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My wife and I recently went on a Franklin River cruise on Tasmania’s west coast where we disembarked to the infamous former penal settlement of Sarah Island. Located in the middle of Macquarie Harbour it is accessed from the open sea through the narrow nautical passageway aptly named, “Hell’s Gates”. Indeed, it has been reported that “It was their proverb, that all who entered there, gave up for ever the hope of Heaven.”^[1]

Having previously read the classic Australian novel by Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life (Published in 1872), which refers to the historic conditions there, I was eager to visit it for myself. 

What I was not prepared for—although, in hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised—was our tour guide’s sudden and vitriolic denunciation of Rev. William Schofield, the evangelical Methodist chaplain to the island from 1828-32. For example, according to our learned guide if convicts professed Christian faith then they were subsequently offered a blanket and extra rations to keep warm and well fed in the freezing conditions. However, atheists it was suggested, would just have to freeze and starve. Hence, Rev. Schofield was subsequently deceived by many spurious religious ‘conversions’.

As an evangelical ‘clergyman’ myself, this led me to researching what the historical record actually said about the Macquarie harbour’s notorious chaplain. Could it be that my tour guide might also have been prejudiced by his own unbelief? Thankfully, we still have many of Rev. Schofield’s letters and in particular journal kept in the Mitchell library, Sydney).^[2] 

I am currently working my way through Rev. Schofield’s letters and journals so as to have a more accurate understanding of this period in Australian history. As an example of what I am referring too here is an entry he made on September 7, 1828 the broader context of which he had reported on a previous visit to the prisoner named “Solomon” that his attitude to spiritual things was “very hard”.

Sept 8th. Went to see Solomon who complained of the want of bed and blanket and that he was almost finished with cold and said the want of these so dissipate my mind that I cannot pray or turn my attention to the state of my soul, and added, had I these things you would see me a different man. I saw I could be of no service to him in a spiritual point of view but promised I would mention his want of bed etc. I did do so the superintendent and commandant but no attention was paid to it.

The reality was Rev. Schofield showed compassion and Christian charity even when prisoners didn’t respond favourably to his presentation of the Gospel. Interestingly, here is a short excerpt from the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

Schofield’s first service with the convicts at Macquarie Harbour was held on 30 March 1828. A large room was provided for later meetings and, although attendance was compulsory, it was soon evident that some of the men and boys were influenced by his message. The penal settlement already had a small Methodist class meeting which Schofield continued; he added weekly meetings for religious conversation, regular evening lectures and singing classes, and a night school, all with voluntary attendance. In these projects he was helped by the commissariat clerk, T. J. Lempriere, and others, including young convicts who tried to teach old convicts to read. The results of this work impressed the commandant and his officers, but Schofield was not deceived by signs of religious revival; he warned his successor, Rev. J. A. Manton to be cautious in recommending apparently pious convicts to the governor for removal to less isolated prisons.

So much then for this evangelical Wesleyan Minister being some kind of naive religious dupe! Rev. Schofield even explicitly advised his successor to be careful of faux spiritual conversions motivated by temporal gain. What’s more, further investigation into Rev. Schofield revealed that the prospect of ‘false conversions’ was something which he zealously guarded against. As one scholarly article reports:

Yet, when early release from the confines of Macquarie Harbour is numbered amongst the potential attractions of a conversion, Schofield’s success rate appears to have been far from spectacular. Given such inducements, one would have expected a tidal wave of potential converts, and at first, this is exactly what happened. Concerned, however, that many of these convict testimonies were shams designed to obtain nothing more than an early release, Schofield drew up a set of rules to separate the sheep from the goats.^[3]

Further research into the Christian ministry which occurred in Macquarie Habor, and especially at Sarah Island reveals that it was far more successful than historians have said. For example, in The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (London: Epworth Press, 1921), we learn of how:

Corporal (now Sergeant) Waddy had been removed from Hobart to the lonely prison station of Macquarie Harbour, on the western side of the island, to which place were drafted the felons convicted for further crime committed in the Colonies. Desperadoes most of these were, of a violent and repulsive type, and Macquarie Harbour was described as ‘a veritable hell upon earth.’ Here, however Waddy succeeded in starting a Class-meeting, aided by occasional visits from the Hobart Missionary. Conversions were witnessed, and Methodism struck root in this terrible place. Sergeant Waddy left Macquarie Harbour, with the removal of his troop, in two or three years; his work was continued in the first instance by John Hutchinson, sent as a Lay Agent from Hobart Town, who did such good service that he was promoted to the ministry, in whose ranks he laboured usefully, both in the colonies and the Friendly Islands, for a number of years. Much labour was spent upon this station, where little or no return in the way of establishing a Church could be expected, as reclaimed convicts were removed from Macquarie Harbour. Governor Arthur deeply interested himself in this Mission, and secured the appointment of a Wesleyan Minister to the chaplaincy. William Schofield, the first holder of this charge (appointed in 1828), fulfilled its duties with exemplary devotion.^[4]

What’s more, at this time a couple of Quaker philanthropists made of tour of the island and reported that:

The labours of William Schofield were…crowned with encouraging success. He found a difficulty in persuading the men to cherish hope; but when this was once effected they began to lay hold of the offers of mercy, and some remarkable changes of character ensured…Macquarie Habour was no longer a place of despair.^[5]

The same historical volume goes on to further record that more generally:

An attack was made on Tasmanian Methodism in the early thirties (1830’s) such as it has suffered from in other colonies. It was represented to Governor Arthur, on ecclesiastical authority, that the Methodist Superintendent Turner was employing immoral persons as Local Preachers; and, further, that Wesleyan methods and teaching were unsuitable for convicts, and made religion cheap! Probably the jealousy between ‘Emancipists’ and ‘Exclusives’, which we have noted in New South Wales Society, partly prompted these insinuations. As it happened, a couple of members of the Society of Friends [Quakers] were just then in Van Dieman’s Land, engaged in studying the moral condition of the colony, and making particular and detailed inquiry into the reformatory work carried on by the various Churches. Their published findings showed that three fourths of the convicts, brought, in various parts of the island, to a saving knowledge of God and an honest new life, owed their conversion to Methodist agency. Sir George Arthur tested the report by his own inquiries, and stated to his Council that the Wesleyans had done more for the convicts than all other Churches put together.^[6]

Unfortunately, such misleading portrayals of religion’s impact on Australian history is common place. In their magisterial work, The Fountain of Public Prosperity (Monash, 2018) Stuart Piggin and Robert Linder make the point that “Academic scholarship has been prodigiously negative about the role of all religious movements in Australian until relatively recently.” They then go on to make the following provocative observation:

A key question remains: is the prevailingly negative picture of Christianity painted by Australian historians a true reflection of the reality that objectively religion has been relatively weak in Australian history, or is it that most conventional histories just repeat uncritically the stereotype created by unsympathetic secularists? There is little doubt that the forces of atheism and agnosticism have been much stronger in the history profession than they are in Australian society as a whole. In a survey of the profession taken in 1987, close to the date of conception of the present study, 48% of 124 respondents said that they were atheists. A further 12% said that they were agnostics. These figures no longer look preposterous, but in 1987 they contrasted sharply with the Australian average. The Australian Values Systems Study of 1983 showed that only 0.9% of all Australians claimed to be atheists; 1.7% were agnostics. So whereas only 2.8% of all Australians said they were atheists or agnostics in the 1980s, 60% of the members of the history profession made that claim. In this respect, the profession has hardly been representative of average Australian views on religion.^[7]

Thankfully academia is starting to redress the anti-religious bias of Australia’s convict past. One of the most helpful examples of this is Hilary Carey’s recent book, Empire of Hell: Religion and the Campaign to end Convict Transportation in the British Empire, 1788-1875 (Cambridge University Press, 2019). For anyone interested in pursuing the subject further this is a must read. 

Carey offers the following fascinating insight into the broader cultural, political and religious milieu in which convict transportation to Australia took place:

So great was the gloom which descended following the French Revolution that Boyd Hilton has termed the period from 1795 to 1865 as “age of atonement’ in contrast to the ‘age of enlightenment’ which preceded it. The Evangelical Party in the Church of England rose up partly to challenge the popular religious revival sparked by the emergence of the Methodists, whose spiritual optimism and enthusiasm were roundly criticized in the years following the death of John Wesley in 1791. ‘Atonement’ lies at the core of Christian doctrine. In the New Testament St Paul teaches: ‘we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son (Romans 5:10), and ‘Christ died for our sins’ (1 Corinthians 15:3). In a range of metaphors employed by early Christians thinkers adopted from the Old Testament, Christ was the Paschal or Passover lamb sacrificed to God by the Israelites on the night before the Exodus which allowed the angel of death to pass over their households (Exodus 12). Hence, Christ’s death was the ransom paid to release the Israelites from Egyptian bondage; His blood was poured out as a sacrifice for all, the single perfect offering (Hebrews 10:12); once salves to sin, Christ’ death has made us free (Romans 6:20). In the eighteenth century the interpretation of the atonement underwent a significant shift, away from the ‘coldness’ of Protestant orthodoxy, to a warmer, more subjective experience expressed in pietism on the continent and Methodism in Britain. Evangelis preached a return to the orthodox Calvinist models of the relationship of God and humanity, where the world was regarded as a place of atonement and suffering, a spiritual penal colony like the material colonies being created in the southern world where convicts were exiled to atone for their sins.^[8]

All of which is to say though, when on a recreational holiday, don’t believe everything you hear. Or if you’re at home reading the work of an anti-religious ‘expert’ on any given subject, keep an open mind to the positive contribution which Christianity in particular has made to this great nation. 

^[1] John West, The History of Tasmania, A. G. L. Shaw (ed). London, 1971, p. 397.

^[2] My goal is to hopefully publish all of Rev. Schofield’s journal, letters and correspondence in the future.

^[3] Hamish Maxwell-Stewart & Ian Duffield, “Beyond Hell’s Gates: Religion at Macquarie Harbour Penal Station”, Tasmanian Historical Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997, page 85.

^[4] G. G. Findlay and W. W. Holdsworth, The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. Volume III (London: Epworth Press, 1921), 69.

^[5] The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society. Volume III, 69.

^[6] The History of Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, Vol. III, 72-32.

^[7] Piggin and Linder, The Fountain of Public Prosperity, 14.

^[8] Hilary Carey, Empire of Hell, 25.