4. Arthur Watts sailed as crew to NZ on HMS Fawn in 1860.
HMS Fawn sailed from Portsmouth on 21 February 1860 to join the R.N.'s Australian Fleet, and arrived at New Plymouth on 23 July. The Taranaki War had begun some months before and she disembarked 112 officers and men of the 12th Regiment of the British Army and 50 "bluejackets" (men of the Royal Marines) to join the forces fighting against Maori. Fawn was one of a half dozen or so British warships stationed in the SW Pacific, and she was here for about three and a half years. She mostly sailed in NZ waters. You can follow her voyages around NZ from newspaper reports in Papers Past from NZ National Library. The library also has a painting of the Fawn and another R.N. ship, HMS Miranda, at a regatta in January 1862 in Auckland.
From the information I have, I cannot determine the date and place of Arthur's desertion from Fawn. But the 1861 British census return shows that he was still on board on the night of Sunday April 7 1861, where he is listed as an Ordinary Seaman, single, aged 19 and born at Woodbridge, Suffolk. At that time the Fawn was at New Plymouth.
In his post of 10 August 2019 on this thread, Colin suggested that Arthur's actions in June 1861 "were pretty unequivocal" - perhaps he meant that he deserted at that time. In June 1861 Fawn went to Sydney for repairs to her machinery. While in Australia, an anti-Chinese riot by gold miners took place near Yass, and bluejackets from the Fawn helped the Australian police to put down the riot. Perhaps this was the the occasion and place of Arthur's desertion. Again the ship's log and muster roll should answer those questions. If he deserted in Australia, he must have come to NZ in another ship - I haven't found it. Also he must have adopted his new name.
Arthur was not alone in deserting from Fawn. In January 1861 18 seamen deserted from Fawn in Wellington, and further desertions occurred from time to time. A newspaper ad in March 1862 listed 21 names of deserters from Fawn in Auckland. She lost 105 men, including two officers, to desertion during her three and a half years here. One of the officers was the first lieutenant who "was last heard of as a cattle drover". Some deserters were captured and returned to the Fawn, but the ship was "scarcely half manned" by the end of her service. Before returning to Britain, Fawn sailed to Hobart Tasmania and recruited 20 boys to join the crew.
Fawn cannot have been a happy ship. Conditions aboard seem to have encouraged desertion. During its time in NZ waters, Fawn gained a reputation as a "flogging ship" - "we were hopeful that the Fawn was an exceptional vessel .....and that the punishment of flogging so frequently in use on board of her was not practiced in any of the other [ships]". The Captain, Ralph Cator was regarded as an overstrict disciplinarian. He sailed Fawn back to England under a cloud from comments made about him by the Commodore in Sydney, and was "paid out of commission" on his arrival [sacked?]. Arthur's former shipmates and others who had deserted and been recaptured faced a court martial on arrival in England and were sentenced to 12 - 18 months hard labour.
But the greatest incentive to desert during the Fawn's time in NZ came from June 1861 onwards with the discovery of gold at Gabriel's Gully in Central Otago. Men (and almost entirely men) flocked to Dunedin from all over NZ and many from Australia to "try their luck" on the goldfields. Otago's population rose from 12,691 in December 1860 to 30,260 in December 1861. As happened at San Francisco in 1848 during the Californian gold rush, ships' crews abandoned their vessels in port and captains found it difficult to find enough crew to sail away.
I haven't discovered if Arthur (now Henry Newson?) went to the goldfields as his brother Alfred and his wife Alison did (they lived at Bannockburn near Cromwell for a time), but perhaps his marriage to Sophia Ann Dowsett on 9 August 1863 anchored him to Wellington and her family there. But an older Henry Newson certainly showed considerable interest in gold rushes later in his life.
