The Scottish Martyrs and the Reform of Narrative

During Barrington’s passage to Botany Bay, the tainted, mutinous prisoner is relegated, literally and metaphorically, to an area below deck and out of sight; he or she is available to the reader only through the narrator’s fragmentary observations and abbreviated comments. The “cured” convict, Barrington himself, alone merits a continuous story focusing on his sensibility, his courage, and ultimately his triumph as a valued British subject. This aesthetic choice is in keeping with how other famous convicts of the 1790s would present their own experiences of conviction and exile. Four of the five Scottish Martyrs—Thomas Muir, Thomas Fyshe Palmer, William Skirving, and Maurice Margarot—experienced transportation through the prism of mutiny.1 All four men sailed for Australia together, aboard the royal transport the HMS Surprize. While Barrington sided with the authorities against potential mutineers, however, the Surprize’s captain became convinced that Palmer and Skirving in particular were collaborating with other convicts to seize control of the ship. Margarot and Muir were drawn into the volley of accusations during the long voyage, the former as an accuser and the latter as a defender of their fellow reformers.