People Australia

Henry Roach (c.1761- ) and five other men including John Leary, Joseph Morley and Francis Garland, were found guilty on 3 March 1783 at Winchester, Southampton, of highway robbery. Roach's death sentence was commuted to 7 years transportation to America on 21 April 1783. He was among the prisoners who mutinied on the convict transport Mercury in April 1784. Recaptured, he was sent to the Dunkirk hulk. He arrived at Sydney in January 1788 aboard the Charlotte as part of the First Fleet.

Roach was working on Watkin Tench's farm in 1788. He married Elizabeth Holloway on 23 August 1790 and was off stores on 24 October 1795. No further records have been found for either him or his wife. As their sentences had expired they may have left the colony.

* information from Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet (1989), p 309