Friendship and Prince of Wales: discipline, scarcity, and mortality

At the Cape, every woman aboard Friendship was transferred to other transports after commanders said sexual relationships were breaking down discipline and because livestock needed the space. Prince of Wales required provisioning at Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, and Cape Town, yet still exhausted its flour and butter and had to open stores reserved for the colony. Its health outcome was far better than Alexander's: only two people died, one in an accident and one from an unknown cause. That result came despite ragged prison clothing, no resident ship's surgeon, insects, rats, fleas, lice, and a late outbreak of scurvy. Sexual exchange between women convicts and ship crews was widespread, and obtaining extra food may have been one incentive. Scarcity had created a gendered informal economy.