First Fleet (1787–1788): Convict Ships Sail to Botany Bay

The First Fleet was the convoy of eleven British ships that sailed from Portsmouth on 13 May 1787 and reached Botany Bay in January 1788, carrying around 1,400 to 1,500 people, most of them convicts. Under Captain Arthur Phillip, the settlers moved to Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 and founded the penal colony of New South Wales. The voyage began permanent European settlement in Australia and, with it, a lasting upheaval for the continent’s Aboriginal peoples.

Background: why Britain sent convicts to Australia

For most of the 18th century Britain had shipped convicted criminals to its American colonies. Tens of thousands were transported, most often to Maryland and Virginia, where their labour was sold to planters. The American Revolution ended this route after 1775, and the Treaty of Paris of 1783 confirmed that the former colonies would not take them back.

Britain’s prisons filled up, and old warships moored in the Thames and at Portsmouth were turned into prison hulks, which became crowded and disease-ridden. The government considered several places in Africa, including a site on the Gambia River, before rejecting them as too unhealthy.

Botany Bay, on the east coast of the continent then often called New Holland, had been visited by James Cook during his first voyage on the Endeavour in 1770. The naturalist Joseph Banks, who had sailed with Cook, told a parliamentary committee in 1779 that it would suit a convict settlement. In August 1786 the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney, announced the decision to send convicts there.

Historians still debate the motives. Most agree that disposing of convicts was the main purpose, but some argue that strategic aims, such as a naval base in the Pacific or supplies of flax and timber from Norfolk Island, also mattered.

The fleet and its people

The government appointed Captain Arthur Phillip, a 48-year-old naval officer, to command the expedition and govern the new colony. The fleet consisted of two Royal Navy ships, HMS Sirius and the smaller tender HMS Supply; six convict transports, the Alexander, Charlotte, Friendship, Lady Penrhyn, Prince of Wales and Scarborough; and three storeships carrying food and equipment, the Borrowdale, Fishburn and Golden Grove.

Exact numbers vary between surviving lists, but the fleet carried roughly 750 to 780 convicts, of whom about three-quarters were men, along with more than 200 marines and their officers, some wives and children of marines, officials and the crews of the ships. Most convicts had been convicted of theft or other property crimes; few were the violent criminals of later legend. The youngest was a boy of about nine and the oldest a woman in her eighties.

Key officers included Lieutenant Governor Robert Ross, who commanded the marines, Judge Advocate David Collins, Surgeon John White, the chaplain Richard Johnson and Lieutenant Watkin Tench, whose published accounts remain important sources.

Preparations were rushed and often chaotic. Convicts were moved from jails and hulks to the transports months before departure, and some ships waited at anchor through the spring of 1787 while Phillip argued with officials over supplies. He complained in letters that clothing for the women convicts, ammunition for the marines and anti-scurvy provisions had been forgotten or were inadequate, and several of his requests were met only at the last moment.

The transports were privately owned merchant ships chartered by the government, and their masters were paid by contract. Phillip insisted on better rations and medical care than was usual on convict ships, a decision that helped keep the death rate low.

The voyage

The fleet left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787 and called at Santa Cruz in Tenerife in June, Rio de Janeiro from August to early September, and Cape Town from October to November, where livestock and plants were taken on board. Phillip then went ahead in the faster Supply with a small advance party.

Life on board was cramped and monotonous. Convicts were usually kept below deck in irons during the early part of the voyage and allowed on deck in groups for air and exercise. Some births and marriages took place during the journey, and there were attempts at mutiny or escape, including a plot on the Scarborough that was discovered and punished. The tropical heat, storms in the Southern Ocean and shortages of fresh water made the last leg from Cape Town the hardest.

The Supply reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788, and the rest of the fleet arrived by 20 January. The whole voyage of about 24,000 kilometres took around eight months. By the standards of the time, deaths were relatively few, usually put at a few dozen, which reflected Phillip’s attention to supplies and health.

Founding Sydney

Phillip quickly decided that Botany Bay was unsuitable, as it was exposed, had poor soil and little fresh water. He explored Port Jackson, a large harbour a short distance to the north, and chose a cove with a freshwater stream, which he named Sydney Cove after Lord Sydney.

On 24 January two French ships of the expedition led by Jean-François de La Pérouse appeared off Botany Bay, an unexpected encounter at the moment of settlement. The British fleet moved to Sydney Cove, and on 26 January 1788 Phillip landed with a party, raised the British flag and toasted the King. On 7 February the colony was formally proclaimed and Phillip’s commission as governor read out.

The women convicts were landed on 6 February, and the first weeks were spent clearing land, pitching tents and building storehouses. Phillip set up a basic legal system, with a criminal court presided over by the judge advocate, and the first executions for theft of food took place within months, reflecting the harsh penal code of the time.

Within weeks a small party under Philip Gidley King was sent to settle Norfolk Island, which it reached in March 1788.

The early colony

The first years were hard. Soils around Sydney were poor, crops failed, livestock strayed or died, and few convicts had farming skills. By 1790 the colony was close to starvation and rations were cut sharply. The loss of HMS Sirius, wrecked at Norfolk Island in March 1790, made matters worse.

Relief came with the arrival of the Lady Juliana in June 1790, followed by the Second Fleet, whose convicts had suffered terrible death rates on the voyage. Gradually farms on better land at Rose Hill, later Parramatta, allowed the colony to survive. Phillip returned to England in December 1792.

Impact on Aboriginal people

The land around Sydney Cove was the country of the Gadigal (Cadigal) people, part of the wider Eora groups of the Sydney region, whose ancestors had lived in Australia for tens of thousands of years, as described in Peopling of Australia. Phillip was instructed to live in “amity and kindness” with them, but the settlers took land, fishing grounds and resources without agreement or treaty.

In April 1789 an epidemic, usually identified as smallpox, swept through Aboriginal communities around Sydney and killed a large proportion of them; the source of the outbreak is still debated. Phillip captured Aboriginal men, including Arabanoo in 1788 and Bennelong in 1789, hoping to learn their language and customs. Bennelong later travelled to England with Phillip in 1792. Resistance followed, most notably by the warrior Pemulwuy from 1790 until his death in 1802.

Legacy

The First Fleet is also unusually well documented. Several officers kept journals or published accounts, including Phillip, Tench, White, Collins and the marine officer Ralph Clark, while artists such as William Bradley and the anonymous painters later grouped as the Port Jackson Painter recorded the harbour, its people and its wildlife. These sources give a vivid picture of the early colony, though almost entirely from the colonisers’ point of view.

Convict transportation to New South Wales continued until 1840, and to Australia as a whole until 1868. In total around 160,000 convicts were sent to the Australian colonies. Many Australians today trace their ancestry to them, and descent from a First Fleeter is a matter of family pride for some.

The anniversary of the landing, 26 January, became Australia Day, a national holiday. For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people it marks the start of colonisation, and the date has become the focus of protest and debate, with names such as Invasion Day and Survival Day.

Timeline

• 1779: Joseph Banks recommends Botany Bay to a parliamentary committee.
• 1786, August: Lord Sydney announces the plan for a convict colony at Botany Bay.
• 1787, 13 May: The First Fleet sails from Portsmouth.
• 1787, June–November: Stops at Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town.
• 1788, 18–20 January: The ships arrive at Botany Bay.
• 1788, 24 January: La Pérouse’s French ships appear off Botany Bay.
• 1788, 26 January: Phillip raises the flag at Sydney Cove.
• 1788, 7 February: The colony of New South Wales is formally proclaimed.
• 1789, April: A smallpox epidemic devastates Aboriginal people around Sydney.
• 1790, June: The Lady Juliana and the Second Fleet bring relief and more convicts.

Why it matters

The First Fleet turned a plan for disposing of convicts into the foundation of modern Australia. Its arrival began a society built partly on forced labour and, at the same time, the dispossession of peoples whose history on the continent stretched back tens of thousands of years, a double legacy that Australians still debate.