Call for information: Portraits of convict transports

9th April 2025 marked the 200th Anniversary of the arrival in Hobart of the convict transport Lady East. As one of 814 voyages carrying convicts to Australia between 1788 and 1868, Lady East’s voyage was unremarkable. The voyage took 116 days (slightly shorter than the average of 119 days) and only two of the 212 male convicts embarked died aboard, close to the 2.26 average for a male convict transport.

What is less usual about Lady East is that a portrait of the ship exists.

Painted by noted ship portrait artist Joseph Heard, likely in the early 1830s, this work depicts the ship in the River Mersey with the Liverpool waterfront in the background, and was acquired by Maritime Museum Tasmania (MMT) in 2019.

Tasmania’s MMT receives many requests from members of the public who are researching their family history and seeking assistance with information relating to migrants’ passages to Australia. They seek information and clarification such as arrival dates, ship names, or ports of arrival or departure.  Sometimes, their request is simply for an image of the ship a forebear arrived on. Before acquiring of the portrait of Lady East, as far as convict transports were concerned, we would simply respond “no, sorry, we haven’t”. Now we can at least say, “no, we haven’t, but it probably looked a bit like this!”

This does raise interesting questions as to how many portraits of convict transports are held in Australian collections. Charles Bateson’s The Convict Ships 1787 – 1868 contains images of six or so paintings, all from the UK’s National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Trove and eHive only bring up a few examples on a basic search for ‘Convict Transport’.

So, do you know of a portrait of a convict transport, or does your museum have one? If so, please do let us know via ammc@sea.museum as there are sure to be family history researchers out there searching!

Prepared by Maritime Museum Tasmania