While most convicts transported to Australia came from Britain or Ireland there are also a remarkable number of Dutch names under the convicts. Some might have been Dutch people living in England, but others in one way or another also ended up in Australia.
The following are names researched by Edward Duyker and mention his book The Dutch in Australia (1987) However there might be more convicts of Dutch descent.
Jane Vandebus was born in England in 1763 and was tried at the Old Bailey, London on 12 September 1787 for receiving stolen goods and was sentenced to transportation for 14 years in 1790. She arrived on the ship Lady Juliana on June 6 in 1790 in Sydney.
This was a convict ship of 401 tons which sailed from Plymouth bringing 226 female convicts and had a reputation as a floating brothel. John Nicol wrote of the convicts on board: ‘There were not a great many very bad characters; the greater number were for petty crimes, and a great proportion for only being disorderly, that is, street-walkers; the colony at the time being in great want of women’.
Soon after her arrival in Sydney she was – on August 1 – sent on the ship merchant ship Surprize, with 150 convict women from Lady Juliana, to Norfolk Island. She returned to Sydney in 1794 when her sentence expired.
John Vandiest was in 1791 transported on the Third Fleet merchant ship Admiral Barrington to serve a 7 year sentence.
Haan Hartog (born c1828) who was convicted in Birmingham of stealing cigars and sentenced to seven years transportation. He arrived in Sydney on the Hashemy a convict ship of 638 tons which experienced a cholera outbreak on its 1849 voyage.
See also: Dutch supplies for starving First Fleeters in Sydney – 1790
