Jessica North - Mary Ann and Captain Piper: The remarkable true story of the convicts daughter who became the toast of colonial Sydney

First published in 2022

Copyright Jessica North 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Email:

Web:www.allenandunwin.com

ISBN 978 1 76087 943 3

eISBN 978 1 76106 408 1

Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Cover design: Lisa White

Front cover photographs: Magdalena Russocka/Trevillion Images (foreground); Henrietta Villa, 1820, R. Read Jnr, State Library of New South Wales (background)

For Belinda and Dawn

Map of Port Jackson and the Parramatta River, New South Wales (W. Meadows Brownrigg, c.1850, State Library of New South Wales)

Mary Ann Piper was just a silhouette in Australian history, a mere shadow behind the dashing Captain John Piper. But when I searched for her among the historical records, the details of her life were gradually revealed until there she was, a vibrant and resilient woman living the most remarkable life in colonial Sydney.

Born on Norfolk Island to First Fleet convicts, Mary Ann Sheers might have expected to become a farmers wife. Instead, at the age of fourteen she entranced the islands Commandantthe charming and flirtatious Captain Piper.

Mary Ann became mistress of the colonys grandest home when Sydney was just becoming a party town. With scores of servants, she and Captain Piper entertained on a scale that had never been seen in Australia, hosting magnificent garden parties, dinners and balls for hundreds of guests, including successive governors of New South Wales.

Mary Anns transition from barefoot child to the toast of Sydney society during the Regency period encompasses triumphs, tragedies and travels around the globe.

All the people in this extraordinary story are real and the events accurately follow the recorded history. On occasions for which there are no historical records, I have described a likely scenario based on the available evidence. In notes at the back of the book I provide reference sources and some extra details.

For clarity, I have occasionally modernised the spelling in quoted letters. I have also shortened the title of the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies to Secretary of State and have referred to the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser as the Sydney Gazette. I have used the term natives when referring to Indigenous Australians to maintain consistency with contemporary descriptions, and often refer to physicians as doctor rather than surgeon, as the colonists also did at the time.

I hope you enjoy getting to know the incomparable Mary Ann Piper.

September 1805

It was two months since Mary Ann Sheers had turned fourteen, and she was scrambling up the grandly named Mount George. When she had nearly reached the top, she flopped down between the stumps of the majestic pine trees that had once graced what was really just a hill.

She had climbed to this spot before, to look down across the small town of Kingston. But this time she felt different. Captain John Piper, Norfolk Islands thirty-one-year-old Commandant, had bedded her the night before and her feelings were all mixed up.

Mary Ann loved her island home. It was a beautiful placelike a small Garden of Eden in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, about a weeks sail east from the British convict settlement at Sydney Cove. Five miles long and three wide, its rolling hills were covered with lush vegetation and its Goldilocks climate meant that it was never too hot nor too cold.

From where she sat on a soft carpet of pine needles, Mary Ann could see the signal flag down by the shore. A blue and yellow cross fluttered in the breeze, indicating to visiting ships that the current weather permitted a rare safe landing at Sydney Bay.

Captain James Cook had first explored the island for the British in 1774. He anticipated that its tall, straight pine trees would make splendid masts for ships and its abundant flax plants could be turned into useful rope and canvas. After one morning ashore he described the island in his journal as paradise.

The evening before he had left on his voyage, he had sat next to Mary Howard, the Duchess of Norfolk, at dinner. She had said: If you find a small isle, would you name it after me? He had graciously done so, being unaware that she had died a few months after he had sailed from England.

Sitting on the side of Mount George, Mary Ann twirled a lock of her wild brown hair in her fingers as she watched the pigeons swirling above the storehouse. They were descended from two birds that had joined HMS Sirius during the First Fleets voyage to Botany Bay. One had been collected by the crew when it was blown offshore at Rio de Janeiro. The other had flown onto the ship while it was moored at Table Bay in Cape Town. For the rest of the long voyage, the two birds had flown together each day, out across the open ocean, before returning to their floating home each evening.

In 1790, food supplies had run so low at the new penal colony at Sydney Cove that Governor Arthur Phillip had sent one hundred and eighty-six convicts, including Mary Anns parents, on board the Sirius and HMS Supply to Norfolk Island, which had more favourable farming prospects.

James Sheers had been a London labourer, transported for highway robbery, though he claimed innocence. Mary Smith was a dressmaker, transported for stealing a pair of leather boots. They had married within a month of arriving at Sydney Cove.

At Norfolk Island, after the convicts had been landed, powerful waves had swept the Sirius onto a rocky coastal reef where it was wrecked, leaving the little Supply as the only remaining link between the two settlementsand the outside world.

A dovecote was built at Kingston for the two well-travelled pigeons and they obligingly began to raise chicks in it. But every day they flew back to their old home on the wreck of the Sirius.

After arriving on the island, Mary Anns father was granted sixty acres of land halfway between Kingston and a cove on the eastern side of the island called Cascade Bay. He was also given a nine-month-old sow, which he shared with two convict women.