AUSTRALIA FIFTY YEARS AGO

Bruce Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 2180, 4 July 1890, Page 6

AUSTRALIA FIFTY YEARS AGO

By far the strangest career of any of the convicts or ex-convicts that I came across was that of a Dane called Jorgen Jorgensen, the king of Iceland. He had published an account of his adventures which was in the main true, and, though plentifully interlarded with moral and pious reflections, showed plainly enough what a consummate scoundrel he was ; but he was certainly justified in being vain of at least one of his exploits, "as it was porfectly true that he had taken possession of Iceland by an extraordinary coup de main. He was the son of a watchmaker at Copenhagen ; first an apprentice in an English collier ; then joined the navy, and was in a tender at Captain Flinders's ship on the coast of Australia ; afterwards, while command- : ing a privateer iv the North Sea, was taken prisoner and got into all sorts of disreputable scrapes in England, but was then employed, probably from his knowledge of Danish, to convey provisions to Iceland, where the people were starving, owing to their communications with Denmark being cut off after the bombardment of Copenhagen. Upon his first visit to the island he found that the people were much dissatisfied with

the Danish G overnor, Count Tramp, and this encouraged him to make a bold stroke on arriving there a second time with more provisions. On a Sunday morning he observed that almost the entire population of the tovn had gone to church, but that the Governor, like a wicked man, had remained at home; whereupon, with a dozen men, he landed and went straight into the Government House, seiz;d Count Tramp, and carried him off in triumph to his ship. In describing this exploit, Jorgensen boasted that no revolution had ever before been so adroitly, so harmlessly, and so effectually accomplished, adding, as a moral reflection, that if the Governor had been at church with the rest of the people, as he ought to have been, it could not have been so easily managed. It is likely enough that the people were, as he asserts, well satisfied with his rule, for, after seizing the public chest, his first act was to remit all debts due to the Danish Government, and his next was to increase stipends of all the clergy throughout the island, who thereupon impressed upon their congregations that he was the most enlightened of rulers. Anyhow, no opposition was offered to him, for nobody conceived it possible that he should have acted without at least the connivance of the English Government, who, however, approved so little of his proceedings that, on his return to England, instead of being received with honour, he was arrested, and fa'ling into his usual disreputable ways, soon after got himself sentenced to transportation. After his arrival in Van Diemen's Land his conduct was not always st> ictly correct, and his hastiness of temper once got him into rather serous trouble. On coming home one day, expecting to find his dinner ready, he saw his wife in the garden digging the potatoes which ought to have been already boiled, and, having his gun in his hand, he immediately fired it at her. She was turned away from him, and stooping down pulling at the potatoes, so that she presented an excellent mark, though, as she had several thick petticoats on, not much damage was done, but this sort of domestic discipline was not to the taste of the authorities, and it brought the ex-king into trouble. — Sir Henry Elliot, in Nineteenth Century.