Landing at the British Penal colony of Van Diemen's Land, the prisoners were marched to the Hobart Penitentiary, where the governor, Sir John Franklin, explained the terms of their imprisonment.
Actually, the terms seemed quite lenient compared with the wretched conditions in jails and prison transport ships. The prisoners were given a probationary period when they were allowed to leave prison during the day, assigned to "masters" on the island where they would work for free.
After a satisfactory probation period, prisoners were issued a "ticket," and were able to seek their own masters and work for slight pay.
Eventually, Samuel Chandler and Benjamin Wait were assigned to a 6,000-acre estate about 50 miles north of the Hobart Prison. Chandler worked as a carpenter and Wait as a clerk and storekeeper. The work day, Wait wrote in his journal, began at 4 a.m. and lasted until 11 p.m.
When they were off work, the ticket allowed them to roam the island. This presented the opportunity for escape, when the men learned several American ships were at the Hobart harbor.
In December 1841, Chandler obtained a 10-day pass and went to the harbor, where he met a fellow Mason and captain of one of the American whaling ships, then made their escape plans. They could not board the ship in the harbor because it was thoroughly searched before it left.
They obtained a rowboat under pretext of going fishing and rowed laboriously out well past the harbor. They were in the boat, with little food and water, for several days and about to return to the island, when they spotted a whaler and were taken aboard.
The men were on the first leg of the road to freedom, but still thousands of miles and seven months away from home. They took tasks helping the crew catch whales on the journey.
Unfortunately, the whaler hit a violent storm off the coast of South America and was wrecked near Brazil. Wait and Chandler soon found themselves penniless, but glad to be alive, in Rio de Janeiro.
They met a captain from Bristol, R.I., who was going back to New York. He agreed to take the passengers with payment promised at a future date.
Canadian historian Colin K. Duquemin wrote, "On arrival in New York, Freemasons extended the hand of friendship to Chandler and by association to Wait. They mustered up funds to buy train tickets for the two men."
The pair traveled to Niagara Falls, where Wait's wife, Maria, was working as a teacher. About the reunion with his wife, Wait wrote, "Over the circumstances of our meeting I will draw the curtain of silence and leave the fancy of the reader to portray it."
Chandler and Wait would not return to Canada, of course, because the treason convictions remained against them. Maria died on May 31, 1843, during childbirth. Wait moved to Elmira where he worked as a barrel maker.
Wait continued to take a deep interest in Canadian affairs, but he was "upset that his contribution and that of his fellow Patriots had not been sufficiently recognized." Wait moved to Michigan, where he died on Nov. 9, 1895.
Samuel Chandler, his wife, Ann, and their children moved to Iowa, where his eldest daughter, Sarah, and her husband lived. He died on June 21, 1838. Upon Chandler's death, William Lyon Mackenzie wrote, "A more trusty, faithful, brotherly minded man I have never met with." Mackenzie served a short term in a Rochester jail for violating U.S. neutrality laws. He was later pardoned in Canada, and returned to Toronto, where he was elected to the Assembly, serving from 1850 to 1958. He died in Toronto in August of 1861.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 5 2003 |