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The banishing from Great Britain of offenders against the law, was regularised by the Transportation Act of 1718; under its provisions the responsibility for carrying out the penalty of transportation fell on the masters of the ships which carried the offenders into exile. Until the War of Independence most transportees went to the American colonies or the West Indies, but in 1784 an Act was passed which authorised the British government to select another place for the reception of convicts. In 1786 the eastern coast of New Holland (Australia), discovered by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770, was chosen; in 1787 the First Fleet left under Captain Arthur Phillip for the Colony which, on arrival, was named New South Wales, and where the government continued to maintain and employ convicts. There were strategic and commercial arguments as well as administrative and penal ones for a British settlement in the South Pacific; the relative importance of trade, defence and the problem of the prisons is the subject of The Founding of Australia, ed. Ged Martin (1978), and Alan Frost's Convicts and Empire (1980), although most contributors to the 'Botany Bay Debate', as it has come to be called, accept that the penal reason was a significant one. Robert Hughes's The Fatal Shore (1987) sees Britain's wish to rid itself of the elements that threatened its privileged class society as the main motivation behind the Botany Bay scheme. Robert King's interpretation and translation of Alexandro Malaspina's report, The Secret History of the Convict Colony (1990), investigates the notion that the Australian colony was settled because Britain wanted a position of commercial and political advantage in the struggle for supremacy in Europe.

About 150 000 convicts were transported to the eastern part of Australia 1787-1852, 80 000 to NSW, which ceased receiving convicts after 1840, and virtually all the remainder to Van Diemen's Land, later Tasmania, which received about 37 000 convicts after 1840. The importance of the convict experience in Tasmanian history is reflected in Tasmania's dominance as the setting of so much Australian convict literature. Of the other colonies, NSW incorporated Victoria until 1851 and Queensland until 1859, although Moreton Bay was a remote penal settlement in 1824-39; South Australia was founded as a separate colony in 1836 and never formally received convicts although, like Victoria, it was a place where 'Vandemonians' settled; and Western Australia received just under 10 000 convicts over a long period, 1829-68. The origins of the convicts are analysed in L.L. Robson's The Convict Settlers of Australia (1965), which, with A.G.L. Shaw's Convicts and the Colonies (1966), George Rude's Protest and Punishment (1978) and Hughes's The Fatal Shore (1987), are standard studies of the convict experience. The research of Robson, Shaw and others has established a profile of the convicts at odds with the 'convict legend'. The legend, influenced by the literary treatment of transportation, is of some longevity among Australians and postulates that the convicts, 'more sinn'd against than sinning', were the victims of a repressive legal system in England and a brutal penal one in Australia, and were characteristically Irish political prisoners, English poachers, or minor offenders forced to commit crimes to feed starving families, or innocents like Rufus Dawes in His Natural Life (1874). All four types of convict were transported to Australia but most were urban offenders convicted at least once before transportation, whose crime was often underestimated in order to prevent trial on a capital charge. Roughly a quarter of those convicted of crimes in England in the period 1788-1840 underwent transportation.

The voyage to Australia on a convict transport, the subject of Charles Bateson's The Convict Ships 1787-1868 (1959), Jonathan King's The First Fleet (1982) and Michael Flynn's The Second Fleet (1993), could be hazardous, either because of the conditions or because of weather or war, or, less often, because of rebellion. Despite the rebellions in Ralph Rashleigh, His Natural Life and other convict novels, there were relatively few such insurgencies either on board ship or after landing: the seizure in 1829 of the brig Cyprus is a notable example of the former; the Vinegar Hill uprising is perhaps the most famous of the latter. There is an extensive First Fleet literature (see First Fleet), almost solely from the official side, although later convict memoirs usually incorporated an account of the voyage as part of the transportation experience. Once at the colonial settlements, the earliest convicts were employed on the construction of public works or in tending government farms, but as the number of free settlers, ex-convicts and emancipists increased, so did the practice of assignment, the assigning of a convict to a master or masters who maintained the convict in clothing and rations. An equally common problem, and a major theme in the creative literature about transportation, was the 'lottery of assignment', a phrase used to describe the defenceless position convicts were placed in regarding the conduct of their masters. After serving part or all of their sentence convicts were eligible to receive a ticket-of-leave, which permitted them to seek employment in a specified area, or a conditional pardon, the condition being that they remain in the colony.

During Lachlan Macquarie's term as governor the number of convicts greatly increased, partly as a result of the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Macquarie is generally recognised as having had a liberal attitude towards the acceptance of emancipists into society; although vindicated in the 1812 report of a British parliamentary committee investigating transportation, his policy aroused the ire of many settlers. In 1819-21 J.T. Bigge investigated Macquarie's administration on behalf of the British government; his reports were critical of Macquarie and led to a tightening up of the 'System', as it came to be called. That many of the worst excesses of the System occurred after the Bigge investigation, during a period when the great majority of convicts (just over 80 per cent) was sent to Australia, helps to explain why so little convict, as distinct from historical, fiction deals with transportation before 1820; Thomas Keneally's Bring Larks and Heroes (1967) and Colin Free's Vinegar Hill (1978) are among the exceptions. The practice of assignment continued after 1820, but those remaining in government service were worked arduously in gangs, often engaged on the construction of roads. A variety of punishments, of which the lash was the most prevalent, awaited both assignee and road gang member, and for the more recalcitrant there were the secondary punishment centres, where reconvicted convicts were sent. Port Arthur, where the first Australian novelist, Henry Savery, was sent after a colonial forgery conviction in 1840, Macquarie Harbour, Norfolk Island and Port Macquarie were the most notorious of these settlements.

During the decades after 1820 the tightening up of the System coincided with an increase in the controversy about the efficacy of transportation. The widely fluctuating views expressed included arguments that the colonies had made sufficient progress to be allowed to develop free of the convict taint; that convict labour should be retained; that transportation had failed both because crime had not declined and too many emancipists had done well; and that the System was still brutal and in need, if not of abolition, at least of reformation. Not all the combatants had first-hand experience of Australia, e.g. Richard Whately, whose attacks on transportation were sternly contested by George Arthur, who believed in the severity of transportation and that his own colony of Van Diemen's Land should be the gaol of the empire. One of the main consequences of the controversy was the British parliamentary select committee of 1837-38, whose report, usually called the Molesworth Report after its chairman, Sir William Molesworth (1810-55), led to the cessation of transportation to NSW and to Van Diemen's Land becoming the focus of the new probation system, which abolished assignment, required a period of compulsory labour for all convicts and established a strictly regulated process by which a convict passed 'through' his sentence. The convict memoirist John Mortlock underwent the probation system. By 1846 the economic depression forced an end to the probation system. A revised system, whereby convicted prisoners would spend the first two stages of their sentence in England before coming to Australia holding a ticket-of-leave or a conditional pardon, led to strongly resisted moves for a revival of transportation to NSW. The last convicts arrived in Tasmania in 1853, although WA, chronically short of labour, continued to receive them for another decade and a half.

The effects of the convict experience on the development of Australia have been the subject of some speculation; the male ethos, anti-authoritarianism and egalitarianism, antagonism towards large pastoral landowners, and development of a harsh penal code are among the suggested legacies. Both the generalisations and their origins in the convict experience are difficult to prove; what is more certain is that most convicts stayed in Australia and thus helped to establish the ambivalent relationship of its citizens with England. Among those who stayed were several who played a pioneering role in Australian publishing and newspapers, and a number of the first creative writers. See also Convict in Australian Literature.

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Transportation concerns the movement of products from a source—such as a plant, factory, or work-shop—to a destination—such as a warehouse, customer, or retail store. Transportation may take place via air, water, rail, road, pipeline, or cable routes, using planes, boats, trains, trucks, and telecommunications equipment as the means of transportation. The goal for any business owner is to minimize transportation costs while also meeting demand for products. Transportation costs generally depend upon the distance between the source and the destination, the means of transportation chosen, and the size and quantity of the product to be shipped. In many cases, there are several sources and many destinations for the same product, which adds a significant level of complexity to the problem of minimizing transportation costs. Indeed, the United States boasts the world's largest and most complex transportation system, with four million miles worth of roads, a railroad network that could circle the earth almost seven times if laid out in a straight line, and enough oil and gas lines to circle the globe 56 times.

The decisions a business owner must make regarding transportation of products are closely related to a number of other distribution issues. For example, the accessibility of suitable means of transportation factors into decisions regarding where best to locate a business or facility. The means of transportation chosen will also affect decisions regarding the form of packing used for products and the size or frequency of shipments made. Although transportation costs may be reduced by sending larger shipments less frequently, it is also necessary to consider the costs of holding extra inventory. The interrelationship of these decisions means that successful planning and scheduling can help business owners to save on transportation costs.

Basic Means of Transportation

There are five basic means of transporting products utilized by manufacturers and distributors: air, motor carrier, train, marine, or pipeline. Many distribution networks consist of a combination of these means of transportation. For example, oil may be pumped through a pipeline to a waiting ship for transport to a refinery, and from there transferred to trucks that transport gasoline to retailers or heating oil to consumers. All of these transportation choices contain advantages and drawbacks.

Air transport. Air transportation offers the advantage of speed and can be used for long-distance transport. However, air is also the most expensive means of transportation, so it is generally used only for smaller items of relatively high value—such as electronic equipment—and items for which the speed of arrival is important—such as perishable goods. Another disadvantage associated with air transportation is its lack of accessibility; since a plane cannot ordinarily be pulled up to a loading dock, it is necessary to bring products to and from the airport by truck.

According to Transportation and Distribution, air cargo remains a comparatively small segment of total freight transportation volume when measured by tonnage (12.5 billion domestic ton-miles of freight annually). But L. Clinton Hoch noted in the magazine that "access to air transportation is expected to become increasingly important since a growing number of customers (such as hospitals and electronic manufacturers) depend upon 'just in time' delivery systems as well as the increasing number of high-tech industries (such as computer manufacturers) adopting the 'build-to-order' strategy." These trends, coupled with increased pressure on consumer goods manufacturers to deliver products quickly to 1) meet customer expectations and 2) reduce inventory and other supply chain costs, are expected to "fuel the demand for expedited services," wrote Hoch. "Accordingly, competition is heating up among the major air cargo and express carriers who are building specialized hubs to handle larger aircraft and major sorting facilities."

Railways. The rail transportation network in the United States included about 120,000 miles of major rail lines in the late 1990s, on which carriers transported an estimated 1.3 million tons of freight annually. Trains are ideally suited for shipping bulk products, and can be adapted to meet specific product needs through the use of specialized cars—i.e., tankers for liquids, refrigerated cars for perishables, and cars fitted with ramps for automobiles.

Rail transportation is typically used for long-distance shipping. Less expensive than air transportation, it offers about the same delivery speed as trucks over long distances and exceeds transport speeds via marine waterways. In fact, deregulation and the introduction of freight cars with larger carrying capacities has enabled rail carriers to make inroads in several areas previously dominated by motor carriers. But access to the network remains a problem for many businesses.

Motor carriers. Accessible and ideally suited for transporting goods over short distances, trucks are the dominant means of shipping in the United States. In fact, motor carriers account for approximately $120 billion in annual revenue, much of it due to local shipments (shipments to and from business enterprises in the same community or local region). This industry sector underwent tremendous change in the 1990s with the introduction of deregulation measures that removed most state and federal regulations in the areas of pricing and operating authority. "With few exceptions, motor carriers are now free to operate wherever they wish and to charge any rates that are agreeable to the shipper and the carrier," wrote Hoch, although he noted that trucks are still subject to federal laws on vehicle specifications and the parameters of the sanctioned truck routes of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982.

Water transport. Water transportation is the least expensive and slowest mode of freight transport. It is generally used to transport heavy products over long distances when speed is not an issue. Although accessibility is a problem with ships—because they are necessarily limited to coastal area or major inland waterways—piggybacking is possible using either trucks or rail cars. However, industry observers note that port terminal accessibility to land-based modes of transportations is lacking in many regions. The main advantage of water transportation is that it can move products all over the world.

Pipeline facilities. Most pipeline transportation systems are privately owned. Generally used for transport of petroleum products, they can also be used to deliver certain products (chemicals, slurry coal, etc.) of other companies. According to Transportation and Distribution, the nation's natural gas line networks include 276,000 miles of transmission pipe and more than 919,000 miles of distribution lines, which combine to deliver nearly 20 trillion cubit feet of gas on an annual basis.

Further Reading:

Ewing, Reid. "Measuring Transportation Performance." Transportation Quarterly. Winter 1995.

Gordon, Cameron. "Putting Transportation Investments in Context." Transportation Quarterly. Summer 1997.

Hoch, L. Clinton. "Find the Best Ways to Your Markets." Transportation and Distribution. March 1998.

Weiss, Howard J., and Mark E. Gershon. Production and Operations Management. Allyn and Bacon, 1989.

noun

1. The moving of persons or goods from one place to another: carriage, conveyance, transit, transport. See move/halt.
2. Enforced removal from one's native country by official decree: banishment, deportation, exile, expatriation, extradition, ostracism. See accept/reject, reward/punish/deserve.

Transportation was a form of punishment devised in England to exile convicted criminals to the American colonies from c. 1650 and after the War of Independence to Australia between 1788 and 1868, when it was abolished. The system arose out of England's lack of state-organized prisons and the overcrowding of what few prisons there were, including converted warships (hulks) anchored in the river Thames. It is estimated that some 210, 000 convicts were exiled between 1650 and 1868; 50, 000 to the American colonies, the remainder to Australia.

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Alternative term for the claimed phenomenon of teleportation, the paranormal movement of human bodies through closed doors and over a distance.

IN BRIEF: The act of moving people or things around.

The mastery of the turn is the story of how aviation became practical as a means of transportation. It is the story of how the world became small. — William Langewiesche

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"I have done almost every human activity inside a taxi which does not require main drainage." - Alan Brien

"I am struck by the way people behave on the Tube. They look at each other beadily and inquisitively, and something goes on in their thoughts which must be equivalent to the way dogs and other animals, when they meet, sniff each other's arses and nuzzle each other's fur." - Graham Swift

An essential part of the livestock industries. It is an expensive on-cost to a farming enterprise. It also represents a source of contact infection and of stress and reduced resistance to infection, and of shrinkage in animals, from 4% to 9% in cattle transported long distances over 3 to 4 days.
Codes of ethics and guidelines for structure and use of transportation facilities are enforced in many countries.

Dansk (Danish)
n. - transport, forsendelse, deportation

Nederlands (Dutch)
vervoer, vervoermiddel, deportatie

Français (French)
n. - (US) transport, (Hist) transport, moyen de locomotion, (Mil) (avion/navire) de transport de troupes

Deutsch (German)
n. - Beförderung, Transport, Transportsystem, Beförderungsmittel, Deportation

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μεταφορά, μεταφορικό μέσο, συγκοινωνία, εξορία (καταδίκου)

Italiano (Italian)
trasporto, veicolo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - condução (f), transportação (m), transporte (m)

Русский (Russian)
транспортирование, перевозка, средства сообщения, (амер.) стоимость перевозки

Español (Spanish)
n. - transporte, acarreo, medio de transporte

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - transport, transportering, förflyttning, transportmedel (isht am.), transportväsen, allmänna kommunikationer, transportkostnader, färdhandlingar, deportation (hist.)

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
运输, 交通业, 输送

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 運輸, 交通業, 輸送

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 수송, 추방 , 운송료

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 輸送, 運送, 交通機関, 流刑, 運賃, 追放

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) وسيله نقل أو مواصلات‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮הובלה, העברה, כלי-תובלה, הגליה, גירוש, שילוח, פינוי‬

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