From Portsmouth, they sailed to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, crossed the Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro, then back again to Cape Town, the last port of call before striking out for Terra Australis. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, he transferred his flag from the Sirius
Taking advantage of the ‘Roaring Forties’, the heavily laden ships plunged across the southern Indian Ocean and rounded Van Diemen’s Land in turbulent seas. Supply arrived in Botany Bay on 18 January 1788, only two days ahead of the rest of the fleet, all completing one of the world’s greatest sea voyages — 24,000km in 252 days — without losing a ship.
TWO INFANT COLONIES
Despite Cook’s recommendation, Botany Bay proved unsuitable, and Phillip reconnoitred for a better prospect. Just 12km to the north, he found Port Jackson, which he described as “the finest harbour in the world”, and selected a small cove as the site for the new settlement. He named this Sydney Cove, in honour of Lord Sydney, the British Home Secretary.
The fleet was brought up and, in the afternoon of 26 January 1788, a party hoisted the British flag to formally proclaim the Colony of New South Wales.
The next day, passengers began to disembark — marines, government officials, settlers and their families, and 775 prisoners of the Crown who had been sentenced to transportation. They also began the lengthy process of landing their cargo of provisions, tools, agricultural equipment and all the paraphernalia required to establish a colony, including a prefabricated wooden frame for the colony’s first Government House.
On 15 February, Phillip dispatched Lieutenant Philip Gidley King in the Supply, with 15 convicts and seven free men, to establish a second settlement on Norfolk Island, and begin farming activities.
THE LONG JOURNEY HOME
Their fleet duties completed, the transports and store ships were released to pursue mercantile ventures for their owners. Many were chartered to the British East India Company and set off to buy tea and goods in China. By November 1788, they had all departed, leaving only Sirius and Supply.
The homeward voyages, separately or in company, were arduous. Most were battered by stormtossed seas, some explored previously uncharted archipelagos, and all were plagued by scurvy which took a heavy toll on the crews. Friendship did not complete the journey.
For those ships that survived, the return did not spell the end of their working lives. Some drifted into obscurity without remark, but others returned to commercial trading, engaged in whaling or slaving, or became privateers against the King’s enemies. Their post-colonial careers are often overlooked in the wake of Australia’s foundation, but they should be recounted to honour their invaluable service and their ultimate ends recorded to properly close this chapter in seafaring history.
LADY PENRHYN
Lady Penrhyn was the first transport to depart Sydney Cove, on 5 May 1788, bound for America to purchase furs to trade in China. By the time she reached Matavai Bay, Tahiti, she was in such poor condition and her crew so ill with scurvy that the voyage had to be suspended for a month. Opting to bypass the American coast, she sailed directly to Canton (now Guangzhou) for a cargo of tea and on to England. When she completed her voyage on 15 August 1789, she had logged 45,000 nautical miles since leaving Portsmouth the year before.
Later that year, she was purchased by London merchants and used on a regular run to Jamaica. In 1795, she was back in government service transporting British troops to the Caribbean to reinforce garrisons against attack by Revolutionary France. On 22 July 1811, Lady Penrhyn was in ballast on a run from London to Grenada when she was captured by the French privateer Duc de Dantzig. Her crew were taken prisoner and she was set ablaze and scuttled.
CHARLOTTE AND SCARBOROUGH
Within days of Lady Penrhyn’s departure from the colony, Captain Thomas Gilbert in Charlotte and Captain John Marshall in Scarborough left, keeping company on their passage to Canton. After navigating through the islands of Micronesia, they anchored off Tinian in the northern Marianas to rest the crews stricken by scurvy and to forage for food. Disaster was narrowly averted when squalls threatened to drive the ships onto reefs, and they were able to reach Whampoa, China, in September. Cargos of tea and spices were loaded, and essential repairs made to storm-damaged rigging, before continuing to England, where they arrived in June 1789, within four days of each other.
Charlotte was sold to merchants who engaged her as a West Indiaman on the London-Jamaica run. She later served as a transport in the British expeditionary force that captured the Cape Colony from the Dutch in 1806. While still in Cape Town, she took on prisoners from the captured French frigate Volontaire and, as a ‘cartel ship’, returned them to France. Four years later, she was sold to a merchant in Quebec and sailed out her days in the trans-Atlantic trade until, in November 1818, she sank off Newfoundland on a run to Liverpool.
Meanwhile, Scarborough was seconded as one of six convict transports in the notorious Second Fleet, which sailed for New South Wales in November 1789. She departed the colony once more in August 1790 and arrived back in London via Canton about a year later. After major repairs in 1792, Scarborough was a merchantman on the London to St Petersburg run, and later in the West Indies trade. In December 1804, she was converted to a privateer and sent off to Barbados. On the way, she encountered a French 16-gun privateer, which Scarborough repelled after an engagement lasting an hour, at the cost of one man killed and her first officer mortally wounded. Whether caused by battle damage or the rigours of 23 years’ service, in April 1805, Scarborough began leaking heavily while at sea off Port Royal, Jamaica, and foundered.
PRINCE OF WALES AND BORROWDALE
Prince of Wales began preparations for the return voyage to England in May 1788, but her departure was delayed for several weeks while she underwent vital repairs to her hull. On 14 July, she set sail in convoy with Alexander, Borrowdale, and Friendship, all under the overall command of Lieutenant John Shortland in Alexander. Their plan to sail in company to the Cape of Good Hope via Batavia went awry when Prince of Wales and Borrowdale were separated from the squadron during a severe storm and decided to return to England via Cape Horn.
These two companions lost sight of each other during the Pacific crossing but were re-united in Rio de Janeiro in October. On their separate arrivals, the crews were so depleted and incapacitated by scurvy they had to call on the harbour master for additional seamen to bring the vessels into port. Prince of Wales’ skipper, John Mason had died from the illness in transit. With both crews sufficiently recovered, the ships set sail from Rio on Christmas Day 1788 and, taking different routes, reached Falmouth, England, almost simultaneously on 25 March 1789, the earliest of the First Fleet ships to return to England.
Borrowdale resumed her occupation as a collier transporting coal from Newcastle to London until, on 31 October 1789, she was struck by a violent gale in the Great Yarmouth roads off Norfolk and sank with the loss of all but one of her crew.
In contrast, Prince of Wales enjoyed a much more varied and colourful career in her later years. For about four years after returning to England, she was deployed as a whaler, operating on both sides of the South Atlantic and off Peru in the Pacific. In early 1793, new owners fitted her out as a privateer. She was quite successful in that role, capturing three rich merchant vessels and recapturing two brigs that had previously been seized by French men-of-war.
In mid-1794, Prince of Wales was cast in a new role as a slaver. On her first voyage as such, from West Africa to Barbados with 359 slaves, she was captured by a heavily-armed French privateer and taken to St Thomas (then a Danish colony in the present-day Virgin Islands). Through circumstances that are somewhat obscure, she soon returned to British ownership, carrying trade goods between London, the West Indies and the Mediterranean. In 1797, she transferred to Fort Royal, Martinique, and was engaged in the West Indies trade until 1810, after which she disappeared from historical records and her fate is unknown.
ALEXANDER AND FRIENDSHIP
After parting company with Prince of Wales and Borrowdale in July 1788, Alexander and Friendship made for Canton to procure tea for the British East India Company. By the time they reached Borneo, both crews were wracked with scurvy — Alexander had lost 17 seamen to the illness and Friendship had only five able to work the ship. With scarcely enough able-bodied sailors to make a single crew between them, Lieutenant Shortland ordered Friendship’s men and stores to be transferred to Alexander, before scuttling Friendship on 28 October 1788.
Battling strong currents and the westerly monsoon, Alexander limped into Batavia on 18 November, where the exhausted men were able to recuperate for several weeks. Forgoing the rest of the voyage to Canton, Alexander sailed for the Cape of Good Hope and arrived in England on 1 June 1789.
Thereafter, Alexander’s working life continued under charter to the East India Company, trading out of London and later Hull until about 1809, when she disappeared from the Lloyd’s Register. The Register of Shipping still listed Alexander in 1810, but with the notation ‘Lost’ against her name without elaboration.
GOLDEN GROVE AND FISHBURN
By July 1788, Golden Grove and Fishburn had unloaded their cargo of stores, but their departure was delayed while Golden Grove accompanied Supply with provisions, marines and convicts to the settlement on Norfolk Island. The ships returned to Sydney Cove on 10 November and a week later, Golden Grove and Fishburn set sail for England. Ignoring Phillip’s advice, the vessels sailed east, rounding Cape Horn and reaching the Falkland Islands in mid-January 1789. They stayed for several weeks to take on provisions and allow time for their scurvy-afflicted crews to recover. Fishburn arrived in England on 25 May 1789 and Golden Grove two weeks later, the fastest return journeys of all the First Fleet ships.
After her discharge from government service, Golden Grove was employed for several years in hauling coal from Newcastle. In 1804, her registration was transferred to merchants in Liverpool, sailing the Jamaica run until disappearing from the records in 1811.
Fishburn’s fate is uncertain. One source has it that she disappeared from the records after being discharged from Her Majesty’s service at Deptford, nine days after returning from Port Jackson, while another claims that she was lost in a storm off Gunfleet Sands, Thames Estuary, in October 1789.
HMS SIRIUS
As an armed storeship with twenty guns, Sirius was both the colony’s main defence and a crucial link in its supply line. She remained in Port Jackson until 2 October 1788, when she was dispatched to Cape Town for supplies to relieve a critical shortage of food in the colony. After loading her cargo, Sirius rounded the Cape of Good Hope and made good time crossing the southern Indian Ocean to arrive at Sydney Cove on 9 May 1789, much to the relief of Phillip and the beleaguered colonists.
In doing so, Sirius became the first vessel to completely circumnavigate the globe in the belt of the Roaring Forties, but she took a battering along the way. Encountering heavy weather off the south coast of Tasmania, she narrowly escaped being wrecked on a lee shore but sustained severe damage forward and lost her figure-head of the Duke of Berwick in the process. Back in Port Jackson, she had to be careened in Sirius Cove (present-day Mosman Bay) for four months for repairs.
By February 1790, food in the colony was once again in short supply and the settlers were on the brink of starvation. To avert disaster, Philip sent Sirius and Supply to Norfolk Island with 400 convicts to boost manpower for farming there and relieve pressure on government supplies at Sydney Cove. On 19 March, the ships were anchored in Slaughter Bay, opposite the main settlement at Kingston, when a sudden storm trapped them against a rocky lee shore. Supply managed to stand safely out to sea, but Sirius was thrown back onto the reef and wrecked.
After his return to England in 1792, Captain Hunter was called before a court martial over the loss of Sirius but was ‘honourably acquitted’. In 1795, he was appointed to succeed Arthur Phillip as Governor of NSW. The archaeological remains of HMS Sirius in Slaughter Bay are the only known in-situ remnants of a vessel of the First Fleet. The wreck site is protected by legislation and was inscribed on the National Heritage List in 2011.
HMS SUPPLY
The loss of the Sirius was a cruel blow to the colonists, who were left with scant food and only one ship — the Supply. By far the oldest and smallest ship in the First Fleet, Supply had performed yeoman’s service as the naval tender and armed companion of HMS Sirius, and had made numerous trips between the Port Jackson settlement and Norfolk Island. Now she was thrust into the breach once more.
In a desperate throw of the dice for the survival of the colony, Phillip ordered Lieutenant Ball to Batavia in Supply to procure emergency supplies. She left on 17 April 1790 and returned five months later with much needed provisions, followed soon after by the Dutch vessel, Waaksamheid, which Ball had chartered to carry additional stores.
During the following year, the doughty Supply made further trips to Norfolk Island but returned so badly damaged from her last mission that she was ordered back to England. She left Port Jackson for the last time on 26 November 1791 and, sailing via Cape Horn, reached Plymouth to complete a circumnavigation of the globe on 21 April 1792 — the last of the Fleet to return home.
Within two months of her return, Supply was sold at auction for £500 to a London coal merchant. Under the new name of Thomas and Nancy, she carried coal in the Thames area for the rest of her working life until about 1806, after which her fate is not known. Gone but not forgotten, in October 1793, the Admiralty purchased the American mercantile ship, New Brunswick, named her HMS Supply and sent her out to Port Jackson to replace her predecessor. Her name also graced a Royal Australian Navy replenishment oiler, which served between 1962 and 1985.