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Sir,

The discontents which have prevailed in the marine detachment, and the desire expressed by most of the officers and men to return home as soon as they shall have performed the tour of duty they had undertaken, have led to the making arrangements for relieving them. With that view His Majesty has ordered a corps to be raised for that particular service, consisting of three hundred rank and file and a suitable number of officers under a Major-Commandant. This corps is ordered to be in readiness for embarkation on the 1st of October next, and will, it is expected, soon after that time proceed upon the voyage.

Grenville To Phillip

Dec. 24th, 1789

The corps which I before informed you was to be raised to serve within your Government, instead of the marines now doing duty there, has been complete for some time past. A detachment from it, consisting of about 100 officers and men, has been put on board the convict ships for their greater security against attempts which the convicts might meditate, and the remainder, under the command of Major Grose, amounting as you will see by the enclosed establishment to upwards of 200 more, will, I expect, embark at Portsmouth on board His Majesty's ship the Gorgon, in the course of a few days.

Governor Hunter To The Duke Of Portland
Sydney, New South Wales,
10th Aug., 1796.

My Lord,

Having occasion in my letter, No. 9. by the ship Marquis Cornwallis, to notice very particularly a paragraph in your Grace's letter of the 10th of June, 1795, which related to the conduct of the military serving upon Norfolk Island in 1794, and which gave me occasion to mention similar outrage having been committed by the soldiers here since my arrival, I signified in that letter that I thought it might be improper in me to suppress or keep from your Grace's knowledge that outrage, and that it should be communicated at a future opportunity. I therefore enclose for your Grace's information a paper, No. 1, containing the particulars, stated in as brief a manner as possible. I forbear, my Lord, to make any observations upon this violent and extraordinary conduct on the part of the soldiers. I transmit only a statement of the facts, leaving your Grace wholly uninfluenced by anything I might have occasion to remark upon so daring a violation of the peace and order of the settlement, as well as in defiance of those laws by which that peace is to be preserved.

But as an alteration in the ration had at that time been ordered, I think it necessary to observe that their temper at the moment was so violent that they positively refused to take it unless they were served all flour, instead of part flour and part corn, a desire which could not be complied with without manifest injustice to others, and also insisted upon being paid short-allowance money for the time they were on short ration, which they say Governor Phillip had promised them. This last demand I must request your Grace's instructions upon.

The paper No. 2 is the Public Order which I gave out immediately after the outrage; No. 3 is a copy of my letter to the commanding officer of the corps upon that occasion; and No. 4 is a paper which was intended to quiet the minds of the inhabitants of the settlement, who might naturally (if no steps were taken to punish the offenders in this case, nor any particular notice be taken of the offence committed by them) conceive themselves subject to such violence and oppression from the military whenever any soldier might think fit to take offence at them. These papers are all which I think it necessary to trouble your Grace with upon this occasion, as the facts will best speak for themselves, and prevent the possibility of a conjecture that any unfair representation could have been intended.

I should feel myself deficient in that duty which I owe to His Majesty's service in this part of the world were I not to take a liberty which I have no reason to believe your Grace will be offended at—I mean, in remarking that the manner in which this corps has, since employed upon this service, been recruited, does in a great measure weaken the effect or service which we would expect to derive from the assistance of the military. Soldiers from the Savoy, and other characters who have been considered as disgraceful to every other regiment in His Majesty's service, have been thought fit and proper recruits for the New South Wales Corps, which, in my humble opinion, my Lord, should have been composed of the very best and most orderly dispositions. They are sent here to guard and keep in obedience to the laws when force may be requisite, a set of the worst, the most atrocious characters that ever disgraced human nature; and yet we find amongst those safeguards men capable of corrupting the heart of the best disposed, and often superior in every species of infamy to the most expert in wickedness amongst the convicts. Our stores, provisions, and granaries must be entrusted to the care of these men; what security can we have in the hands of such people? None, my Lord. Your Grace will see the impropriety of such recruits being sent to this country, and mixed with a corps who have the care of our most valuable concerns. Not to detain your Grace, I will beg permission to observe that a corps of military to be permanently established for the service of this colony, to which the dregs and refuse of our native country are directed by its laws to be sent as a punishment, cannot be attended with that advantage which may have been expected from it.

This, I confess, my Lord, to be my opinion, and for this reason, that they will make connections with infamous characters here, whatever attention may be paid by their officers to prevent it; by this means they will in time be corrupted and rendered unfit people for the trust which we must repose in them. It might probably be thought expensive to relieve them as other garrisons, once in three, four, or five years; but I cannot help believing, my Lord, that the service would be much benefited by such a measure; and two forty-four-gun ships armed en flute sailing at a proper season would complete the relief, and return in from twelve to fourteen months, frequently less. The expense attending this measure will probably be an objection; but, my Lord, although the saving to be made by it may appear too remote to merit immediate notice, yet I am convinced it would ultimately prove a saving, and no inconsiderable one.

I have, etc.,
Jno. Hunter.

(Enclosure No. 1)
Statement Of The Case Of John Baughan

John Baughan who officiates as foreman of the carpenters working at Sydney, and a private soldier of the New South Wales Corps, of the same profession, had some dispute when formerly working together on an occasion when Baughan had the direction. This dispute, it appeared, had not subsided in the mind of the soldier, and probably was not wholly forgot by the other. It, however, was more conspicuous in the soldier, from the following circumstance:—One day when sentinel over a storehouse, knowing that Baughan was at work in a house some distance from his post, he set his arms down against the wall of the store, and seeing a man whom he knew, standing on the outside of the building in which Baughan was at work, entered into a conversation with him, of which Baughan was the subject, and in which much abuse was bestowed which it was meant that he, Baughan, should hear. Baughan went out at the back door unperceived, and seeing the soldier without his arms, went to his post, where he found the musquet, which he took up and carried to the guardhouse and delivered to the sergeant of the guard. The soldier was, of course, taken notice of and relieved, being without his arms. The next day, 5th February, at half-past nine o'clock in the forenoon the whole of the corps off duty at this place assembled, and in the most public and tumultuous manner proceeded to the dwelling of John Baughan, broke open his gates, doors and windows, entered his house, chopped the corner-posts of it, broke his bedsteads and bedding, chairs, window-frames, drawers, chests, and, in short, completely demolished everything within his possession to a considerable amount, for the man had by great labor and industry built himself a neat house and had it well furnished.

Upon their first approach, having had a few minutes' notice, he armed himself with a loaded gun and defended himself by threats for some time, but their numbers were so many that they surrounded his paling which enclosed the house, which some tore down, and entered on the opposite side to that which he endeavored to defend, came behind him, secured and threw him down with his face to the ground, whilst one held an axe over his neck, and swore if he offered to stir, he would chop the head from his body. During the time he remained in this situation they completed the ruin of his whole property, to the very great terror of the man's wife, after which they went off cheering, as if something meritorious had been effected, and marched in a body across the parade before their commanding officer's house.

After so daring an attack in the open day, upon the dwelling-house of an inhabitant, and in direct defiance of all law, civil or military, they could only be considered as in a state of mutiny. I immediately issued in Public Orders the papers No. 2.

(Enclosure No. 2)
Government And General Order
5th Feb., 1796.

Parole—Milbrook.

Countersign—Cawsand.

The very riotous manner in which the soldiers have conducted themselves this morning, and the very unwarrantable liberty they have thought proper to take in destroying the dwelling-house of John Baughan, is so flagrant a crime against the laws established in this colony that nothing but the want of proof to substantiate who the principal actors in this disgraceful business were, could possibly prevent their being immediately tried for so glaring an offence against the peace of the colony.

The Governor thinks it necessary to assure the soldiers that he considers their conduct upon this occasion to have been disgraceful to the character of a British soldier, and that he did hope to have found men amongst them who would have had pride enough to have stood forward and have pointed out the ringleaders of so mutinous a conduct, for in no other light can it be considered than that of mutiny when the military assemble in such numbers unknown to their officers, who are at all times ready to listen to any complaints they may have to make, and to see that agreeable to common justice they are redressed. If the soldiers expect that the Governor or any of the officers in this settlement can hereafter consider them as hereafter meriting the honorable appellation of British troops, it must be by their bringing forward the ringleaders or advisers of this disgraceful conduct, in order that the stigma may be wiped away by such worthless characters being brought to trial for this shameful conduct.

(Enclosure No. 3)
Governor Hunter To Captain Paterson
Sydney, 7th Feb. 1796.

Sir,

Since I saw you this morning I have turned in my mind the subject of our conversation, and I have in consequence changed my intention of speaking to the soldiers myself. I see that it would be a condescension on my part which their violent and unsoldierlike conduct does not entitle them to from me. I stand in this colony as the Chief Magistrate, and the representative of our Sovereign; anything, therefore, that could lessen me in the eye of the public would be degrading the King's authority, which shall never suffer in my person whilst I am capable of giving it its full power and consequence. I never can or will listen to the complaints of any set of men who feel themselves above preferring them with moderation, and a decent submission to the laws and regulations of the colony; they must not—they shall not—dictate laws and rules for the government of this settlement; they were sent here by His Majesty to support the civil power in the execution of its functions, but they seem disposed to take all law into their own hands, and to direct it in whatever way best may suit their own views.

Their violence upon the late occasion shall be laid before the King, and the principal actors in it shall be pointedly marked, in order that justice the most perfect be done to everyone concerned in it. I must declare to you, sir, that the conduct of this part of the New South Wales Corps has been, in my opinion the most violent and outrageous that was ever heard of by any British regiment whatever, and I shall consider every step they may go farther 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 is all I think it necessary to trouble you with. Their conduct will be pointedly marked thro' all its stages, and I will be firm and resolved in such steps as it may be necessary for me to pursue, and of this you, as their commanding Officer, will be pleas'd to inform them.

I am, etc.,
Jno. Hunter

A Source Book of Australian History, 1919