Captain Arthur Phillip must have felt more than a little apprehension setting sail from Portsmouth on 13th May 1787 aboard the Sirius, accompanied by a fleet of 10 other ships carrying supplies, crew, marine guards with families, and over 750 convicts. Their destination was Botany Bay in the southeasterly corner of Australia, identified as an ideal location for a settlement 17 years earlier by Captain Cook and botanist Joseph Banks.

Cook’s survey of the coastline in 1770 marked the first recorded British contact with Australian soil and Aboriginal people. However, it wasn’t until the American War of Independence put paid to transportation in North America that serious thought was given to revisiting Terra Australis with a view to rooting a permanent European community.

Phillip’s eight-month voyage was a challenging undertaking in itself. Several men in the first fleet sent to Australia had previous convictions for mutiny, and a plot to seize the Scarborough was hatched before they had barely left English waters. Nevertheless, the fleet arrived relatively unscathed, minus 20-odd people who died at sea. Vital supplies were replenished en route at Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. Little did they realize how much they would come to rely on those provisions over the coming months.

Botany Bay came into sight on 18th January 1788, but Capt. Phillip quickly concluded the area was not as fertile as they had hoped. Moving around the coast, they settled on the shores of Port Jackson’s natural harbour as a more suitable site for their military garrison. Phillip raised the British flag on 26th January, naming Sydney Cove after Secretary of State Viscount Sydney. Male convicts were brought on land first to set up the men’s camp – literally tents until more permanent buildings could be erected.

The much smaller group of female convicts was brought ashore on 6th February, among them mothers with children. Some had endured pregnancy and giving birth at sea under the supervision of ships’ surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth. Men and women had not been entirely segregated during their confinement, and romantic liaisons had been formed. The first marriages in the colony took place on the Sunday after the women were unloaded. The day of their release from the ships had been tempestuous in more ways than one. Bowes Smyth was at a loss for words to write in his journal that stormy evening: The men convicts got to them very soon after they landed, and it is beyond my abilities to give a just description of the scene of debauchery and riot that ensued during the night.

By the time they arrived some convicts had been held captive on the ships for over a year. Incarceration was not part of the plan however – all hands were needed to build a viable settlement and work the land. Capt. Phillip, the first Governor of Australia, organised a parade the day after the women disembarked and addressed the entire commune, haranguing the convicts for their despicable conduct. Furthermore, he warned, If they did not work, they should not eat.

Food was to become the biggest problem. The soil around Sydney was not as fertile as anticipated, and the first fleet of convicts lacked agricultural expertise. Dry terrain hindered the colonizers’ ambitions for self-sufficiency. Meat would not keep in the heat, and by April many inhabitants were suffering from scurvy as government stores were rationed. Those who attempted to escape and live in the bush invariably met a sticky end, or returned to their captors.

All but two of the ships had returned to England within the first 6 months, and in October Capt. Phillip ordered the Syrius to Cape Town to purchase much-needed provisions. Meanwhile the Supply set sail for Norfolk Island with a group of convicts and marines to establish another penal colony, leaving the Sydney settlers isolated. Syrius returned in May 1789 but less than a year later she was wrecked. The Supply was sent to Batavia in April 1790 when the situation was most desperate and starvation a real threat.

Theft of food was a common problem. Flogging or death were the prescribed punishments for offences committed in the colony. Phillip’s officers, untrained in law, were forced to hold Criminal Courts and the Governor had little choice but to agree to convict John Harris’s suggestion that a contingent of transportees should operate a Night Watch to keep order. The Second Fleet arrived in 1790, but its complement of convicts was louse-ridden and suffering the effects of harrowing cruelties. It wasn’t until after the arrival of the Third Fleet in 1791 that more regular shipments brought much-needed materials and skilled convicts, so that the starving and ragged community finally had a chance of survival. On 11th December 1792 Governor Phillip left his fledgling colony to return to England, suffering from ill health. Remembered as a fair leader in the Dictionary of National Biography, he initially encouraged the colony to befriend the native tribes. The first free settlers arrived in 1793 and by the time transportation ended in 1857, Britain had sent over 162,000 convicts to Australia.

In In the print edition
Read about the Australian gold rush, and Laura Berry’s research into the roots of James Bond actor Daniel Craig, in Issue 4 of Discover Your Ancestors, available online at www.discoveryourancestors.co.uk