Mary's misshapen hands did not allow for needlework but to her great delight, along with cloth and thread, the resourceful Quaker ladies had supplied a small library. While there were no novels, plays or other improper books, the single box contained, as well as religious works, travel, biographies and history books and poetry. This last gave Mary a new-found pleasure, and was to bring her considerable joy for the remainder of her life.
Most of the convicts on board adapted to the order and routine the Ladies' Committee established at the commencement of the voyage, and those within Mary's mess, though all of them prostitutes, encouraged by her, soon proved eager to take up needlework. They were frequently rewarded for their diligence by Mary with readings while they worked, but this was not true of Ann Gower's mess.
These were the women who were branded by the authorities within the surgeon-superintendent's report at the conclusion of each voyage with words such as, 'notoriously bad', 'disorderly', 'profligate wretches', 'quarrelsome', and for those with a flair for invective and a good, well-inked goose feather quill, 'the basest and most abominable wretch of a woman', or 'scheming, blasphemous vixen and prostitute' – this last description being appended to Mary's name by Tiberias Potbottom on the very first evening of her coming on board. When the ship arrived in Hobart, this single entry in the surgeon's report resulted in her being incarcerated in the Female Factory instead of being assigned as a servant to a settler. In truth, with the exception of theft and blasphemy, fighting and the urgent couplings which took place at night, most of the offences committed on board were minor breaches of discipline such as insolence and refusal to obey orders, howling and singing a hymn or prayer to the tune of a well-known bawdy and sentimental song.
In the week before the departure of the vessel the relatives of those convicts on board began to arrive to farewell their wives and daughters. Mary, having no family of her own, witnessed the piteous sight of parents parting from their daughters with no likelihood of ever seeing them in this life again. The deck of the Destiny II was washed with the tears of country folk who had seen their dear daughters leave home to find work as servants or some form of livelihood in the city only to end up, unbeknown to them, selling their bodies on the streets of London, Dublin, Glasgow or Liverpool or resorting to petty crime in order to stay alive. These were good, honest people, who, for the most part, worked at backbreaking labour to earn barely enough to put bread and broth upon the table. They brought what they could as gifts, though frequently this was no more than the tears they shed and the love they bestowed for the last time upon their unfortunate and wretched offspring.
The Destiny II, flying the red and white pennant, 'the whip' which denoted a convict ship, sailed with the evening tide on the 14th of June amid the dreadful cries of distress from both those on board and the ones they'd left behind forever. The wind was from the nor'west, the temperature 68 degrees Fahrenheit and the sailing down channel was steady and most pleasant until about midnight when the winds changed to the west. This brought choppy seas and frequent squalls and the weather billowed into gales and huge seas by the time they entered the Bay of Biscay.
By midnight, when the prisoners had long since been confined below decks, almost the entire complement of convicts became sick to the point of frequent vomiting and nausea. They commenced to howling and blaspheming until no strength existed for these bitter emotions, whereupon they lay in their own vomit and moaned, willing themselves to die in the insufferable atmosphere of the water-logged prison.
The Destiny II was a 'wet' ship, that is to say, when the huge waves washed over the decks the water poured down into the prison quarters so that not a single flock mattress, pillow or blanket or anything contained within the female prison, including the convicts themselves, remained dry. The swinging stoves were hung in the prison to help dry the prison quarters but to no effect. The constant downpour of water rushing in from the deck above caused the contents of their stomachs to somewhat dilute, and with the hatches tightly closed, by the time dawn's light came the stench and the mess from the swill at their feet was beyond any possible description.
Sea sickness has no medication other than a tranquil sea and the weather remained inclement for the following week and then continued foul with intermittent calm of no more than, at most, a day, until they reached Tenerife, twenty days after departing from Woolwich.
At almost the moment they made the harbour at Santa Cruz at seven of the clock on a Sunday morning with the church bells summoning worshippers to early mass, the wind died and the sun blazed up to chase away all signs of the threatening cumulus cloud gathered above the high conical peaks above the town. While there was no thought that the convicts might be allowed to go ashore, they rested for several days while the ship took on new provisions. The women were allowed fresh fruit bought from the various boats which pulled to the side of the vessel and all were kept occupied at cleaning-out below decks and drying their bedding, clothes and personal effects.
As each cloudless day passed, the women became more hysterical at the prospect of leaving. On the third day, as they up-anchored in preparation to depart, the convicts went berserk and were confined to below decks with the hatches of the prison quarters securely locked. This was for fear that they might riot at the expectation of atrocious weather such as they'd endured during their first month at sea.
Only Tiberias Potbottom and Joshua Smiles seemed content to be on their way again. God had blessed the voyage with gale force winds and stormy seas, though not sufficient of either to cause harm to the Destiny II, and this was seen by both men as a blessing breathed upon their journey to the other side of the world.
Soon the routine on board ship assumed a semblance of normalcy. Most of the women were allocated jobs on board which helped somewhat to alleviate the long empty hours. Some of these positions carried the promise of a small reward while others were reward enough by helping to pass the hours between six o'clock muster when they rose and the time, roughly twelve hours later at dusk, when they were confined below decks. Most, being experienced in domestic service, adjusted easily enough to the routines on board and took readily to the added pleasures of sewing and needlework. They were not averse to working as servants in the kitchens and hospital or in other menial tasks of cleaning and labouring. Mary asked that she might teach those who wished to learn to read and write. She was the only one among the female convicts with sufficient learning to impart this knowledge to others and the Ladies' Committee had encouraged the formation of a school. But this was refused as a duty, in Joshua Smiles' name, by Potbottom and so Mary was obliged to run her school during the afternoon. Potbottom saw to it that she was on constant duty cleaning out the prison each morning, dry scrubbing the deck with holystone and sand and washing down and refilling the water closets, these being the most menial and hated tasks on board ship.
Moreover, at every opportunity, Potbottom would try to humiliate Mary and at each bloody pusover he would make cruel jokes about her hands or comment on the scar upon her face, or make her linger longer before the matron with her skirts held above her waist and her flannel undergarment removed. On two occasions, when he had caught her in utterance of bad language, he had caused Mary to be placed in a scold's bridle, a strap worn tightly over the mouth, tied at the back of the neck and which made it quite impossible to speak, nor, for the space of one week, was she allowed to read from a book, a punishment she found far more onerous than the silence the bridle enforced.