Tasmania Reads: Reading an Account of the Voyage of a Convict Transport (Part Two: The Answer and Historical Background)

The State Library and Archive Service is issuing a challenge to Tasmanians to read five different examples of nineteenth-century handwriting from our Heritage Collections, each featuring a different set of records held in the State Archives.

Continue reading “Tasmania Reads: Reading an Account of the Voyage of a Convict Transport (Part Two: The Answer and Historical Background)”

Tasmania Reads: Reading an Account of the Voyage of a Convict Transport (Part One: The Challenge)

The State Library and Archive Service is issuing a challenge to Tasmanians to read five different examples of nineteenth-century handwriting from our Heritage Collections, each featuring a different set of records held in the State Archives.

The scripts are selected to give you insights into some of the key strengths of our collection and we hope they will pique your interest to explore further.

As the week progresses, the challenge will get a bit more difficult, as you become more familiar with reading script. 

Each challenge will consist of two blogs. The morning blog will contain your transcription challenge, while the afternoon blog will provide the answer, as well as historical background to the events discussed in the challenge task. There will also be recommendations of other resources held in the Libraries Tasmania collections on the topic for you to explore.

Your Transcription Challenge

Your first challenge is to transcribe a passage from the account of the voyage of the Female Transport, Garland Grove (2) in 1842/1843:

Tasmanian Archives: Abraham Harvey, Reminiscences of a Voyage on the Female Convict Ship Garland Grove, p.4 (1842-43), NS816/1/1.  Abraham Harvey was the 2nd Officer on board the Garland Grove, which left England in August 1842 and arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in January 1843.

The Answer …

will be published in our blog this afternoon. Stay tuned!