The Dance of the New Hollanders
Watkin Tench, the Royal Circus & the Dance of the New Hollanders
A unique copy of an early chapbook abridgement of Watkin Tench’s first book on New South Wales has a frontispiece captioned “the landing of the convicts at Botany Bay.” This precise wording was also used in April 1789 to describe one of the headline attractions of a popular show at the Royal Circus theatre in London. Both works date from an era when smaller publishers and popular theatre borrowed heavily from each other — and from the headlines — so the likelihood is that the engraving relates to this otherwise unknown entr’acte dance, the “New Hollanders,” the only contemporary stage-show to explicitly represent the First Fleet.