selected companions for the voyage, and a sentence of
transportation included prostitution. It is not incredible that modest
women rejected life on such terms, or preferred a public execution to
the ignominy of a floating brothel. These practices were first
tolerated as inevitable, and afterwards justified as politic. No
conspiracy could be concealed, while the women were paramours and spies;
and, when long detained, the population of the ship considerably
augmented before she dropped anchor. The government of the vessel was
not less severe than its aspect was licentious.[67]

Thus the abuses which, during the war, penetrated every branch of public
business, rioted in the convict ship; whilst the contractors, who
engaged to convey the prisoners at a price, snatched a profit from the
subsistence stipulated by the crown. Malignant fevers, brought from the
hulks or prisons, propagated in the stagnant atmosphere, and, when
combined with low and crude diet, more than decimated the list. These
effects of official negligence were early apparent. The second fleet
lost nearly one-fifth of the whole, either on the voyage, or shortly
after the arrival. Of the previous expedition, the loss was
trifling.[68] It was fitted out with integrity, surpassing the custom of
the times, or the pioneers of the colony might have perished on a barren
shore.

Captain Parker, of H. M. S. _Gordon_, detected this peculation: he
traced the unusual mortality to the frauds of the officers, whose
subduction from the standard allowance had "starved the prisoners to
death;" but it was not till many years after, that the humanity of
ministers interposed effectual regulations. The numbers who perished on
board the _General Hewitt_, the _Surry_, and the _Three Bees_ in 1814,
forced the attention of the local government to the subject; and on the
report of Surgeon Redfern, great improvements were adopted.[69] The
dispatch of vessels without regard to the season, brought the prisoners
within the cold latitudes, and exposed them to the southern winds in the
winter; and thinly clad, and enervated by the heat of the tropics, they
were crowded below, or shivering on the deck. A supply of warm clothing,
and the choice of the proper period of sailing, greatly mitigated the
voyage; and the constant examination of the diet, samples of which were
preserved, checked the avarice which cost so many lives, and had thus
led to atrocious crimes. It is humiliating to find,