It was the evening of Monday 13th of January, 1834 and all had seemed well aboard the Frederick, lying to inside the Gates of Hell, waiting to cross the Bar into the open sea of the Great Australian Bite. It was about half past eight and all was well with the ship, but all was not well with David Hoy; his health was not good and he was in the cabin of the ship with Captain Charles Taw who was both pilot and master. Also on board the Frederick was James Tait, a shipwright, a corporal and three privates of the 63rd Guard who were supposed to control the 12 convicts on board. These men had worked on the Frederick in the shipyard and were all that was left of the prisoners from Sarah Island penal colony, the rest of whom had been escorted by the Commandant, Major Bailey, his officers and troops, to Port Arthur.
David and Mr Taw were no doubt taking their ease on that Monday; David knew the prisoners well as he had used them as labourers in the shipyard, and even trained some of them as apprentices to his craft. The soldiers on board were nominally in charge of them but they were also supposed to be sailing the ship. The ship was well supplied for the journey to Hobart with 3 or 4 casks of Irish beef, 3 pigs, a goat, 4 dozen ducks and fowl, 2 geese, 15 hundredweight of flour, 4-5 hundredweight of biscuit, sugar, tea and some spirits. Two of the soldiers were on the deck, having left their arms on the half deck; another two soldiers had gone off in the whale boat without permission and without the knowledge of Captain Taw. Maybe they thought it would be alright to do so as they had already been out in the boat that morning.
It must have come as a great shock to Taw and David when William Shiers and James Leslie burst into the cabin armed with pistols which they pointed at the two men.
“We have got the vessel, and if you don’t give yourself up, I will blow your brains out!”
Taw jumped up and tried to wrestle the weapon away from Leslie, while Shiers held David at gunpoint. Taw tried to drag him towards the cabin ladder but at that moment another convict, Benjamin Russen appeared with a loaded musket in his hands. Shires left David and rushed to Taw and overpowered him.
It was mutiny!
Lois Elsden 
It’s very exciting to read about it but I wouldn’t have liked to have been in your ancestor’s shoes.
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He’sd had some hard and difficult times up till then but that must take the biscuit! (Ship’s biscuit maybe… poor joke!)
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I just don’t know how they coped with things like that – it is so frightening. This is why I love people writing about family history – as a reader, it takes on a totally different light for me: if I had read it as a piece of fiction, it would have been exciting; if I had read it as a piece of history, it would have been slightly different but still exciting; when I read it as something which happened to an ancestor of someone I know, then it becomes a whole new ball game. It touches me, the distance has gone and the reality steps in. I bet that sentence in the middle is the longest sentence you have ever read.
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I specialise in very long sentences!! A friend once asked me about my Germanic constructions! Have you read that book I reviewed, ‘Midnight in Peking’? Amazing – and amazingly well written too.
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No I haven’t read Midnight In Peking – I’ll have to look for it.
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