Morgan’s Way by Colleen McCullough, summary

The Australian writer created a historical epic about the birth of the New South Wales penal settlements based on the life of a real person — her distant relative on her husband’s side, Bristol gunsmith Richard Morgan. The novel was published in 2000; the author wrote it after extensive archival research in England and Australia, temporarily interrupting her seminal Roman series to explore the fate of a simple British convict on the First Fleet.

Bristol Trap

In the Cooper’s Arms tavern in Bristol in August 1775, Mr. James Thistlethwaite reads news of the rebellion of the thirteen American colonies. The innkeeper, Dick Morgan, argues with the pamphleteer about trade losses while his eldest son, Richard, holds his firstborn, William Henry, recently vaccinated against smallpox, on his lap. Richard had been trained by the Portuguese gunsmith Thomas Habitas, building army muskets called "Dark Bess," but after military orders declined, he returned to work at his father’s counter. His former three-year-old daughter, Mary, had died of smallpox, leaving an indelible mark on her father. Now the child is able to withstand the fever, the smallpox blister on his hand is healing, and the family breathes a sigh of relief.

The city is suffering greatly from the war: Lewsley warehouses burn, a Tory mob executes effigies of rebels, and the arsonist Jack the Painter is executed at the port. Richard returns to Habitas’s workshop for four shillings apiece, saving his earnings to buy a house in the hills of Clifton. His wife, Peg, refuses to leave the city due to recurring nightmares of their son drowning in the Avon, and then despairs over her own infertility. The boy is sent as a day pupil to the Colston Charity School.

Having saved three thousand pounds, Richard invested it in engineer Thomas Latimer’s circular steam engine, but the inventor fled to America with all the investors’ money. The family lost their savings. Richard found work as a mechanic at Thomas Cave’s distillery on Redcliffe Street, where he repaired copper stills under the ruthless overseer William Thorne.

Peg suddenly dies of a stroke. Before he can recover from his grief, Richard discovers secret drain pipes in the distillery, through which tons of unregistered rum are diverted, past the excise tax, into the hands of Thorne, Cave, and the dandy Seeley Trevelyan.

On his father’s advice, Richard informs the chief excise collector, Benjamin Fisher. But the officials act slowly and cowardly. In retaliation for the devastation, the gang decides to eliminate the witness. Soon, William Henry dies: the rascal goes for a walk with his Latin teacher, George Parfrey. In a fit of passion, Parfrey frightens the boy, and the child throws himself off a cliff into the murky waters of the Avon. Parfrey shoots himself, leaving a suicide note confessing his guilt.

A broken Richard searches the banks for his son’s body and drowns his sorrows in rum. At the tenement house of witness William Insell near Jacob’s Well, he is seduced by the Frenchwoman Annemarie Latour. The affair turns into a trap set by Trevillian. Finding Seeley in Annemarie’s bed, an enraged Richard threatens the lovers with a coal hammer and extorts a promissory note for five hundred pounds from the seducer, taking his steel watch. A week later, bailiffs take Richard and Insell into custody.

Gloucester Dungeons

Both are taken to Bristol’s Newgate, where leg chains dig into their ankles and the floor is awash with filth. Thanks to the help of his cousin, James, a pharmacist, Richard obtains a trunk of linen, books, and, most importantly, a porous stone filter from Tenerife that purifies rotten well water. Since the crime was committed in Clifton, the defendants are transported by van to the Gloucester Assizes. In the local overcrowded prison, men and women are housed together. Richard takes custody of pickpocket Lizzie Locke, convicted of stealing silk hats, in exchange for her guarding his trunk while he works hard labor on a construction site.

At the spring session of 1785, a biased court presided over by Sir James Eyre found Insell not guilty and Richard guilty of grand extortion in collusion with his missing partner. Pardon was rejected, and the sentence imposed was seven years’ exile in Africa.

For a whole year, Morgan hauled stones, disinfected his fellow prisoners’ wounds with bitumen ointment, and warded off scurvy with malt. News that the African project had been abandoned due to the mass deaths of white prisoners on the Gambia River brought news of a new destination: Botany Bay in Captain Cook’s territory. In January 1786, the convicts were transported on foot in chains to Woolwich, where they were taken to the floating prisons on the Thames.

Campbell Academy

On the dilapidated ship Ceres, the prisoners fall under the control of contractor Duncan Campbell and warden Hanks. Richard organizes six fellow countrymen — Bill Whiting, Will Connelly, Neddy Perrott, Taffy Edmunds, and Jimmy Price — into a separate work gang. Morgan blesses his stone filter with a mock pagan ritual in the name of Hippocrates, warding off camp thieves and superstitious guards. Under the supervision of foreman Zachary Partridge, the Bristolians scoop tons of heavy, liquid sludge from the bottom of the Thames day after day, earning the right to hot meals and buying vegetables from the boats. Thistlethwaite visits Richard, supplies him with gold and books, and reports on the preparations of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip.

In January 1787, prisoners were transferred to the old slave bark Alexander. The holds were overcrowded, the bulkheads were coated with whitewash over tar, but the bottom compartments were clogged with stinking sewage. A strange fever with glandular swellings broke out. Morgan explained the pumps to the naval doctor, White, and helped establish a sewage pumping system, saving hundreds of lives.

The ship sails via Tenerife and Rio de Janeiro, where Richard uses smuggled gold to buy corundum powder for sharpening instruments. At the Cape of Good Hope, the fleet replenishes supplies. During the arduous passage through the forties of the Indian Ocean, forty convicts from the Alexander die, but Morgan’s crew survives thanks to hygiene and dried citrus peel.

In January 1788, the ships entered Botany Bay, but Phillip found the bay to be hopeless and moved the fleet to the convenient harbor of Port Jackson.

Norfolk Island

In Sydney Cove, the settlers are met with hunger, scurvy, and axe-splitting stone. Morgan repairs tools, sets up a sawmill, sharpens saws, and sets teeth with chisels. The first thieves are executed for stealing food. Richard marries the newly arrived Lizzie Locke to save her from the camp’s brutality, but the marriage remains a formality — there is no intimacy between them.

In October 1788, Commandant Philip Gidley King took Richard as a sawyer to uninhabited Norfolk, located a thousand kilometers to the east.

Giant pine trees grow here, producing wood of astonishing strength. Richard spends days in the pit, converting rip saws into crosscut saws and organizing teams of convicts, among whom the feeble-minded Joe Long becomes a loyal assistant.

After the wreck of the flagship Sirius on the Norfolk reefs, the settlement staves off starvation by harvesting the petrels nesting on Mount Pitt. Officers and sailors collect hundreds of thousands of bird carcasses. The new military commandant, Major Robert Ross, appreciates Richard’s skill, appoints him chief armorer on the island, and tasks him with secretly setting up a still for distilling rum from wild sugarcane.

Ross soon grants Morgan a conditional pardon and allots him twelve acres of fertile land on the headwaters of Arthur’s Creek. The gunsmith names his property Morgan’s Run.

The ship "Surprise" arrives, carrying emaciated women from the Second Wave of the penal servitude. In the forest, Richard finds twenty-year-old Catherine Clarke, who has escaped from camp robbers. The girl was convicted of stealing muslin. In her eyes, Richard shudderingly recognizes the look of William’s drowned son, Henry. He takes her in as his servant, builds a separate annex to the house for her, protects her from violence, and teaches her how to run a household.

Gradually, estrangement gives way to a deep, late passion. Kitty reciprocates, recognizing the aging master as her protector and master. In February 1793, their first child, a daughter, Kate, is born.

His ex-wife, Lizzie Locke, finds peace in the home of another settler, and his friend, Stephen Donovan, receives a commission as a naval lieutenant and prepares to sail for England. The night before the ship’s departure, Richard finishes a lengthy letter to James Thistlethwaite. He writes that he will never return to British shores: from now on, his home, family, and destiny belong forever to this land at the end of the world. Having sealed the letter with sealing wax bearing his personal imprint, Morgan extinguishes the lamp and goes out to his wife and daughter.