'Fitzjames' used as a floating reformatory, in Largs Bay from 1880, for South Australian boys aged eight to 16
The wooden hulk Fitzjames (at left), used as South Australia's floating reformatory for boys from 1880 to 1891, with the province's only navel ship HMCS Protector moored alongside it in Largs Bay in St Vincent Gulf off the Adelaide coast.
The wooden hulk Fitzjames in 1880 to 1891 became a floating reformatory – called “Hell afloat” at its worst – for South Australia’s neglected and delinquent boys aged eight to 16, and anchored in Largs Bay off the Adelaide coast in Gulf St Vincent.
The Fitzjames, a former three-masted trader and emigrant ship built in Canada in 1852, had been bought by the South Australian government in 1876 to be used as a quarantine ship until a more permanent quarantine station was built at Torrens Island near Port Adelaide. The dilapidated Fitzjames was brought from Melbourne to fulfil the quarantine role. Its three masts were removed among work converting the hulk to this role that continued until 1880 when the Torrens Island station upgrade was completed.
The South Australian government chose the case put by the Destitute Board to take over using the Fitzjames. In a 1874 report on the boys reformatory at Ilfracombe in Burnside, the Destitute Board had suggested a floating reformatory or hulk as the best and most economical mode of treating “uncontrollable” boys, through safe guardianship or effective training.
The Destitute Board suggested the floating reformatory be a “training ship” that set boys up for a life at sea in the merchant navy. In 1875, Destitute Board chairman T.S. Reed, was happy to report that the British government, responding “so promptly and liberally” to a request by the governor, had made the warship Rosario available for a floating reformatory. Reed said this was preferable to a land-based one because it allowed “safe custody” by mooring of the vessel “some distance from the shore” (avoiding the need for costly security) and provided “more varied and attractive” employment for the boys in trades and activities such as "naval instruction, ship and other carpentering, drilling and shoemaking”. The boys would be taught to cook their own food “as in the English training ships”.
But the Rosario was never bought. A wooden screw sloop launched at Deptford, England, in 1860, it served as a slave ship chaser off Cuba before arriving in Australia in 1867 and used in attempts to stamp out the kidnapping of Pacific Islanders for employment in Queensland and Fiji. The vessel returned to England in 1875, a few months after it had been “promised” to the South Australian government. It was sold out of service in 1882.
The Fitzjames, the government's second choice, without masts and rigging, wasn’t wholly suitable for naval training. In March 1880, 35 boys were brought to the hulk from Ilfracombe boys reformatory, the boys reformatory at Magill and Magill Industrial School. Some had committed serious crimes, while others were guilty of petty theft, or simply deemed uncontrollable.
On the Fitzjames, some boys were trained in tailoring and shoemaking, all without sewing machines, while others were taught carpentry. Other tasks included transporting fresh water, cooking, and cleaning the ship. Most boys were apprenticed out after having served a third of their sentence. Only few boys went to sea. The majority were placed on farms.
In 1883, a royal commission to report on the Destitute Act in South Australia found the Fitzjames was in a bad state and unsafe in deep water. It was moved to the shallow False Arm of the Port River. The commission reported the boys were ill fed, dirty, and slept in hammocks strung up side by side, with so little room that the hammocks “bowed up almost in an arc of a circle”. With overcrowding, diseases spread easily and many boys contracted opthalmia, a painful eye infection; some went blind as a result.
In May 1891, the boys were removed from their floating prison and returned to their old address at Magill. The Fitzjames was broken up soon after. By August, the Fitzjames was offered at a public auction with no reserve and sold for £130.