Elizabeth Isabella Throsby (née Broughton; 4 February 180714 January 1891) was an Australian survivor of the 1809 Boyd massacre.
Born on Norfolk Island, Throsby was two years old when she and her mother left Sydney on the Boyd, bound for England via New Zealand. During the voyage, a dispute broke out between the ship's English captain and a Māori passenger returning to his home at Whangaroa Harbour. Once there, his tribe learned of the captain's ill-treatment of him, and sought revenge by murdering and cannibalising most of the 70 passengers and crew, including Throsby's mother. Throsby and three other survivors were rescued a few weeks later by merchant and explorer Alexander Berry, who took them to South America. Throsby remained there for almost a year until a whaler took her to Sydney to be reunited with her father.
She went on to marry in her late teenage years and raise a large family at Throsby Park south of Sydney, where she remained for the rest of her life.
Birth and family
Elizabeth Broughton was born on 4 February 1807 on Norfolk Island—then a satellite penal station of New South Wales and now an external territory of Australia—as the youngest of five children to Englishman William Broughton and his common-law wife, London-born convict Ann Glossop, of Welsh descent. Born in Chatham, Kent in 1768, William travelled to New South Wales in 1787 aboard the First Fleet convict transport Charlotte, as a free servant of John White, the colony's first Surgeon-General. Upon arrival in Botany Bay, Sydney on 20 January 1788, Broughton and White commissioned a convict on the ship, Thomas Barrett, to strike each of them a medallion to commemorate the voyage. Broughton supplied Barrett with the metal and engraving tools, as well as the ship's coordinates for recording. Both medallions are regarded as the first works of Australian colonial art.
In 1792, while working as a store-keeper in Parramatta, Broughton met Glossop, who had been transported to the colony that year aboard the Pitt. They moved to Norfolk Island in 1800 when he became its acting deputy-commissary. In the wake of the Rum Rebellion of 1808, they returned to Sydney, where Broughton replaced Bligh loyalist John Palmer as commissary of New South Wales.
Boyd massacre and rescue
The Boyd, a convict transport captained by John Thompson, arrived in Sydney from Ireland in August 1809, and two months later was chartered by ex-convict Simeon Lord to take seal skins to England. On the way, the Boyd was to call at New Zealand to complete the cargo with kauri spars, and also drop off several young Māori at Whangaroa Harbour, among them Te Ara, the son of a Ngāti Uru chief. Among the passengers bound for England were the emancipated Glossop and two-year-old Elizabeth, possibly to visit her siblings who had been sent there for their education. During the voyage, Thompson, fresh from England and apparently ignorant of Māori customs, treated Te Ara like a common crew member and demanded that he work his passage as a seaman. When Te Ara failed to comply either due to illness or out of a belief that, as a rangatira, such work was beneath him, he was deprived of food and flogged—common punishments meted out to British sailors at the time. This slighted his "mana" (dignity), which in Māori culture is met with the expected response of "utu" (revenge).
The Boyd reached Whangaroa in December and Te Ara's tribe soon learned of his punishment. This only deepened their desire for "utu", for they had grown suspicious of Europeans since another ship's visit in 1808 resulted in a deadly outbreak of disease among Māori, which they believed to be a curse. Oblivious to local feelings, Thompson and several crew members disembarked and went in search of kauri up the harbour, where they were murdered and cannibalised by local Māori. Then, as night fell, Māori assaulted the Boyd, murdering and later cannibalising most of the 70 remaining passengers and crew, including Glossop. Elizabeth was one of only four passengers to survive the massacre. The next day, the Boyd burnt to the water after its gunpowder magazine was accidentally ignited, causing a massive explosion that killed a number of Māori who were pillaging the ship, including Te Ara's father. The ensuing chaos triggered a civil war in Whangaroa.