Daring Escape: Fled

Fled is based on the life of Mary (Dabby) Bryant, the woman behind one of history’s most daring escapes. Sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia, she escaped from the colony and sailed over 3,000 miles for 66 days in a stolen open boat with her husband, two children and other companions to West Timor (Coepang as it was then called). Here she was discovered, arrested and returned to Britain to be incarcerated until she was taken up as a cause célèbre by James Boswell who set her up in a house and sent her a stipend after she returned to Cornwall. In an Author’s Note, Meg Keneally stresses that this is a work of fiction, which is why she has changed some elements of the story, including names of the characters – Mary Bryant becomes Jenny Trelawny, later Gwynn after marrying Dan Gwynn.

The first part of the novel concerns Jenny’s route to crime and the highway robbery for which she was transported to the other side of the world. There is a detailed account of that trip on the Charlotte, on which she conceives and after which her daughter is named. She befriends Captain James Corbett, whose character is based on that of Watkin Tench, who tells her, “We don’t need to remake Newgate on the other side of the world. Well, I imagine there will be a guard house, or something like it. I’m sure that not everybody has left their criminal disposition back in England. But the entire place is intended as a prison. We’ll have no need of walls for the most part, it is to be hoped. We’ll have the ocean.”

The Charlotte at Portsmouth, May 1787 from Frank Allen's The Ships of the First Fleet

Life in this colony is brutish and cruel, as it is intended to be, in a land that must seem upside-down. The triangle that is used for the floggings is “an ominous symbol, a profane and subverted trinity.” To save herself from rape and degradation by the male convicts and soldiers, she marries Dan and has another child, Emmanuel (these were the real names of Mary Bryant’s children). Married couples are given separate quarters but others, jealous of what they perceive to be her advantages, strive to bring her low. When their actions result in Jenny being expelled to the women’s camp, she reflects, “While space was the only blessing this colony provided in abundance, it was one of the many denied to the hut convicts. Jenny now lived in a place of wails and screams and sobs and fights, of stench upon stench, of dangers buried in innocent conversation.”

From the moment she lands in Botany Bay, Jenny knows she wants to leave, and it soon becomes apparent that their best chance of survival is escape. Food is scarce, supply ships are absent, farming is in its infancy, and provisions are rapidly dwindling; making theft of food a hanging offence and starving to death a distinct possibility. Perhaps if the settlers had collaborated with the local people they might have had better chances of survival, but there is limited interaction between the white settlers and the Indigenous tribes. Jenny encounters an Aboriginal woman who shows her what leaves to chew or to brew to avoid scurvy. Although these are plentiful, Jenny guards this knowledge as currency, as she does when the Indigenous people take her fishing and share their methods with her.

Questions have been asked as to why Mary Bryant would risk a journey for herself and her children on the ocean and potential drowning. As well as starvation, the new colony is rife with disease (particularly smallpox) and the dangers to the women convicts are manifold. “Emmanuel’s death at sea is a possibility. His death here is nigh on certain.”

1930s era illustration of the convict escape

Much of the action of the novel takes place on the water, either in the Charlotte, or the cutter in which Jenny and her companions make their escape. These seafaring experiences are described in some length, which is both terrifying and tedious as indeed it must have been in reality. When they land, Dan’s bragging of his expertise at sailing the boat back to Coepang, leads to them being discovered and their subsequent arrest. The governor who had supported them and admired their skill and courage when he thought they were shipwrecked, turns against them when he learns they are escaped convicts, because he is angry that he has been cheated and make to look a fool; he fears for his reputation and “Laughter, laughter on the seas as the story spreads about the dupe of a governor.” Jenny is frequently at the mercy of men and their egos.

Eventually she returns to her family in Cornwall. She had been afraid of their reaction, but they are thrilled to see her and welcome her back, so the story has come full circle. This is one of the bits that the author has invented, but it makes for a satisfying conclusion. Mary Bryant’s adventure is a fascinating story and, although she has changed the names to compensate for lack of certain facts, Meg Keneally has told it with drama and compassion.