Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Australia Breaker Morant

A mate of mine named Ted Beazley (deceased) was on parade in Germany in the '70's when a British officer wandered on by after inspection, some lout in the ranks yelled "remember the BREAKER", the Poms bitched and whinged but as luck would have it not one of the Australian officers present heard a damned thing.

A self-avowed Englishman, with a British officer commission
in a British regiment [Bushveldt Carbineers] formed in Sth.Africa
and attached to a British column under a British General.

so why do some Australians feel so strong about Morant?

Morant, Handcock and Witton were not Australian
soldiers, as BVC they were British army.

When it comes to justice, one should be aware that
military justice tends to be more defective vs civil
as it can be subject to expediency on active service.

If some feel the way they do about Morant,
how do they feel about that [born in Aus.]
Lieutenant George Raymond Dallas Moor,
who received the Victoria Cross after intentionally
Shooting four of his own men?

btw: while Australia was in the process of gaining
independence from Britain through federation,
many men from the Aus. colonies were volunteering
in the British army to deny Boers their independence.
Roughly near half of all imperial colonial forces
were sourced from Aus.




Record shows they executed a commissioned officer Brit.

Morant is the most or 2nd most legendary Australian character?..where do you draw that conclusion from?
and if it wasn't for the English having their constant hate and mistreatment of the Irish , Kelly might not have
taken exception to it.

If you bother to read up on your British empire Kiwi colonial history, you will find it was the most lawless violent
white settlement in that part of the ocean under the British Empire.- It became so bad because:......... [/quote]

Didn’t William Bligh face off with the garrison for some time while he was on his ship in Sydney harbor after being chased off by some officers? I seem to recall a book where he was trying to get order and the Brit officers had a whiskey gig going. If I recall, he would launch a few cannon balls towards the garrison every once and awhile. He was governor of Australia after the Bounty.... memory may be foggy but Aussie history is something everyone should read....

They call it the 'Rum Rebellion' cause the NSW Corps under
John McCarthur had a lucrative monopoly on the rum trade...
The penal colony of NSW was orig. designed as a subsistence
ecomony where convicts were supposed. to be self-
sufficient and cultivate their daily needs at least cost
to mother England.
There was to be no currency for convicts, but officers, soldiers
and administrative officials had to be paid.. and of course
the free settlers could have their own money. But
the officer's would use their wealth and influence to buy up
the alcohol from visiting ships and trade it on at enormous gain.

Convicts who did their required gov. work hrs for the day
were permitted to do after hrs private work, but many
would not do it unless they got paid in Rum, and who
controlled the rum supply/price/market.?

Settlers had to pay wildly exorbitant prices for rum to get
convicts to work for them, while officers would get
convicts to work on their large land grants by paying
them in cheap rum ... Officers also got convicts to work
on their private lands when they should have been
doing gov.public works projects... So they were milking
it every way they could.

Alcohol virtually became the unofficial currency to
the aggravation of the crown.

Blight appointed as Governor was tasked to fix the 'alcohol economy'
problem.. but what caused rebellion by NSW Corps was not resistance
to alcohol regulation but a combination of other things.

Bligh put the officer's before a local tribunal and also stripped
them of very generous prime land grants previous governors
had given them...the nature of the charges and the findings
meant they were up for the penalty of Capitol punishment...
Thinking they were going to hang they thought they had nothing
to lose by taking their chances with insurrection which is a capitol
punishment offence anyway.

So the actual rebellion was about desperately saving their
own lives rather than about the rum... but it's not wrong to
say the NSW 'Rum' Corps did rebel.

*****
"The COLONY" (1788-1830) by Professor Grace Karskens
covers the details and other interesting things about
the penal settlement.
*****
"BLIGH - Master Mariner" by Rob Mundle
dispels the damaging propaganda and
common accepted myths about Bligh.
*****

Officer John McCarthur was well connected
and Fletcher Christian of HMS Bounty fame
had a well connected attorney brother, so were
able to set narrative in England to their advantage.

Bligh himself had married into the affluent port and
shipping merchant family of Campbell, which had
land and sea operations going in a number places
around the empire including the NSW penal colony.
The contract for convict hulks on the Thames was
held by Campbell and the HMS Bounty captained
by Bligh was purchased from Campbell.

Lt.William Bligh also had connection with the highly
influencial Sir Joseph Banks which helped his career,
but he did earn his stripes as a great naval sea
commander both in combat and in other services
to the crown.

Lt. James COOK (another in connection with Banks)
selected 21 yr old Bligh as master of HMS Resolution,
for his third voyage... Cook and Bligh were the ones
responsible for all the surveying and charting.

When people talk about circumnavigation of Aus.
they will mention Matthew Flinders, but usually
fail to mention naval officer Philip Parker King.

The Aus PM has set aside $7 million (?) for the
replica of Cooks 'Endeavour' to circumnavigate
the whole Aus. continent.

However neither Cook or the orig. Endeavour
were ever engaged in such voyage... LoL.

M. Flinders commanded HMS Investigator 1801
and didn't survey or chart the whole coastline.
He was the second person to do the coast
of what was then New Holland.
Dutch explorer Able Tasman charted the
North coast more than century and half earlier.
P. P. King employed the HMS Mermaid and
HMS Bathurst in his four coastal surveys of Aus.
1817- 1822.

=========+

Anyways this thread has gone from Breaker
to Ned Kelly then capt.Bligh... LoL

Some Australians have even refered to the Breaker
as a "Ned Kelly in Khaki"..