How well it was attended to, and what effect the punishment of the seamen and convicts produced, were instantly seen. The _Hunter_*, preparatory to a voyage to Bengal, where she was to freight with goods for the colony, went out of the harbour. A woman named Ann Holmes being missing, the governor ordered an armed boat from the _Reliance_ to follow the ship, with some of the constables, and search her; with directions, if any persons were found on board who had not permission to depart, to bring her into port again. Having found the woman, the ship was brought up the harbour and secured.
[* This ship had been a Spanish prize, and was the property of Mr. Hingston, late master of the _Hillsborough_, and two others, free people belonging to the settlement.]
Several of her crew having behaved in a most insolent and mutinous manner to the officer of the _Reliance_, having armed themselves against the constables with cutlasses, and one of them having presented a musket at the chief constable, they were secured, ordered to be punished on board their own ship, and afterwards turned on shore. But it was necessary to do something more than this; and, a criminal court being assembled for the purpose, the master of the ship was brought to trial, charged with aiding and abetting a female convict to make her escape from the colony. As the offence consisted in aiding a convict, it was requisite to prove that such was the person found on board his ship; but, upon referring to a list of the prisoners who were embarked in the _Royal Admiral_, the ship in which Arm Holmes had been sent out to New South Wales, no specific term of transportation was found annexed to her name. On the question then, whether the master had aided a convict in making an escape, he was acquitted, it not being possible by any document to prove that Holmes was at that moment a convict. But the master was reprehensible in concealing any person whatever in his ship, and ought to have felt the awkwardness of his situation, in being brought before a court for the breach of an order expressly issued a short time before to guard him and others against the offence that he had committed.
When the _Hillsborough_ was searched, not less than thirty convicts were found to have been received on board, against the orders and without the knowledge of the officers, and secreted by the seamen. This ship and the _Hunter_, shortly after these transactions, sailed on their respective voyages.