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n Peter Bellamy and Phil Pickett in "The Transports" at Kempton Park, June 10, 1978 RealAudio sound samples |
  any cite Peter's ballad opera, The Transports, as his greatest achievement. Based on closely-researched real events which connected the First Fleet to Australia with his hometown of Norwich, it was written in an amazing four days.
The album, which came out on Free Reed (FRRD 021/022) in 1977 (re-released by Topic as TSCD459 in 1992; Order from Amazon by clicking HERE) starred a virtual who's who of the folk revival (Martin Carthy, The Watersons, Bert Lloyd, Nic Jones, Cyril Tawney, June Tabor among them). Its lavish packaging featured a fully illustrated lyric book and poster commemorating the recording. Although there had been earlier folk concept works - Shirley & Dolly Collins' Anthems in Eden and Fairport Convention's Babbacombe Lee, to name but two - none had achieved the cohesion or extent of Peter's work. Patrick Humphries in Meet on the Ledge, a history of Fairport Convention, estimates the worth of Babbacombe Lee with the words - "[It] could at least have given The Transports a run for its money" - an oblique reference which says more about the reputation of Peter's work than the quality of Fairport's. At the time of his death, one of the songs Peter was working on was The Transports by his hero Walter Pardon. One can only imagine the fun he would have had introducing it. A rehearsal tape of Peter singing this song exists. There have been several live performances, the first of which took place on February 23, 1978, at Norwich Castle. Others included Kempton Park Race Course (June 10, 1978), Chester Folk Club (October 4, 1980), Herga Folk Club, Loughborough (1980), Bracknell Festival, Southill Park (July 12, 1981, an all-star version with Peter and Anthea Bellamy, Nic Jones, Shirley Collins, Cathy Le Surf, Jim Mageean, Tony Rose, Johnny Collins, Ron Taylor, and Mark Emerson), York University (March 18, 1983), Queen Elizabeth Hall, London (August, 1983), Norwich Folk Club (1985), and Portsmouth Festival (1987), directed by John Kirkpatrick. |
| THE STORY OF THE TRANSPORTS
In 1783 a 19-year-old youth named Henry Cabell, from the Suffolk village of Mendham, was sentenced, along with his father and another man named Abraham Carman, to be hanged for burgling a country house at Alburgh in south Norfolk. There is no hint, in the brief reports of the trial, of the poverty that may have driven these villagers to crime - but it was noted as particularly reprehensible that they stole the hangings from the bedsteads and the pickled meat from the casks in the cellar. They were brought in chains from Thetford Assizes to the county gaol at Norwich, which was then housed in some old brick buildings inside the roofless stone keep of the Norman castle. Cabell senior and Abraham Carman were publicly executed on the high green mound of the castle, while a crowd stood in the cattle market below and watched them swing from the gallows. Young Henry Cabell's sentence was, however, commuted to transportation for fourteen years. He was kept in the castle gaol, among some forty or fifty other felons, to await shipment overseas. Towards the end of the same year, 1783, another 19-year-old, a girl named Susannah Holmes, from the south Norfolk village of Thurlton, was sentenced to death for the theft of some household linen and silver (value £2.13s.6d.). Her sentence, too, was commuted to transportation, and she also was kept in Norwich gaol to await the sailing of a prison ship to the colonies. Henry and Susannah were imprisoned for three years - simple, unlettered young villagers, awaiting penal servitude in some unknown country far across the ocean, for offences which would nowadays be met, in all probability, by suspended sentences and a period of probation. The reason for the long wait was that 1783 was the year in which a defeated Britain recognised the independence of the United States, and was thereby deprived of the American colonies to which she used to transport her convicts. Crime was rife in the towns, whose population was beginning to swarm under the influence of the industrial revolution. In the country, landless labourers and discharged soldiers resorted under stress of poverty to smuggling, highway robbery, burglary, and horse, sheep and poultry stealing. Vainly, the law increased the severity of its penalties. Hanging disposed of the major offenders: whipping, and hard labour in the local bridewells, punished the petty criminals. Yet the gaols were full and the hulks were crowded with felons the Government had been accustomed to pack off to America, to work out their sentences at forced labour for the colonists. At last, in 1786, it was decided to send a fleet of prison ships to found a colony in New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia, which had been explored by Captain Cook some seventeen years previously. There, in a hitherto uncultivated continent on the far side of the earth, inhabited only by the sparse and wandering tribes of its aborigines, the embarrassing surplus of the criminal population would be out of sight and out of mind. Meanwhile, in the mixture of squalor, barbarity and laxity that prevailed in an 18th century gaol, Henry Cabell and Susannah Holmes had contrived to become lovers. In the spring of 1786 Susannah bore a son, named Henry after his father. Henry Cabell - described at the time as "a fine, healthy young fellow", in spite of his years in prison - was devoted to the mother and child, and pleaded repeatedly but in vain to be allowed to marry. Then, when the child was five months old -"a very fine babe, which the mother had suckled from birth" - the gaoler of Norwich castle was ordered to send his female convicts to Plymouth, to join the expedition then fitting out under Captain Arthur Phillip. Henry Cabell desperately renewed his petition to be allowed to marry, and begged to be transported along with Susannah, but was refused. So, in November 1786, the turnkey, John Simpson, set out with Susannah and her baby, and two other women prisoners, on the slow journey of 350 miles on the outsides of coaches, through the dismal November weather, to Plymouth. There was much worse to come; for when, after waiting three hours in an open boat, the women were put aboard the ship on which they were to await transportation, the captain said he had no instructions about infants, and flatly refused to accept the baby. Susannah was dragged, sobbing, to the cells below deck, and threatened to kill herself at the first opportunity. Simpson, the turnkey, was obliged to go ashore with the baby. Fortunately, Simpson was both a kindly man and a strong character. (He became known, after this incident, as the Humane Turnkey). "Having once before been with his lordship on a matter of humanity", he resolved on a direct approach to the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney. So he set off on the first coach back to London, nursing the baby on his knee, and feeding it as best he could at the inns on the way. In London, he left the child with a careful woman, and - followed by a sympathetic crowd - went straight to Lord Sydney's house, where he forced his way into the presence of a secretary, whom he persuaded to make out an order for the restoration of the child to its mother. Simpson then waited in the hall, ran to Lord Sydney as he came downstairs, and begged him to sign the order. it stands to the credit of this 18th century grandee that, having been waylaid in his own house by a mere turnkey, he listened to his story and "was greatly affected". He made his secretary write immediately to Plymouth, that the mother was to be told her child would be restored to her, and he ordered that the father should accompany her, "directing at the same time that they should be married before they went on board, and adding that he would himself pay the fees". The humane Simpson arranged for the care of the child until he should return with the father, and then hastened to Norwich to break the glad news to young Cabell that he was to be transported. Meanwhile, sympathisers in London, led by a Mrs. Jackson, subscribed for a box of comforts to be shipped for the use of the young couple when they reached Australia. Thus it was that Henry, Susannah and their infant son eventually sailed in May 1787 in what is known to historians of Australia as the First Fleet. The convoy consisted of eleven ships, carrying 600 male and 178 female convicts, 200 Marine guards, two years' supply of stores, and a deck cargo of sheep, pigs, goats and poultry. They were nearly nine months at sea before they anchored off what proved to be the inhospitable shore of Botany Bay. There is a tradition that when Captain Phillip, the first Governor of New South Wales, eventually decided to disembark in the more favourable locality of Sydney Cove, the sturdy Henry Cabell carried him ashore through the surf on his back, and was thus the first man to set foot on the site of the new colony. This was not the only precedent he set. For Lord Sydney's instructions in London, that Henry and Susannah were to be married before the convoy sailed, had apparently miscarried. They were in fact wedded on Feb. 10th, 1788, along with four other couples, in the first marriage service ever held on Australian soil. Not long afterwards the colony's first civil court of law was established by that just man, Arthur Phillip, to hear a complaint by Henry against the captain of the ship Alexander, because the box of comforts furnished for him and Susannah by Mrs. Jackson had been broken open on the voyage. Susannah lamented the loss of the luxury of some tea, and complained that there was nothing left but books, which she could not read. The court awarded £15 compensation. By the way, the family name was henceforward spelt Kable. It is unlikely that Henry was anything more than barely literate, and his name must have been spelt phonetically in the records of the penal settlement. The landing in Sydney Cove was only the beginning of fresh tribulations for the unhappy convicts. The Government had comfortably assumed in London that from the proceeds of agriculture, stockbreeding and fisheries the settlement would very soon become self-supporting. In fact, the soil was stubborn, the climate harsh, and the expedition's supplies were inadequate. The officers quarrelled with one another and with the governor, the soldiers were unruly, and most of the convicts were poor and unskilful workmen. Four years after the landing, the whole colony was still on half rations. Nevertheless, further convoys of prison ships were sent from England; and, under less humane and able commanders than Arthur Phillip, their miserable freight of convicts fared worse than those in the First Fleet. Ashore, they were subject to the merciless discipline of fetters, the cat o' nine tails and the gallows. Until well on into the 19th century, the history of convict settlement in Australia is one of the most cruel tales in the record of man's inhumanity to man. And yet Henry Kable throve. His character was obviously as rugged as his physique. (Tradition also has it that he was red-haired). He became first an overseer of his fellow-convicts, and then chief constable of the new settlement. Being freed on the expiry of his 14-year sentence, he prospered commercially. in 1798 he opened a hotel called the Ramping Horse, from which he ran the first stage coach in Australia, and he also owned a retail store. His property later extended to five or six farms, and he was a partner in a big fleet of sealers and trading ships. He was one of the "emancipists", or freed convicts, who rose to be commercial barons of the colony - but were described by Bligh of the Bounty (who became Governor of New South Wales after Phillip) as unprincipled rogues. As for Susannah, she bore Henry Kable ten more children besides young Henry who was born in Norwich gaol, and who survived to become captain of one of his father's ships. Henry, senior, lived to the ripe age of 82, died in the odour of respectability, and was buried in the family vault (no less) beside his Susannah, who predeceased him in 1826. And in 1968, on the 180th anniversary of the landing from the First Fleet, more than a hundred descendants of Henry and Susannah Kable met in Sydney to honour them as the heads of one of Australia's founding families. It was the first reunion to acknowledge convict ancestry. This is the happy ending of the tale. Eric Fowler. n Sound Samples Review, by Karl Dallas The usual comparison between The Transports and Fairport's Babbacombe Lee, is not, I think appropriate. True, both are set in much the same historical time-frame, and both tell the story of someone who escaped from hanging. But stylistically, Bellamy's work is closer to the ballad operas of John Gay and similar 17th Century pillagers of tradition - except that Bellamy doesn't so much borrow from tradition as add to it, for the work is a wonderful treasurehouse of folk-inspired melodies. If Peter was right in saying that MacColl's Shoals of Herring has become a folk song, then he was wrong in describing the noble melodies he has himself created as "imitation folk songs". If songs like The Black and Bitter Night and The Green Fields of England have not become folk club staples, then audiences are even more cloth-eared than we feared. It is in every sense of the word a monumental work, and a great humanistic paeon, from someone who always denied any didactic purpose in his work. Yet it would be impossible for even the aforesaid cloth-eared to experience the complete 75 minutes without being changed profoundly in their consciousness and mindset, which is surely the purpose of all great art. And this, after all, is what politics ought to be all about, not the weary repetition of sterile slogans and phrasemongering. In a way, it is a pity that so many luminaries of folk were assembled for the album. Of course, Carthy, Watersons, Tawney, Nic Jones, and old uncle Bert Lloyd all do a wonderful job of work - not forgetting for a moment the less famous but equally journeyman performers, like the always under-rated Martin Winsor (now gone to join Peter in that great singaround in the sky) and Vic Legg. But this is no mere super-session, as the names of other performers who were involved in various live performances (see top of page) bear witness. It is a major work, worthy to be put alongside not only The Beggar's Opera and Babbacombe Lee, but yes, also the MacColl-Seeger-Parker "Radio Ballads", and even Pete Townshend's Tommy. Like the Who's "opera", The Transports is really more of a cantata: there is no character development, or inter-action between the people presented to us. We are left to conjecture what made the "humane turnkey" humane, and why Lord Sydney had compassion for the wretches holed up in the hulks, when the bulk of the affluent thought they deserved everything they got. Each song is a vignette, with the progression of the story left in the mouth of the ballad singer (played by Peter himself, with sensitive accompaniment from Dave Swarbrick's lilting fiddle). The songs are like the woodcuts which illustrated the handsome book included in the original vinyl release (and, sadly, omitted from the Topic reissue on CD). They are like frozen tableaux illuminated by flashes of lightning. And what songs they are! We have spoken of their noble melodies, but the scope of the words is wide-ranging, from the sly elbow-nudging of Abe Carman's The Robber's Song (My name it is Abe Carman/My trade it is right charmin'/For you know there is no harm in/A little burglaree) to the rural imagery of the pathetic fallacy in The Leaves in the Woodland:
Yet, for all his comic posturing, Abe Carman is never seen again: we know that he is hanged from the ballad narrative, an end predicted in Carman's own song (On the day when they do take me/And on the gallows break me/And that'll pay for all, an echo of the classic Sam Hall hanging ballad; interestingly, Peter rewrote this song in much darker vein, and you can compare it here) and the father's song (Us Poor Fellows) tells us nothing about him, being more akin with Harry Cox's What Shall Become of Engeland: he is the "sweetheart" of whom the mother sings in The Leaves in the Woodland (a wonderfully warm and impassioned rendering by June Tabor, far, far removed from her sometimes over-technical and soulless singing today). When The Transports erupted on to the scene 22 years ago, its impact was earth-shaking. It has worn remarkably well, the only jarring note being the huffing and puffing of Dolly Collins' arrangements. One longs for the sort of contemporary accompaniments which made Bright Phoebus timeless, or even the sparser arrangements Dolly did for her sister's Anthems in Eden. It is ironic that Peter, who quit the Young Tradition because of its fashionable flirtation with "medieval" archaism, should have fallen into the same trap with this major work. Hearing him sing three of these songs on this Wake the Vaulted Echoes compilation serves as a reminder of their quality, and how much has been lost with his unwarranted and tragic departure from among us. And how much he taught us about the power of the untrammeled human voice. It should cause us to cherish those talents still among us: since it is given to us to live our lives but once, there are no second chances to re-evaluate what's gone before. Each life is the real thing, not a dress rehearsal. n Sound Samples |
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