March 1787 to June 1787
Preparation of the fleet ordered to Botany Bay.--Particulars of its
arrangement.--Departure and passage to the Canary Isles.
16 March 1787
The squadron destined to carry into execution the above design, began to
assemble at its appointed rendezvous, the Mother Bank, within the Isle of
Wight, about the 16th of March, 1787. This small fleet consisted of the
following ships: His Majesty's frigate Sirius, Captain John Hunter, and
his Majesty's armed tender Supply, commanded by Lieutenant H. L. Ball.
Three store-ships, the Golden Grove, Fishburn, and Borrowdale, for
carrying provisions and stores for two years; including instruments of
husbandry, clothing for the troops and convicts, and other necessaries;
and lastly, six transports, the Scarborough, and Lady Penrhyn, from
Portsmouth; the Friendship, and Charlotte, from Plymouth; the Prince of
Wales, and the Alexander, from Woolwich. These were to carry the
convicts, with a detachment of Marines in each, proportioned to the
nature of the service; the largest where resistance was most to be
expected, namely, in those ships which carried the greatest number of
male convicts. Altogether they formed a little squadron of eleven sail.
They only who know the nature of such equipments, and consider the
particular necessity in the present instance for a variety of articles
not usually provided, can judge properly of the time required for
furnishing out this fleet. Such persons will doubtless be the least
surprised at being told that nearly two months had elapsed before the
ships were enabled to quit this station, and proceed upon their voyage:
and that even then some few articles were either unprepared, or, through
misapprehension, neglected. The former circumstance took place respecting
some part of the cloathing for the female convicts, which, being
unfinished, was obliged to be left behind; the latter, with respect to
the ammunition of the marines, which was furnished only for immediate
service, instead of being, as the Commodore apprehended, completed at
their first embarkation: an omission which, in the course of the voyage,
was easily supplied.
This necessary interval was very usefully employed, in making the
convicts fully sensible of the nature of their situation; in pointing out
to them the advantages they would derive from good conduct, and the
certainty of severe and immediate punishment in case of turbulence or
mutiny. Useful regulations were at the same time established for the
effectual governing of these people; and such measures were taken as
could not fail to render abortive any plan they might be desperate enough
to form for resisting authority, seizing any of the transports, or
effecting, at any favourable period, an escape. We have, however, the
testimony of those who commanded, that their behaviour, while the ships
remained in port, was regular, humble, and in all respects suitable to
their situation: such as could excite neither suspicion nor alarm, nor
require the exertion of any kind of severity.
When the fleet was at length prepared for sailing, the complement of
convicts and marines on board the transports was thus arranged. The
Friendship carried a Captain and forty-four marines, subalterns and
privates, with seventy-seven male and twenty female convicts. The
Charlotte, a Captain and forty-three men, with eighty-eight male and
twenty female convicts. In the Alexander, were two Lieutenants and
thirty-five marines, with two hundred and thirteen convicts, all male. In
the Scarborough, a Captain and thirty-three marines, with male convicts
only, two hundred and eight in number. The Prince of Wales transport had
two Lieutenants and thirty marines, with an hundred convicts, all female.
And the Lady Penrhyn, a Captain, two Lieutenants, and only three privates,
with one hundred and two female convicts. Ten marines, of different
denominations, were also sent as supernumeraries on board the Sirius. The
whole complement of marines, including officers, amounted to two hundred
and twelve; besides which, twenty-eight women, wives of marines, carrying
with them seventeen children, were permitted to accompany their husbands.
The number of convicts was seven hundred and seventy-eight, of whom five
hundred and fifty-eight were men. Two, however, on board the Alexander,
received a full pardon before the departure of the fleet, and
consequently remained in England.
13 May 1787
Governor Phillip, on his arrival at the station, hoisted his flag on
board the Sirius, as Commodore of the squadron: and the embarkation being
completed, and the time requiring his departure, at day break on the 13th
of May, he gave the signal to weigh anchor. To the distance of about an
hundred leagues clear of the channel, his Majesty's frigate Hyena, of
twenty-four guns, was ordered to attend the fleet, in order to bring
intelligence of its passage through that most difficult part of the
voyage; with any dispatches which it might be requisite for the Governor
to send home.
20 May 1787
On the 20th of May, the ships being then in latitude 47° 57', and
longitude 12° 14' west of London, the Hyena returned. She brought,
however, no exact account of the state of the transports; for the sea at
that time ran so high, that the Governor found it difficult even to sit
to write, and quite impracticable to send on board the several ships for
exact reports of their situation, and of the behaviour of the convicts.
All, however, had not been perfectly tranquil; the convicts in the
Scarborough, confiding probably in their numbers, had formed a plan for
gaining possession of that ship, which the officers had happily detected
and frustrated. This information was received from them just before the
Hyena sailed, and the Governor had ordered two of the ringleaders on
board the Sirius for punishment. These men, after receiving a proper
chastisement, were separated from their party by being removed into
another ship, the Prince of Wales. No other attempt of this kind was made
during the voyage.
We may now consider the adventurers in this small fleet as finally
detached, for the present, from their native country; looking forward,
doubtless with very various emotions, to that unknown region, which, for
a time at least, they were destined to inhabit. If we would indulge a
speculative curiosity, concerning the tendency of such an enterprize,
there are few topics which would afford an ampler scope for conjecture.
The sanguine might form expectations of extraordinary consequences, and
be justified, in some degree, by the reflection, that from smaller, and
not more respectable beginnings, powerful empires have frequently arisen.
The phlegmatic and apprehensive might magnify to themselves the
difficulties of the undertaking, and prognosticate, from various causes,
the total failure of it. Both, perhaps, would be wrong. The opinion
nearest to the right was probably formed by the Governor himself, and
such others among the leaders of the expedition, as from native courage,
felt themselves superior to all difficulties likely to occur; and by
native good sense were secured from the seduction of romantic reveries.
To all it must appear a striking proof of the flourishing state of
navigation in the present age, and a singular illustration of its vast
progress since the early nautical efforts of mankind; that whereas the
ancients coasted with timidity along the shores of the Mediterranean, and
thought it a great effort to run across the narrow sea which separates
Crete from Egypt, Great Britain, without hesitation, sends out a fleet to
plant a settlement near the antipodes.
3 June 1787
The high sea which had impeded the intercourse between the ships, as they
were out of the reach of rocks and shoals, was not, in other respects, an
unfavourable circumstance. On the whole, therefore, the weather was
reckoned fine, and the passage very prosperous from Spithead to Santa
Cruz, in the Isle of Teneriffe, where the fleet anchored on the 3d of
June.