This was always a favourite service with the best disposed of the convict
prisoners, for in the event of their meriting, by their good conduct, a
favourable report on my return, the government was likely to grant them
some indulgence. I chose these men either from the characters they bore,
or according to their trade or particular qualifications: thus:

Burnett was the son of a respectable house-carpenter on the banks of the
Tweed, where he had been too fond of shooting game, his only cause of
trouble.

Whiting, a Londoner, had been a soldier in the Guards.

Woods had been found useful in the department as a surveyor's man; in
which capacity he first came under my notice, after he had been long
employed as a boatman in the survey of the coast, and having become, in
consequence, ill from scurvy, he made application to me to be employed on
shore. The justness of his request, and the services he had performed,
prepossessed me in his favour, and I never afterwards had occasion to
change my good opinion of him.

John Palmer was a sailmaker as well as a sailor, and both he and Jones
had been on board a man-of-war, and were very handy fellows.

Worthington was a strong youth, recently arrived from Nottingham. He was
nicknamed by his comrades Five-o'clock, from his having, on the outset of
the journey, disturbed them by insisting that the hour was five o'clock
soon after midnight, from his eagerness to be ready in time in the
morning.

I never saw Souter's diploma, but his experience and skill in surgery