Fort Denison-Sydney Harbour

One of the most popular islands in Sydney Harbour is Fort Denison, sometimes known as ‘Pinchgut’ or ‘Rock Island’. The island has a fascinating convict past, being originally used as a place of punishment for the more difficult convicts. It was the convicts who named it ‘Pinchgut’ after the starvation rations they had to face. In 1788 a convict named Thomas Hill was sentenced to a week on bread and water in irons on what was then referred to as ‘the small white rocky Island adjacent to this Cove’. By 1796 a gibbet was constructed and convicts who were sentenced to death were left to hang until their bones turned white. The most famous convict to be sentenced to death here is Francis Morgan, who arrived in the colony in 1793 on the Sugar Cane from Ireland. He had been tried for the murder of a man at Glassneven in Co Dublin, and was caught wearing the murdered man’s watch. Convicted, his sentence was commuted to transportation for life. After his arrival in Sydney, he was again charged with murder, after bashing a man named Simon Raven to death on the north side of the harbour on 18 October 1796. By the 1840s the colony, fearing invasion from the Russians, had converted the island into a fort and by 1857 the fort was manned, including two ten inch guns and twelve 32 pounders. The guns have only been fired during ceremonies and on special occasions.