Of all the stories of the First Fleet, that of Mary Bryant - the only woman convict ever successfully to escape from Botany Bay - is the most extraordinary. A Cornishwoman convicted of highway robbery and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude, she gave birth to one child on the long sea voyage to Australia and was delivered of another during her three years in the colony.

Bryant, her children and eight other convicts escaped in Governor Phillip's 30-foot cutter and their journey in that open boat from Sydney Cove to Timor in Indonesia is one of the great voyages.

They reached the Dutch colony after almost 10 weeks at sea and, claiming to be shipwrecked sailors, were at first welcomed. But her drunken husband betrayed their true secret and they were manacled and sent back to England to face execution.

During the voyage Bryant lost both her children and then her husband to fever but on her return to London she was lionised by the newspapers for her exploits and befriended, and defended, by Dr Samuel Johnson's amanuensis, James Boswell. With his help, she and her shipmates won a royal pardon and she lived out her days in her native Cornwall.