Welcome to the Britten(Brittain) and associated family's pages.


"I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me those who are to come. 
I looked back and saw my father and his father and all our fathers, 
and in front to see my son and his son, 
and the sons upon sons beyond. 
And their eyes were my eyes. 
As I felt so they had felt, and were to feel, as then, so now, as 
tomorrow and forever. 
Then I was not afraid for I was in a long line that had no beginning 
and no end. 
And the hand of his father grasped my father's hand and his hand was in mine, 
and my unborn son took my right hand and all, up and down the line that 
stretched from 
Time That Was to Time That is Not Yet, 
raised their hands to show the link. 
And we found that we were one......" - Richard Llewellyn
 



 
  When WILLIAM BRITTAIN landed in Sydney Cove in 1791 on the ship ACTIVE, age 27, he 
came as a Private in the NSW Army Corps, battalion 102 and was listed as a shoemaker 
by trade. 
He certainly could never have imagined, in his wildest dreams the lasting footprint 
of 
new life and achievement, he would leave behind him, on these shores, and indeed 
elsewhere, around the globe.
In those days the achievement of making it to this vast new country "Australia was in 
itself nothing short of amazing! The fear, day to day trials and adventures for nine 
months on the open seas, with a ship full of starving convicts in a heavy clunker of 
a 
boat,was impossible to even contemplate, from the comfortable perspective that we 
enjoy today.
 Much has been written about his ship on that particular journey 

 As The poor unfortunate convicts and their minders bounced around on the 
unpredictable ocean, one judge's words said it all....

"I sentence you," says the Judge, "But to what I know not? Perhaps to storm and 
shipwreck? Perhaps to infectious disorders. Perhaps to famine? Perhaps to be 
massacred 
by savages? Perhaps to be devoured by wild beasts. Away, take your chance; perish or 
prosper, suffer or enjoy; I rid myself of the sight of you.  The ship that bears you 
away saves me from witnessing your sufferings, I shall give myself no more trouble 
about you." 

Also much has been written about the infamous Rum Corps, of which he was a small part.
It should be remembered that rum was a comfort currency for the poor and displaced 
convicts and these men shouldn't perhaps be judged as harshly as the Rum Corps is by 
today's standards, for providing rum and using it as currency.
 By offering rum as payment paddocks that otherwise would not have been 
cleared with crops were planted, and would have stood unattended bleak and 
uninviting had it not been by offering an incentive to work.  More particularly what 
was needed, to blot out 
their unhappy lot.  The work,forced on an a rag tag group of convicts, most of them 
with no farm knowledge whatsoever, it could be successfully argued, would never have 
been 
done,and the food situation would have been so much worse for all in the colony.
They managed to get work out of these convicts,who otherwise, were according to the 
records of the day, almost useless for the tasks required.
The Rum Corps did get a bad press, yet their members didn't for the most part opt to 
go back to England, but stayed to populate, and farm their lands, unlike many of the 
convicts as soon as their sentences were ended they were on the boat and out of the 
place.  For sure rum played a big part, but I think if I was back there, I would need 
something to warm me and deaden the pain of being banished to a wilderness on the 
other side of the globe.
So too, is it impossible for us to imagine how it would have been for the young 
seventeen year old CHARLOTTE SUTTON, who was born in the Colony,  and who took refuge 
in 
the comfort of WILLIAM BRITTAIN'S arms in 1813, as his wife.
How uncomfortable and silent would she have been, on the many occasions when the 
stories from home were 
told?  She was a blank canvas in relation to the sharing of past experiences.
About places she had never seen, and a London, she couldn't even imagine, and an 
Ireland and its stories, that was way beyond her reason.  How much of a foreigner she 
must 
have felt, to those around her, to have known only bush tracks and canvas shanties 
and 
later wattle and daub buildings that let the rain in.
Indeed Charlotte must have endured a kind of loneliness, about what was possible, in 
more populated places.
 So in her short life Charlotte concentrated on creating her own proud Australian 
heritage, a special something, in all of us, to be extremely proud of,the Britten 
blood that continues to flow through our veins.