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Crimean War
Hitchcock: As an offset against the influx of the criminal element the convict system was the means of introducing about 2000 persons consisting of military pensioners with their wives and children. A contingent of those time-expired soldiers came out as guards over the prisoners in every convict ship. A large number of them were retained in the enrolled force to guard the convict establishment and others became warders or policemen or entered into other pursuits. Many of them were veterans of the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny, and others were comparatively young men who had been invalided home from India early in their military career. On the whole they were a valuable addition to the population; numbers of them accumulated property, and many of their descendants are to be found occupying prominent positions, both in private and official life. Hitchcock: 34.
Oldman:
From 1850 to 1868 forty three ships transporting convicts journeyed to the Swan River Colony. Starting with the Scindian and ending with the Hougoumont, 9,720 convicts were destined to complete their sentences of penal servitude in the Colony. Also on board these ships were over 1,000 men of the enrolled pensioner force whose role was to guard the convicts at sea and act as an auxiliary military unit after landfall. Many warders and gaolers and some policemen joined the convict establishment to assist in law and order in the Colony. Their wives and children travelled with them or joined them later.
Many of these men of the convict establishment, the convicts themselves and other military pensioners were veterans of the Crimean War.
References and Links
Hitchcock, J.K. 1929, The History of Fremantle, The Front Gate of Australia, 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council.
Oldman, Diane, 'Fremantle's Link to the Crimean War', presentation given at the Fremantle Studies Day 2016.
Crimean War veterans in Western Australia.
Royal Sappers and Miners in Western Australia.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 8 March, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/events/crimean.html (it was last updated on 27 July, 2023). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.