21 February 1798: At Bantry, Co Cork, Maj Gen John Moore enters details in his diary of the "camp conspiracy" which blighted the garrison in June 1797.
He is optimistic on the 16th that "no more of that spirit exists", considering his men "upon the whole well-behaved, but they have . . . no sort of respect for their officers; I am more afraid of this than of their disaffection". Moore has over 3,000 troops under his command, including the "very fine men" of 12 militia light infantry companies.
These skirmishers are exceptional and the general thinks it "melancholy . . . that we have only the Militia with which to encounter an enemy inured to war and that . . . like everything else in this country, the giving of regiments was made an instrument of influence with the colonels, and they made their appointments to serve electioneering purposes.
"Every sort of abuse has been tolerated . . . The officers are in general profligate and idle, serving for the emolument but neither from a sense of duty nor of military distinction."
On the 20th a special session of the peace is convened in Wicklow Town under the chairmanship of Peter La Touche of Delgany. He reports that he had "laid before Government the Resolutions passed at the last meeting . . . in which it was stated . . . that the Castlemacadam corps of cavalry & the Ballymurtagh corps of Infantry, as being almost entirely composed of seditious and disaffected persons and as being in general unattended by their officers, ought to be disarmed".
Chief Secretary Thomas Pelham perseveres in his ongoing efforts to convince the Transport Board to furnish the Irish administration with a vessel to send 200 convicts to New South Wales. He tries to persuade Whitehall with a claim that "the state of this country being such as to render it essentially necessary to send off a number of desperate offenders in the gaols of the Kingdom under sentence of Transportation . . . let me know as soon as possible whether such a vessel can now be obtained, and if it can, at what time we may expect its arrival at Cork to receive the convicts".
London is uninterested in Pelham's agenda and no ship has sailed from Ireland since December 10th 1796, when Captain Thomas Dennott's Britannia put to sea from Cork. The voyage was punctuated by a mutiny in March 1797 when maltreated United Irish prisoners tried to seize the vessel off South America. Eleven died after receiving 300-700 lashes each.
This disaster, however, is less of an impediment to providing another ship than Dublin Castle's unwillingness to pay demurrage penalties and other debts arising from the voyage. This is a damaging impasse as Irish jails are full of political prisoners, with many more anticipated at the spring assizes.
Three of those awaiting deportation, Corkmen Michael Fitzgerald, Jeremiah Connor and John Whelehan, are "camp conspiracy" prisoners and their continued detention in Ireland is not only expensive but an affront to the concept of exemplary justice.
They are perhaps in better circumstances than those detained on the prison tender William and James, which the press claims on the 20th is "coasting round the Kingdom, with 90 unfortunate prisoners, the greatest part 10 long months buried in her hold, and this in order to avoid the service of habeas corpus writs".