Richard Devine / Rufus Dawes
Richard Devine is the son of the wealthy shipbuilding magnate Sir Richard Devine. It is revealed by his mother, Lady Elinor Devine, that he is not Sir Richard's biological son. He is immediately exiled from the home, and comes across his biological father, Lord Bellasis, shortly after he has been murdered. Giving his name as Rufus Dawes - the name he keeps for the remainder of the book - he is arrested, tried, and although acquitted of murder, convicted of robbing a corpse, and sentenced to be transported to the penal colony. Dawes is in his own way a tragic hero. He is an honorable man; he was not thrown out of his family home because of anything that he did but because of the circumstances of his birth. He is the heir to a fortune he never gets to claim. He is also a man whose decency creates problems for himself. For example, by warning Captain Vickers about the planned mutiny, he becomes the target for John Rex, the mutineer, who has realized that Dawes was the "squealer". Dawes is tough and hard to break. Rex never manages to break him, but eventually, Maurice Frere does. Dawes and two other men come up with a plan that two will murder the other. Dawes is sentenced to death, something that he wanted to happen because to him, death would be a welcome escape from the savagery of the settlement.
Dawes is a man who believes he knows nothing about love, but who still has a capacity for it that he does not know about. He is attracted to Sylvia and falls in love with her. He was always gentle and kind to her. He is very hurt when she does not remember his kindnesses and cannot understand why. We have such high hopes that Dawes will finally attain happiness at the end of the book, having escaped the penal colony, and having discovered the real perpetrators of both crimes he was sentenced for, as well as convincing Sylvia that he is a good man; tragically he drowns with Sylvia, after a bad storm that overturns and wrecks the ship they are traveling on.
Lord Richard Devine
Devine is a successful man outwardly but as a husband he is a failure, abusing his wife both physically and mentally. After one particularly violent attack his wife tells him that his son is not really his son at all; he was fathered by Lord Bellasis. Devine takes his anger out not on his wife, but on the child he had previously believed to be his own. He demands that Lady Elinor force Richard to leave. This is very cowardly because he is using the eviction of his "son" as a tool with which he can also torment his wife. He is the suspected killer of Lord Bellasis from the readers' perspective, because he is seen fleeing the scene of the murder; however, he turns out to be innocent of the crime. He dies shortly after Bellasis is murdered.
Lady Elinor Devine
Lady Elinor is Richard's mother and is forced by her abusive husband to exile her son from the house. As soon as Lord Devine dies, she begins to search for her son again, hoping to bring him home.
Lord Bellasis
Bellasis is a character whom we, the reader, never meets, but who plays a pivotal role in the story. He is the biological father of Richard. This causes Richard to be banished from his family home. He is then the victim of murder, but even in death he is influential. Richard is blamed for the murder, and although acquitted this, he is still sentenced to transportation for robbing a corpse. Bellasis is also revealed to be the father of John Rex, a revelation that explains why the two men look so alike.
Captain Vickers
Captain Vickers is the new commander of the penal settlement of Macquarie Harbor. He is a good man, imbued with a decency that many others in similar positions seem not to have. He is a family man, accompanied by the wife and daughter he deeply loves. He is devoted to them, and the job he has been asked to do by his country. He is a fair man and his settlements are run without savagery or violence. He is shipwrecked with mutineers and although he does not fair well, he does manage to survive.
Sarah Purfoy
Sarah is maid to Captain Vickers' wife. Everything that she does is done with an ulterior motive and she is extremely manipulative. She accompanied the Vickers family to Australia purely to be close to her lover, John Rex, who is a convict on the ship. She devises a plan to free him and is really the ringleader of the mutineers. She has no scruples and is constantly looking for the next opportunity to scheme. Even when John Rex escapes her, she finds him again, and starts to blackmail him into calling her his wife, even when she is not, or else she will reveal his identity to Lady Elinor. Eventually she emerges as something of a winner in the novel as she is able to emigrate to Sydney with the assistance of Lady Elinor.
John Rex
John Rex is a criminal and a troublemaker. If there is a mutiny in the air, he will be involved with it. During the course of the novel he is the instigator of two major mutiny events. The latter is successful. Rex manages to escape to London by exploiting the facial similarity between himself and Dawes. He purports to be the long lost son Lady Elinor has been searching for but does not seem to her to be genuine and his true identity is revealed. He is also the murderer of Lord Bellasis. He killed him because Bellasis was his biological father but dismissed Rex's claim out of hand. This explains also why Dawes and Rex are so alike; they really are half brothers.
Lieutenant Maurice Frere
Frere is Dawes' cousin and feels deep resentment at life in general because he believes he should be the heir to the Devine family fortune that instead went to the long lost Devine son, Richard. This belief eats away at him and fuels his anger with everyone. He is a brutal settlement commander, unnecessarily brutal and seemingly without any moral compass at all. He hates Dawes because he is clearly a man of strength and character, and all he wants is to break him. He does not break him through force of will but with physical brutality, day in, day out. He wants to marry Sylvia Vickers and uses any means necessary to do so. He lies to Sylvia, who has amnesia due to injuries sustained in the mutiny, and tells her that Dawes is a bad person who is threatening and dangerous.
Sylvia Vickers
We meet Sylvia as a child, traveling to the colonies with her parents, and we revisit her at various stages in her maturation. As a child she develops a special relationship with Rufus Dawes who is kind to her. She does not warm to Frere at all. When the group experience the mutiny and consequential shipwreck, she suffers from "fear amnesia" and is therefore unable to remember the special relationship that she and Dawes had. She is scared of him because Frere, who presents himself to her as her hero, has told her that Dawes is a criminal with savagery in his heart. When Dawes manages to confront her, she feels an affinity to him that she cannot understand but that she does not fight. She begins to remember that they were once friends and that he was kind and gentle. She meets a sad end; she and Dawes are found tangled together, drowned.
Reverend James North
Despite being a pastor, Reverend North is a man of dubious character. He has a drinking problem and rumor of bad behavior follows him from place to place. He is horrified by the brutality of Frere's settlements. He cannot bear to watch them and when he attempts to intervene is either ignored or threatened with punishment himself. He therefore decides to resign his position and return to "civilian" life. He is the first person to believe Dawes' story but does not follow through with the promises he makes him. He promises to speak to Sylvia and tell her that Dawes is a good man, but because he is in love with her himself, deliberately neglects to do so. At the novel's end, he admits this to Dawes, and also admits that he was the person who robbed the body of Lord Bellasis, looking for incriminating documents that he believed Bellasis had in his possession. He is the person who, unwittingly, enables Dawes to escape, leaving his hat and cape in Dawes' cell. Dawes disguises himself as the reverend, and although North realizes this, decides to let Dawes leave without alerting anyone.
