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Ask most people to name an Australian bushranger and you'll get Ned Kelly, Ben Hall or Captain Thunderbolt. Hardly anyone says John Caesar. Yet the man the First Fleet officers called "Black Caesar" was out in the bush around Sydney Cove robbing gardens with a stolen musket in 1789, the best part of a century before the Kelly Gang. He escaped again and again, ran a small gang of runaways, had a price put on his head, and was shot dead near what is now Strathfield in February 1796. The Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Dictionary of Sydney and Museums of History NSW all call him Australia's first bushranger.
A word of warning before we start. Nearly everything we know about Caesar was written by the officers who were trying to catch him, mostly the Judge-Advocate David Collins. Collins wrote about him in the openly racist language of the 1790s. I quote him where I have to, because his are the only eyewitness words we have, but remember who was holding the pen.
Who Was John Caesar?
We don't know his real name. "Caesar" was a common name given to slaves, and the account on the Enslaved.org database (from Kimberly Cheek's entry in the African American National Biography) says he probably got it after being taken to the Americas as a slave in the late 1770s. The ADB says he was "of unknown African parentage" and "may have been born on Madagascar". Lieutenant William Bradley wrote in January 1790 that Caesar was "a Native of Madagascar". The Dictionary of Sydney, on the other hand, calls him a "West Indian who fled to England to escape plantation slavery".
From Slavery to the Streets of London
The historian Cassandra Pybus, in her 2006 book Black Founders, put Caesar into a bigger story. Jeff Sparrow's review in The Age explains it. During the American Revolution, Lord Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, offered freedom to slaves who would fight for the King, and hundreds ran to the British lines. When Britain lost, the lucky ones got a berth on the last ships out of New York and were written down in a register called the Book of Negroes. Many ended up poor and friendless in London. Pybus summed up the point bluntly: "Australia's first bushranger was black as pitch."
Wikipedia, drawing on Pybus, says the Book of Negroes lists two young men called Caesar, aged 14 and 18, sailing to Spithead in England in 1783, and that Pybus believes the 14-year-old, a "stout fellow", was our man. The Enslaved.org account says he either fled to the British hoping for freedom, or was the property of a Loyalist owner who went back to England after the war.
Deptford, Maidstone and the Hulk
By 1786 Caesar was a servant living in the parish of St Paul, Deptford, on the Thames. On 13 March that year, at Maidstone in Kent, he was convicted of stealing about £12 from a house and sentenced to seven years' transportation. He was sent to the hulk Ceres to wait for a ship. When his age was taken in May 1787 it was put at 23, which is where the "born about 1763" comes from.
The Alexander and the First Fleet
On 6 January 1787 Caesar was put aboard the Alexander at Woolwich. The Dictionary of Sydney calls her "the largest and most notorious convict transport in the First Fleet", a 452-ton barque carrying 195 of "ye worst of land-lubbers". Its entry describes Caesar as "a well-built Malagasy". Wikipedia says he was one of at least twelve black convicts on the ship. Carolyn Webb, writing about Santilla Chingaipe's research in 2021, said there were at least ten men of African descent in the whole First Fleet.
The Alexander reached Botany Bay with the rest of the fleet on 19 January 1788.
Strength and Appetite
What everyone noticed about Caesar was his size and his hunger. Collins wrote that he "was always reputed the hardest working convict in the country; his frame was muscular and well calculated for hard labour". Then came the problem: "his appetite was ravenous, for he could in any one day devour the full ration for two days. To gratify this appetite he was compelled to steal from others, and all his thefts were directed to that purpose."
That rations problem was real. Wikipedia says Caesar was six feet tall, and that the weekly ration in 1790 was about a kilo of pork, 1.2 kilos of flour and a kilo of rice. For a big man doing hard labour, that was hunger.
The trouble started early. Extracts from the Sydney Cove records, put together by the University of Wollongong's First Fleet project, show that on 30 April 1788, barely three months after landing, Caesar was accused of stealing 4 pounds of bread from Richard Partridge's tent. Caesar said the bread in his bag had been given to him by a Mr Shairp.
Into the Bush, Again and Again
The First Escape, May 1789
On 29 April 1789 Caesar was tried for theft again and sentenced to transportation for life. Scott recorded in his diary that "two Black men (Convicts) one by the name of Ceasar and the other called Black Jemmy" were tried that day. Caesar got life and Black Jemmy got 500 lashes.
On 13 May Caesar ran. Scott wrote that he "Elloped from Camp taking with him Arms and Ammunition belonging to Abraham Hand, Marine". Collins said he took "some provisions, an iron pot, and a soldier's musket". On 26 May he robbed the brickmakers of their rations and got away from the party sent after him. On the night of 6 June another convict, William Saltmarsh, caught him close to the house of Zachariah Clark, the assistant commissary.
Caesar wasn't sorry. Collins wrote that he was "so indifferent about meeting death, that he declared while in confinement, that if he should be hanged, he would create a laugh before he was turned off, by playing off some trick upon the executioner." Governor Phillip decided not to hang him. Instead he was sent to Garden Island to work in fetters, and he was given vegetables from the garden on top of his ration.
The Canoe, December 1789
Caesar behaved himself on Garden Island well enough to have his irons taken off. Then on 22 December 1789 he took the canoe kept there for the workers, along with a week of their food, and went. A few nights later he came back in the canoe and helped himself to an iron pot, a musket and some ammunition.
This time he tried to live off the land. The ADB says he robbed settlers' gardens and threatened Aboriginal people camped nearby, taking their food. He couldn't make it work. On 30 January 1790 Collins recorded that Caesar had turned up at Rose Hill "very much wounded by some natives whom he had met with in the woods", with "several spear wounds about him in different parts of his body". Caesar tried to talk his way out of a flogging with a story that he had found the colony's lost cattle being minded by Aboriginal men, and had been speared trying to drive them home. Nobody believed him. He went to the hospital instead of the triangle.
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Norfolk Island
Phillip then did something surprising. He pardoned Caesar and shipped him off to Norfolk Island in the Supply, in March 1790. Collins wrote that among the convicts sent there was "the troublesome and incorrigible Caesar, on whom he had bestowed a pardon".
On the island Caesar did better than he ever had in Sydney. By 1 July 1791 he was supporting himself on a lot at Queenborough and had been given a hog. In January 1792 he was given an acre of land and only had to work three days a week for the government. He also had a partner, Ann Power, a convict who had come out on the Lady Juliana in 1790. Their daughter was born on 4 March 1792.
It didn't last. About twelve months after his daughter was born, Caesar went back to Port Jackson in the Kitty, leaving Ann and the baby behind. Ann died on Norfolk Island in 1796. Their daughter was taken in by a woman named Hannah Fisher, was baptised Mary Ann Fisher Power in 1806, and later went to Van Diemen's Land.
Back in Sydney, and Pemulwuy
Caesar was barely back before he was off again. In July 1794 Collins reported that he "took up again his former practice of subsisting in the woods by plundering the farms and huts at the outskirts of the towns". He was soon caught and flogged hard, and he answered, Collins wrote, "with exultation and contempt, that 'all that would not make him better.'"
Late in 1795 Caesar was with a convict work party at Botany Bay when it was attacked by warriors led by the Bidjigal resistance leader Pemulwuy. The ADB says Caesar wounded Pemulwuy. Wikipedia says he cracked his skull. For a while the colony thought Caesar had killed him. In December Collins wrote that Caesar was "reported" to have "done one meritorious action, killing Pe-mul-wy". The Dictionary of Sydney's Pemulwuy entry says the report "turned out to be false". Pemulwuy kept fighting for another six years, until he was shot dead on 2 June 1802.
Australia's First Bushranger
In December 1795 Caesar escaped for the last time. Collins, in one of his ugliest lines, called him "a savage of a darker hue" who had "once more fled from honest labour to the woods, there to subsist by robbing the settlers". This time Caesar wasn't on his own. He had a gang of runaways around him, armed, and Collins later put their number at "six or eight".
Caesar sent word into town that "he neither would come in, nor suffer himself to be taken alive". That made him a real problem for the Governor. Collins wrote that "scarcely a morning arrived without a complaint being made to the magistrates of a loss of property supposed to have been occasioned by this man. In fact, every theft that was committed was ascribed to him." When a cask of pork went missing from the millhouse and the sentries were acquitted, the blame went on Caesar too.
The Reward: Five Gallons of Spirits
On 29 January 1796 Governor John Hunter offered a reward to whoever would "secure and bring him in with his arms": five gallons of spirits. Wikipedia calls it a generous reward, and in the rum-soaked colony of the 1790s it was. Settlers and anyone else trusted with ammunition were warned what would happen if they were caught passing it to the runaways.
Shot at Liberty Plains, February 1796
The reward worked. On Monday 15 February 1796, while a criminal court was sitting in Sydney, word came in that Black Caesar had been shot that morning. Collins tells it in a few lines:
"This man and another, allured by the reward, had been for some days in quest of him. Finding his haunt, they concealed themselves all night at the edge of a brush which they perceived him enter at dusk. In the morning he came out, when, looking round him and seeing his danger, he presented his musket; but before he could pull the trigger Wimbow fired and shot him. He was taken to the hut of Rose, a settler at Liberty Plains, where he died in a few hours."
The man who shot him was John Wimbow, an ex-highwayman who had served his time. The ADB places Liberty Plains at today's Strathfield, and the hut belonged to the settler Thomas Rose. Collins didn't name the second man. A 1936 article in The World's News said he was James Ruse, the ex-convict who Museums of History NSW says was the first person in NSW to get a land grant. That rests on one newspaper story written 140 years later.
Collins gave Caesar a cruel epitaph: "Thus ended a man, who certainly, during his life, could never have been estimated at more than one remove above the brute, and who had given more trouble than any other convict in the settlement."
His Legacy
For a long time Caesar was a footnote, or a figure of fun. Wikipedia lists newspaper stories from the 1890s and 1930s about him, one headed "The First Great Bushranger", and Thomas Keneally put him in his 1987 novel The Playmaker, which became the play Our Country's Good. Wikipedia notes that the novel shows him as the "mad Madagascan" in leg irons, which isn't how historians see him now.
That changed with Cassandra Pybus's Black Founders in 2006, which told the stories of the black convicts and settlers of early Sydney, including Billy Blue of Blues Point. In 2021 Santilla Chingaipe's SBS documentary Our African Roots had the actor Mohamed Osman playing Caesar. Chingaipe told Carolyn Webb she thought stories like his were forgotten because of the White Australia years. They didn't fit our "myths about who we were and who we wanted to be". In 2024 she published Black Convicts: How slavery shaped Australia.
The American historian Kimberly Cheek points out, as Wikipedia quotes her, that Caesar's life crossed four continents, Africa, North America, Europe and Australia, and reflects "the broad global experiences of some Africans in the eighteenth century". Museums of History NSW puts it simply. He was one of many convicts "of all ages, races and religions" on the First Fleet, and he "became Australia's first bushranger when he fled the settlement in December 1795".
What I keep coming back to is the man under Collins's sneering. He was probably carried off from Africa as a youngster, crossed the Atlantic as a slave, came to London and then across the world in chains. He worked harder than anyone, was always hungry, would not be broken by the lash, and laughed at the idea of the gallows. He was finally shot for a few gallons of rum somewhere out around today's Strathfield. Ned Kelly gets the statues, but Caesar was first.
Timeline
- About 1763 – Born, probably in Africa and possibly on Madagascar (ADB).
- Late 1770s – Enslaved in the Americas, probably Virginia or South Carolina (Enslaved.org; Wikipedia).
- 1783 – A 14-year-old "Caesar" sails from New York to Spithead. Pybus believes this was him.
- 13 March 1786 – Convicted at Maidstone, Kent, of stealing about £12. Seven years' transportation. Sent to the hulk Ceres.
- 6 January 1787 – Embarks on the Alexander at Woolwich.
- 19 January 1788 – The Alexander reaches Botany Bay with the First Fleet.
- 30 April 1788 – Accused of stealing 4 lb of bread from Richard Partridge.
- 29 April 1789 – Tried for theft and sentenced to transportation for life.
- 13 May 1789 – First escape, with a marine's musket and ammunition.
- 6 June 1789 – Caught by William Saltmarsh near Zachariah Clark's house. Sent to Garden Island in fetters.
- 22 December 1789 – Escapes from Garden Island in a canoe.
- 30–31 January 1790 – Gives himself up at Rose Hill, badly speared.
- March 1790 – Pardoned and sent to Norfolk Island in the Supply.
- 1 July 1791 – Supporting himself on a lot at Queenborough, Norfolk Island.
- 4 March 1792 – Daughter born to Ann Power.
- 1793 – Returns to Port Jackson in the Kitty.
- July 1794 – Third escape. Caught and severely punished.
- Late 1795 – Wounds Pemulwuy during an attack on a work party at Botany Bay.
- December 1795 – Final escape. Leads a gang of six or eight runaways.
- 29 January 1796 – Governor Hunter offers five gallons of spirits for his capture.
- 15 February 1796 – Shot by John Wimbow. Dies a few hours later in Thomas Rose's hut at Liberty Plains.
- 1806 – His daughter is baptised Mary Ann Fisher Power on Norfolk Island.
- 2006 – Cassandra Pybus publishes Black Founders.
- 2021 – SBS screens Our African Roots, with Mohamed Osman as Caesar.
Where the Sources Disagree
- Where he was born. Bradley in 1790 called him "a Native of Madagascar", and the ADB and Enslaved.org lean that way. The Dictionary of Sydney calls him "West Indian", and Wikipedia says early newspaper stories had him born in the West Indies.
- How old he was. His age was put at 23 in May 1787, which gives the usual "about 1763". If Pybus is right that he was the 14-year-old Caesar in the 1783 Book of Negroes, he would have been born about 1769.
- When he went to Norfolk Island. Collins wrote of it on 3 March 1790, and the ADB gives 4 March 1790. Kimberly Cheek's account on Enslaved.org says 6 March 1791.
- When he gave himself up after the canoe escape. Collins records it on 30 January 1790, while the ADB and Bradley say 31 January.
- All night or all day? The 1798 text of Collins on Project Gutenberg says Wimbow and his mate hid "all night" at the edge of the brush. The extract from Cobley's Sydney Cove on the University of Wollongong site reads "all day".
- Who was with Wimbow. Collins only says "another". A 1936 World's News article named James Ruse, as Wikipedia notes.
- Wimbow or Winbow. Collins and the ADB spell it Wimbow. Cheek's account spells it Winbow.
- Spirits or rum. Collins and the ADB say "five gallons of spirits". Enslaved.org says five gallons of rum.
- Did he kill Pemulwuy? Collins passed on the December 1795 report that Caesar had killed him. The ADB and Wikipedia say Caesar only wounded him, and the Dictionary of Sydney says the report "turned out to be false".
- How many escapes. Museums of History NSW says "no less than four". Counting the May 1789, December 1789, July 1794 and December 1795 runs gives four.
- How many black convicts came with him. Wikipedia says at least twelve on the Alexander alone. Carolyn Webb, reporting Chingaipe's research, says at least ten men of African descent in the whole First Fleet.
- When his daughter left Norfolk Island. The ADB says she went to Van Diemen's Land in 1813, and Wikipedia says 1814.
- Was he really the first bushranger? The ADB, the Dictionary of Sydney and Museums of History NSW say yes. Britannica, as quoted on Wikipedia, says he "probably became the first bushranger". The ADB and Museums of History NSW date it from his last escape in December 1795, while Carolyn Webb dates it from his first escape in 1789.
My Earlier Posts
- Pemulwuy – Bidjigal Resistance Leader of Botany Bay and Parramatta
- Colbee (Colebee) – The Cadigal Man Kidnapped with Bennelong at Manly
- Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Fisherwoman, Wife of Bennelong
- Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales – Norfolk Island, the Rum Trade and the Sydney Gazette
- The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
- The First Gaol – George Street North, The Rocks
- Fort Denison – Pinchgut Island – Sydney Harbour
- Sydney Past & Present – Chapter 1 – The Founding Of The City
- The Rum Corps – The New South Wales Corps, Rum, Land and Power in Early Sydney – 1789 to 1818
- Billy Blue – The Old Commodore of Blues Point – Convict, Ferryman and Macquarie's Harbour Watchman – c.1767 to 1834
Sources
- Chris Cunneen and Mollie Gillen, "Caesar, John Black (c. 1763–1796)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2005 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/caesar-john-black-12829
- David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Volume 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg eBook 12565 – https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12565/pg12565.txt
- University of Wollongong First Fleet project, "John Caesar as the documents tell it" (extracts from Cobley, Sydney Cove) – http://firstfleet.uow.edu.au/s_caesar.html
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Caesar, John" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/caesar_john
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Alexander" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/alexander
- Dictionary of Sydney, "Pemulwuy" – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/pemulwuy
- Museums of History NSW, "John 'Black Caesar'", 24 July 2020 – https://mhnsw.au/stories/first-fleet-ships/john-black-caesar/
- Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade, "John Caesar" (after Kimberly Cheek, African American National Biography) – https://enslaved.org/fullStory/16-23-106179/
- Wikipedia, "John Caesar" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caesar
- Jeff Sparrow, review of Cassandra Pybus, Black Founders, The Age, 17 June 2006 – https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/black-founders-the-unknown-story-of-australias-first-black-settlers-20060617-ge2jae.html
- Carolyn Webb, "Australia's first bushranger – he may not be who you think", Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, 24 September 2021 – https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/australia-s-first-bushranger-he-may-not-be-who-you-think-20210922-p58tzj.html
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, with credits under each picture.