In 1790, exiled American patriot Benjamin Franklin dies in Britain's Botany Bay prison colony in Australia, at the age of 84. In that community of exiles, the elderly Franklin has become something of a folk hero; his survival to such an age despite years of imprisonment in England and transportation in 1788 to the primitive conditions of the Botany Bay outpost is considered a sign of his toughness, and his accounts of the American try for independence appeal to his fellow transportees, who have no more reason than he to love the Crown. Franklin's revolutionary rhetoric will inspire the creation of an Australian version of the American Sons of Liberty after his death.