Non British Australia: Were do all the convicts go?

OK, the French beat Captain Cook to Australia, Cook dies, whatever. Australia is not open for British colonisation for some reason, so the question is: where do the convicts go? America is out of the question, as is Canada. So where could the British send their convicts?

Could the western coast of America be considered? There were no major settlements besides some fur traders, and it would be a good way of enforcing the British claim to the area.

Thoughts? Is it feasible?
 

Thande

Donor
Interesting question. I think Newfoundland or the north of (the modern definition of) Canada is a possibility...

Perhaps also the Cape if it gets taken from the Dutch at some point, too.
 
Interesting question. I think Newfoundland or the north of (the modern definition of) Canada is a possibility...

Perhaps also the Cape if it gets taken from the Dutch at some point, too.
You're joking, no?

You could also just slit their throats and throw them overboard and have done with it.

Suppose you send them to Nfld. Then they either fish or die. If they fish, they desert en masse a sailors to any ship that will take them, which rather defeats the whole 'transportation' idea.

Where in 'north of Canada'? Until you get into the prairies there's no place that would support them, and getting them to the prairies would be ... interesting.
 
North of Canada would kill them, and the American west coast is really far away and expensive by ship. Perhaps Britain will spread them over a whole bunch of its tropical islands? Another possibility is Walvis Bay if someone manages to work out how to access the interior, isolated enough that the convicts are stuck but close to the Cape and the trade routes to keep them controlled and useful - annexed in 1840 but the British were interested well before that.

OTH the convicts transported were only 170k or so over 80 years..it be easy enough for Britain to just go 'screw it, we'll send them to short stay prison work sentances here', in which case they'll stay in the isles.

@Falastur: The Andamans were for prisoners from the Raj, Europeans sent and kept in convict conditions there would die in pretty short order from the diseases.
 
How about the Gold Coast (Ghana)?

Could develop into a war with the Ashanti as OTL, but this time with the prisoners (or descendants) and British fighting for the territory.
 
Somewhere remote and uneeded, like how the British vioewed Australia at first. Maybe that colony in South America. The French did it, I think.
 
Top