page_title: Badger escape
section_title: Discovery in Macau
hierarchical_section_title: Badger escape / Discovery in Macau
caption_attribution_description: English: Chinese painting of Macao from the 19th Century, oil on canvas. Exhibit in the Asian Civliisations Museum, SIngapore.
context_page_description: The Badger escape occurred in July 1833 when twelve convicts in the British penal colony of Van Diemen's Land used the government schooner Badger to escape to Macau, China. Most of the convicts involved were experienced seafarers who had been appointed to man the vessel soon after their transportation. For this, the colonial press accused the government of extreme negligence, and also called for the removal of lieutenant-governor George Arthur. In The History of Tasmania, John West wrote that, of all the escapes from Van Diemen's Land, "never was the government more culpable, or the prisoners less so, than in the instance of the Badger".
context_section_description: The fate of the Badger remained a mystery in Australia until Captain Rees, of the merchant vessel Lord Amherst, reported in August 1834 that the convicts had been found alive in Macau, China. When Rees was there, he met a party of self-described "shipwrecked seaman" who had initially reached Manila before being brought up to Macau by a Spanish vessel. Later on, the commander of the convict transport Argyle, Captain Stavers, arrived at Macau on his ship the Mermaid. He recognised Philp "as a runaway convict from Van Diemen’s Land, having brought him out from England"; at least two others "were also identified by other persons as being runaways from the same place". An investigation confirmed that the "seamen" matched descriptions of the twelve absconders in a copy of The Sydney Herald found at Macau, and the vessel which had wrecked at Manila "[corresponded] in every respect with that of the Badger". Nonetheless, the Portuguese authorities refused to interfere, saying there was "not sufficient proof", and the men having been well-behaved in Macau, they could not imprison them.
  Rees reported that four of the men subsequently escaped to America aboard a vessel, while Philp and the other seven "remained unmolested" at Macau. Before leaving for Sydney, Rees offered Philp a passage there, but he politely refused, saying "he did not wish to go so far southward".
caption: Macau, early 19th-century
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