Notes for Arthur Wilcox MANNING


He was the fourth son of John Edye Manning, who had arrived in Sydney in 1828
to become the registrar of the Supreme Court. At the age of 21, Arthur Manning
left England with his bride for a new life together in New South Wales. He had
originally planned to study for the Church of Engalnd Ministry but decided
that his epilepsy would be a disadvantage. He went on to have a distinguished
career as a government official in New South Wales and Queensland.

In his journal , Manning provides a revealing record of life on an emigrant
ship from the perspective of a cultivated first class passenger. He writes
about the friction between the different classes of passengers and the
difficulties faced by everyone on board: illness, death, overcrowding and the
shortage of provisions which necessitated a four-day stop at Cape Town. He
discusses the personalities of the officers and crew, sectarian conflicts and
misrepresentations of the emigration agent. He vividly describes incidents
such as a mutinous sailor threatening the captain, Thomas Surflen, waking to
find his face covered with cockroaches, sighting a corpse floating past the
ship, burials at sea, a threatened duel, thefts from the hold and discovering
an albatross on deck with a message on a leather collar. The journal also
contains a plan of the vessel with a key, a compass card diagram, a list of
passengers and officers, a list of deaths, a chart of the anchorage at the
Cape, a daily chronology of latitude and longitude and two pages of coloured
illustrations of flags and signals. Another feature is Manning`s one-page
letter of introduction to the `Reader` in which he makes it clear that he has
publication in mind.

The Sydney Gazette noted the arrival of the Earl Grey in two notices on 27
February 1840. The ship arrived on Tuesday, the Gazette reported, with 218
Bounty emigrants from London. Nine adults died during the passage, one by
accident, and one from rheumatic fever, one apoplexy, and six from fever;
there was only one birth. The remainder are in perfect health.

The Bulletin 16th October 1913 - A.W. Manning was Under Secretary in The Chief
Secretary`s Office in Queensland in 1868 when he was assaulted with a tomahawk
by a suspended C.P.S. The C.P.S. got penal servitude for life. Manning three
months later got a pension of £600 a year. Everyone believed that he had
retired to die, but he lived for another 32 years.

(Source: http://www.manning.ch/genealogy/f822.htm#P2642)
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