“It’s got everything it needs to be a blockbuster,” they said.
“History, romance, the paranormal: the story of a narrator finding his way in the world.”
It’s an adventure across 5 countries.
Including Australia where, my research shows, unknown and hidden Royal children were sent in the First Fleets to the new colony with a cargo of female convicts.
Who would know?
They were hidden from sight.
Until now.
Read this history-making Mind/Body/Spirit paranormal true story.
PS. Over a thousand years ago, in medieval Britain, the Smiths were the craftsman, the metal smiths, the blacksmiths, who created the basis of society. Today I’m the creator Smith who, as a wordsmith, creates the society (again). With words, not the sword (get my book here).
PS. Shown above is the Flying Scotsman which my great-great-great grandfather drove several centuries ago. I’m told he once drove Queen Victoria who told him that she was terrified on the trip because he drove too fast and would never be his passenger again. My true story is about her uncles.
PS. Illustrated above. an anonymous painting of the ‘Mary Ann’ the only all-female convict to sail from England to New South Wales in 1792 with the Third Fleet.
The ‘Mary Ann’ was an all-female convict ship which had sailed to New South Wales (Australia had not been named yet) as part of the Third Fleet in 1791 “under strange circumstances.”
Strange circumstances?
Although officially one of the Third Fleet the ‘Mary Ann’ sailed independently of the rest of the fleet, leaving England forty days before the first of the other ships. The remaining nine vessels were mostly in a bad state of repair, “mostly old, and the Navy Board’s officers were less than vigilant than usual or had no alternative but to accept vessels that were in poor repair and ill-found.” 1
Under the command of her part-owner, Mark Monroe, the 298 ton vessel sailed from England on the 16 February, 1791, arriving in Port Jackson on 9 July. This was the fastest voyage yet made by any ship of the three fleets. Bateson reports a cargo of 150 female convicts but the records of ‘Shipping Arrivals & Departures, Sydney, 1788-1825′2show this to be incorrect. The ‘Mary Ann’ (officially) carried 141 female convicts, six children and one free woman. Six children and one free woman? She was the only ship in the fleet to carry exclusively female, and no male, convicts.
There were a number of indications of a hasty departure. As reported by Collins, the Master of the ship “had not any private papers on board (but what added to the disappointments everyone experienced), he had not brought a single newspaper, and having been but a few weeks from Greenland before sailing for this country, he was destitute of any kind of information.” 3
Even more intriguing was an incident reported by Charles Bateson. After a grueling 143 days at sea “possibly because she called at only one port en route to refresh her prisoners with fresh provisions” a very strange thing happened.
“The Master landed a boat in a bay on the coast about 15 miles to the southward of Botany Bay; but no other observation of any consequence to the colony, than that it was a bay in which a boat may land.” 4
Notice it was the Master who landed the boat according to Bateson.
Puzzled by this I wrote to my genealogist in England asking for information about the ‘Mary Ann’.
“There seem to be no ships musters for the ‘Mary Ann’,” he wrote back. “Looked next the embarkations returns for 1791 but there was no mention of the ‘Mary Ann’ … I looked at the Home Office lists for the ‘Mary Ann’ but these give only the list of convicts, so there is something wrong with your data.”
I found the list of female convicts on the ‘Mary Ann’ but none for the free women and child.
So what have we got?
The Master of the ‘Mary Ann’, a female convict ship carrying six children and one free woman, lands a boat on the coast away from the main settlement about fifteen miles from their port of destination, for no apparent reason, even though there must have been many on board who were ill and in need of fresh food and water having stopped only once on the journey. Her departure does not seem to have been recorded in England. No ships musters could be found. She leaves hastily “under strange circumstances” without the usual papers, sailing over a month in advance of the other ships in the fleet and making the trip in record time. The captain also happens to be the part-owner.
Was something fishy going on here?
But that’s not all.
Bateson offers another interesting observation. “Of the ten sail of transports [the Third Fleet] lately arrived, five, after delivering their cargo, were to proceed on the southern whaling fisheries – the ‘Mary Ann’, ‘Matilda’, ‘William and Mary’, ‘Salamanda’ and ‘Brittania’. Two of the whalers, ‘Matilda’ and ‘Mary Ann’, came in from the sea the day on which the others arrived. The former found a boat in a bay on the coast six miles to the southward of Port Stephens …” 5
Port Stephens is some 200 miles to the north of Botany Bay.
Was there some kind of cover-up going on?
I know what was going on and it was a cover-up to save the Prince of Wales’ Skin.
Or maybe his neck.
I wrote the book to answer this and other big questions.
I’ve received a threat of libel against her family from (name supplied) in an email, (dated 9 October, 2022), who claims to be a descendent of Mabel Hookey ,who I’ve quoted in my book ‘The Great Regency Cover-Up’.
She is threatening legal action if I “continue to quote from her ad nausea, without checking if indeed her claims are accurate or how the impact such claims may have on the Desailly descendants.”
She says she is is “fed-up” with Hookey’s “figment of imagination”.
“I now have support with members of Hookey’s own family,” she adds, “who together with our family, may take legal action for libel. Her claims are not true.”
Firstly they have no case.
They should be suing Mabel Hookey, the author of the book I’ve quoted, not me.
If they offend them then they need to sue Hookey, the author of the book I’ve quoted, “The Chaplain, Being Some Further Account Of The Days Of Bobby Knopwood”.
The passages I’ve quoted in the book refer only to rumours.
Hearsay.
I’ve heard independently from a descendant of Dr Desailly who supports my story of Dr and Mrs Desailly and say her family also has not been able to learn anything about the doctor’s alleged secret.
The other subject containing Mabel Hookey’s quotes is of rumours surrounding the private lives of King George III and King George IV.
One concerns a rumoured secret marriage of George III to a Hannah Lightfoot when he was young.
The other of a secret marriage of George Prince of Wales to a widow Mrs Maria Fitzherbert.
The legitimacy of the marriage was declared legal by the Pope but not the British Parliament.
If either rumours were true then this may have changed the entire course of history.
Both matters are still being disputed today, more than 200 years later.
Any evidence, like the hastily drawn up wedding agreement between George Prince of Wales and Maria Fitzherbert were destroyed by Mrs Fitzherbert after the King’s desth.
Mabel Hookey, in her book and the extracts I have quoted, is only offering whatever evidence we have, circumstantial or otherwise, in Chapter 13 ‘The Secret Marriage’ and elsewhere throughout the book.
As for doctor Desailly, I have found documents that show he eventually appeared in elite circles in Tasmania.
He is reported to be in the company of the first chaplain of Tasmania, Rev Robert Knopwood, and the Governor of the colony, David Collins.
Hookey’s information, she clearly says, is only rumours.
From chapter 2 in ‘The Great Regency Cover-Up’, “It was whispered that”, “gossip”, “conjecture”, “supposition”, “mystery”, “secret”, “let us draw a bow at”.
All rumours.
There is no case of libel against the Hookey family here.
I’ve written a book revealing clues to a secret hidden until now in the Third Fleet of female convicts sent to the new colony of Australia.
The ship was named the ‘Mary Ann’.
Here is the cover of my true story showing a painting of a small boat with secrets being smuggled ashore even before she offloaded her cargo of suffering female convicts.
So what was the big hurry?
This rare unknown painting shows a small boat leaving the ‘Mary Ann’, the only all-female convict ship and one of eleven to sail to Australia from England in 1791 as the Third Fleet.
She sailed hastily a month ahead of the rest “under strange circumstances”.
“You have discerned an amazing story.” – Writer’s Digest
Right from the start there’s a paranormal mystery.
Why did the ‘Mary Ann’, the only all-female convict ship among the Third Fleet of convicts to Australia, leave England in 1791 in such a hurry before the rest of the fleet and “under strange circumstances”?
Who was the Commander of the ‘Lady Nelson’ and what was his true shocking identity?
Have I found the unsuspected unknown missing children of George IV?
What if you were a Romeo waiting for your Juliet, a Guinevere waiting for your Lancelot, to show up in this life?
What if a past life ended tragically, in a death perhaps, untimely separation or unfortunate distance, leaving emotions and experiences unfinished or unexpressed.
How tragic.
What if we’ve returned to complete what was started last time with an unhappy parting?
What if, what if?
Are we going to blow it by settling for someone we’ve asked to be our partner too soon?
What if?
How do we know?
We don’t, except that we can go with the flow, by trusting that our interests are being taken care of.
Not so if we’re trying to force things.
What if there is a priority of the thoughts and influences in our lives depending the intensity and the degree to which each is important.
I’ve always thought that the recent talk of the Law of Attraction is only relevant as far as other influences which are in our mental make-up at the time are more important.
For example, are there aspects of our Destiny or our Karma that might override any forcing we set up as our expectation of the Law of Attraction.
And choices.
We’re free to make choices all the time.
That’s free will.
But how do we know whether our choices are, in the long run, in our best interests?
How do we know without a crystal ball?
Seeing into the future.
Are our chances of winning the lottery diminished by aspects to the contrary in our Karma or our Destiny or simply in our need to win the lottery over other considerations.
Are we always simply in the queue?
It’s a mix, like a cake.
Priorities are surely determined more by their importance on a spiritual level than our own sense of importance.
Much of which we may not understand.
It’s not either/or.
Trust.
In the Tao it’s known as “wu wei”, not forcing things.
For the past 30 years I’ve lived by not forcing things.
I had no choice.
Read about it in my book ‘Man Steps Off Planet’ HERE.
Take care.
Neil Walter Smith
Further reading: ‘Tao: The Watercourse Way’ by Alan Watts.
“At Rokeby, where the road branches off from Skillion Hill, through Glebe Farm on its way to Cambridge,” wrote Mabel Hookey in a small limited edition book published over 40 years ago, “there is an old cottage, once the home of Dr and Mrs Desailly.
“It was built in 1826, by William Hance and was one of the early landmarks of the locality.
“There was a certain cachet about the Desaillys, and a hint of strangeness as of exotic birds blown from their course by adverse winds.
“It was whispered that Dr Desailly’s English practice had been at the court of George IV, and that his beautiful wife had been a Lady in Waiting to Queen Caroline.
“What were they doing in this antipodean outpost? They held no official position, nor were they of the free settlers who were beginning to trickle into the colony.
“They did not swell the ranks of those unfortunates [convicts] who had left their country for their country’s good, nor were they political exiles.
“A vessel under special charter brought them to Van Diemen’s Land [Tasmania], and they always had plenty of money, derived from a mysterious pension, paid regularly and with great secrecy.”
I know the Desailly’s secret and I’ve written a fun and entertaining and revealing book about it.
your mind is all 