From David Lewis
I was most interested to read Tony Farmer describe Captain Bligh’s “Who shall have this?” sharing system as “transparently fair” (Letters, 29 July). It reminded me of Henry Barber’s experiences of the same system when he was wrongfully transported to Norfolk Island aboard the Agincourt in the 1840s. His seven mess companions (“no more desperate characters”) employed the “who shall” system to share out their rations but, as he soon discovered, “under this ostentatious parade of fair play there lurked the grossest injustice … and I learned there was a well-understood confederacy between the adjudicators”.
Barber was a sensitive, educated man who had to endure his companions’ continual “obscene and blasphemous songs and schemes for future crimes”. When even these diversions palled, they would “gravely narrate irnperfectly remembered versions of childish stories like Jack the Giant Killer”, which often occasioned heated and “ridiculous discussions of the facts”. Barber tried the experiment of “some stories from English and Roman history which they listened to with eager attention and urged him to repeat”.
Happily Barber eventually obtained a pardon and after a number of death defying adventures made his way home via China, India and Egypt.
