vic. : Five Mile Press, 2001.

Smith’s journals provide his first-hand account as a young sailor on a convict transport, the Sir Robert Seppings, to Hobart in 1852; imprisonment in Hobart for insubordination aboard ship; and a further voyage on the same vessel to transfer prisoners from Norfolk Island to Port Arthur. His desertion from the ship with six others while at anchor in Port Arthur was followed by capture and 30 days’ imprisonment in Hobart. After stints on coastal steamers, and a period on the Victorian goldfields, July 1853-November 1854, Smith left Melbourne for England on the barque Chicora, November 1854-March 1855, visiting the mother of a friend from the diggings in Edinburgh in May 1855. In September 1855 Smith returned to Melbourne on the clipper Red Jacket, arriving in December 1855 and travelling via Sydney and Morpeth to visit an uncle in East Maitland, William Burgess, of whom he had heard in England. After various labouring jobs in Melbourne, Smith returned to the goldfields of Victoria and New South Wales in 1856. He returned to London on the ship La Hogue in February 1857. The fourth notebook is interrupted in mid-June 1857, during this visit, with Smith looking forward to collecting his inheritance on his 21st birthday in August 1857.

Volume 1: 1 January [1851]-1 April 1855
Volume 2: 1 April 1855-[21] December 1855
Volume 3: [21] December 1855-[August?] 1856
Volume 4: [August?] 1856-[June] 1857

Published as Send the boy to sea : the memoirs of a sailor on the goldfields / by James Montagu Smith ; edited by Peter Cuffley. Noble Park, Vic. : Five Mile Press, 2001