Blame America for why the convicts were sent to Australia

By the late eighteenth century, Britain faced a growing crisis as criminal convictions increased rapidly, particularly in cities where poverty and hunger worked together with chronic unemployment to drive petty theft and repeat offences.

Courts filled their lists of cases with matters involving stolen food or damaged property, along with prosecutions for forged coins.

Since capital punishment had come under more serious public criticism, especially for minor crimes, transportation remained the most commonly used penalty.

It allowed authorities to remove unwanted people, and they did not face protests or any increase in leniency. 

For more than 150 years, the American colonies had absorbed Britain’s transported criminals.

Under the Transportation Act of 1718, offenders received sentences of seven or fourteen years and were shipped overseas so that they would work as indentured labourers.

This system gave plantation owners a steady source of labour, and British officials welcomed the opportunity to empty jails without any need to expand the number of domestic prisons.

Until the 1770s, the system ran with regular official routines, and few people questioned how well it worked.

Then, in 1775, fighting began between colonial militias and British troops at Lexington and Concord.

As the rebellion grew into full-scale war, convicts who awaited transportation remained stuck in gaols or short-term holding areas.

After the Declaration of Independence in 1776, many American ports began to turn away convict ships and attempts to resume transportation failed, since the United States refused to accept any further shipments.

British attempts to bypass local authorities or bribe port officials achieved nothing.

The former colonies no longer felt bound by previous agreements. In 1784, the port of Charleston formally turned away a convict transport, and other ports quickly followed its example. 

As a short-term response, the government started to use prison hulks, which were decommissioned warships stripped of their rigging and anchored in British harbours.

On board, prisoners endured terrible conditions. Foul air, cramped quarters, and still and dirty water made it very easy for disease to spread.

Typhus and dysentery spread quickly, and hundreds died within months. Reports from officials described bodies that were chained beside the living and noted that few prisoners survived their sentences.

For example, the Justitia was moored at Woolwich and became one of the most notorious hulks, where some reports suggested death rates reached about 10 to 15 percent each year during outbreaks of disease.

By 1783, thousands of prisoners were kept on hulks in places such as Chatham and Portsmouth.

Although meant as a short-term answer, the hulks remained in use for decades.

Eventually, the scale of the problem forced the government to reconsider its plans.

So, ministers looked at a range of possible destinations so that transportation could begin again, including Sierra Leone, Canada, and the West Indies.

However, none satisfied all requirements, as some had dangerous land and climate, others were politically unsafe, and most could not hold large numbers of prisoners.

As pressure mounted, attention shifted to New Holland, where Lieutenant James Cook had charted the coastline in 1770.

His report on Botany Bay described open space and safe harbour, while later reports, which came especially from Joseph Banks, gave a more hopeful view of what the area could support.

In 1783, James Matra, who was an American loyalist, proposed that Botany Bay should be settled with convicts and displaced loyalists, and he argued that such a plan could help Britain’s navy and trade. 

After further debate, the government approved a plan from Lord Sydney and the Admiralty to send a fleet of convicts and guards to settle the area.

On 13 May 1787, the First Fleet departed Portsmouth under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip.

Aboard were more than 700 convicts, 578 men and 160 women, along with marines, officers, and supplies.

After a voyage of over 24,000 kilometres, they arrived in January 1788 and established the penal colony of New South Wales.

Without the American Revolution, British convicts would have continued to flow across the Atlantic.

The American colonies had operated for decades as Britain’s main outlet for transportation, and they received between 1,000 and 2,000 convicts each year.

Local economies had come to depend on this system, and British courts operated under the assumption that America would remain available.

Yet once the United States declared independence and secured victory, its new leaders refused to accept any more British criminals. 

From the start, figures like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin rejected convict transportation as a threat to public safety and a stain on national dignity.

Washington reportedly described transported convicts as "human refuse," and Franklin once suggested that Britain should receive rattlesnakes in exchange.

Congressional representatives, governors, and port authorities blocked every attempt to resume shipments.

In some cases, ships were turned away without unloading, and crews returned to Britain with their prisoners still aboard.

This disruption created serious legal and administrative problems for both courts and prisons.

Soon after, British government leaders began to acknowledge the problem in official letters that passed between Lord Sydney and naval commanders, in which the loss of America appeared as a main worry.

Parliamentary debates from the early 1780s regularly referred to the transportation crisis and the urgent need to find a replacement.

By 1786, discussions grew more urgent, with ministers warning that unless an alternative was found, Britain’s penal system would collapse.

Reports from gaolers and prison inspectors warned that unrest inside the hulks increased and that mortality also rose.

Without America, they argued, Britain had no ability to manage its convict population.

Consequently, the decision to colonise New South Wales grew out of a process of elimination, not out of any grand plan.

Cook’s observations made Botany Bay a useful second choice, but the plan gained traction only after every closer option had failed.

The length of the voyage, the uncertainty of the land, and the enormous cost all pointed to the same conclusion: Britain would never have considered this if not for American rejection.

American independence did not create British transportation policy, nor did it force Britain to send convicts to Australia.

However, British courts continued to hand down severe sentences for minor offences, and the government refused to explore reforms or reduce incarceration rates.

This meant that, when it cut off access to a long-standing penal destination, the United States caused a change in imperial policy.

Its refusal to participate in Britain’s penal system created a gap that Britain then rushed to fill. 

Certainly, the new American republic had no duty to continue receiving convicts and the leaders wanted to distance themselves from the old colonial order and believed that accepting criminals would damage their efforts to build a stable and respectable society.

Their refusal aligned with their political goals, and the long-term results reached other parts of the world. 

Had the Thirteen Colonies remained under British rule, it is likely that transportation would have continued for decades, so Australia would not have become the focus of penal settlement, and the First Fleet may never have been launched.

Thousands of convicts, many of whom later became settlers, farmers, or labourers, would have lived and died on another continent.

In that sense, the American Revolution redirected political power and human migration.