by David Hill
The next day they were ‘very agreeably surprised’ to see the three transports the Alexander, the Scarborough and the Friendship arrive safely and anchor nearby. To their even greater surprise and some consternation, at eight o’clock the following morning, Sunday 20 January, they saw ‘the Sirius and all her convoy coming round Point Solander’.3 The Sirius and the slower ships of the second convoy had in fact reached the outside of Botany Bay the night before. Had they not left their entry until the next morning, they would have arrived on the same day as the three transports.
Arthur Bowes Smyth was aboard the women’s convict ship the Lady Penrhyn, which arrived with the second part of the fleet. He recorded the excitement and relief of those on board at finally reaching their destination:
Saturday 19th. This morning I arose at five o’clock in hopes of seeing land, but was disappointed – The Sirius and all the fleet made sail about four o’clock in the morning and at 7 a.m. we discovered land about forty miles distant. The joy everyone felt upon so long wished for an event can be better conceived than expressed, particularly as it was the termination of the voyage to those who were to settle at Botany Bay, and: it is ten weeks on Monday since we left the Cape of Good Hope; the longest period of any we had been at sea without touching at any port. – The sailors are busy getting up the cables and preparing all things for anchoring.4
The following day he recorded his happiness on coming into Botany Bay and seeing the four ships of the first part of the fleet all safely at anchor:
Sunday 20th. The Sirius made sail at four o’clock this morning with a fine breeze … – About eight o’clock we came abreast of Point Solander and … arrive at [the] Bay, where we were very happy to find the four ships who had parted with … us, all safe at anchor. The Supply brig got there on Friday night, but the Alexander, Scarborough and Friendship reached it but the evening before us!5
Of the more than fourteen hundred people who had embarked, only sixty-nine had died. Many of the deaths had occurred before the ships left Portsmouth and in the first few weeks of the voyage, predominantly among the old and the sick, who should never have been considered for the journey in the first place.
On the day he arrived in Botany Bay, Arthur Phillip had noted that they were in no way threatened by the local Aboriginal population. When the balance of the transports arrived, however, the newcomers witnessed a more threatening gesture from a large band of Aboriginal people who stood on Cape Solander shouting and waving their spears over their heads in a way that suggested the newcomers were not welcome.
After less than two days looking for a suitable spot to establish their new town, the leaders of the First Fleet were forming the opinion that Botany Bay was totally unsuitable. It had insufficient fresh water and the bay was open to the region’s strong southerly and easterly winds, which would not have provided the ships of the fleet with the necessary shelter. The only significant fertile soil was found by Phillip’s colleagues on the south side of the bay, in a spot Cook had named Point Sutherland after one of his seamen who was buried there.
Several months later Phillip was to provide a long report to Lord Sydney explaining why he had so quickly abandoned Botany Bay and settled for Port Jackson.6 Although Cook had suggested that the harbour was ‘tolerably well sheltered from all winds’,7 Phillip disagreed:
I began to examine the bay as soon as we anchored, and found, that though extensive, it did not afford shelter to ships from the easterly winds; the greater part of the bay being so shoal [shallow] that ships of even a moderate draught of water are obliged to anchor with the entrance of the bay open, and are exposed to a heavy sea that rolls in when it blows hard from the eastward. Several small runs of fresh water were found in different parts of the bay, but I did not see any situation of which there was not some strong objection.8
Phillip’s colleagues were equally unimpressed with what they saw at Botany Bay. Captain Watkin Tench had this to say:
We set out to observe the country, on inspection rather disappointed our hopes, being invariably sandy and unpromising for the purposes of cultivation … Close to us was the spring at which Mr. Cook watered but we did not think the water very excellent, nor did it run freely. In the evening we returned on board, not greatly pleased with our discoveries.9
Surgeon Bowes Smyth also quickly realised that Botany Bay was not the fertile paradise they had been led to expect, when he went ashore on the first night his ship arrived:
Upon first sight one would be induced to think this a most fertile spot, as there are great numbers of very large and lofty trees, reaching almost to the water’s edge, and every vacant spot between the trees appears to be covered with verdure: but upon a nearer inspection, the grass is found long and coarse, the trees very large and in general hollow and the wood itself fit for no purposes of building, or anything but the fire – The soil to a great depth is nothing but a black sand which, when exposed to the intense heat of the sun by removing the surrounding trees, is not fit for the vegetation of anything even the grass itself, then dying away, which, in the shade appears green and flourishing; add to this that every part … is in a manner covered with black and red ants of a most enormous size.10
Phillip was in Botany Bay for only three days before he set off to search for an alternative location for the new settlement. With the fleet in Botany Bay and the convicts and cargo still aboard, he departed on Monday 21 January with John Hunter, James Kelty, Judge David Collins and a number of other officers to examine Port Jackson, twelve kilometres to the north.11
They had very little idea what to expect at Port Jackson, as the only information about it was a brief mention in Cook’s journal from eighteen years ago. Cook had made only a passing observation about what he named Port Jackson12 as they sailed past several miles out to sea:
Having seen everything this place [Botany Bay] afforded we at day light in the morning weighed with a light breeze … [and] steered along the shore NNE and at noon we were by observation … about two or three miles from the land and abreast of a bay or harbour wherein there appeared to be safe anchorage, which I called Port Jackson.13
Phillip’s three small boats reached the mouth of Port Jackson in the early afternoon and rowed through the one and a half kilometre gap between the north and south headlands into the harbour. That night they pitched tents in the small inlet on the south side, which is still called Camp Cove today.
One of the oarsmen on Phillip’s boat was the American sailor Jacob Nagle, who recalls that on their first day in Port Jackson he caught some fish, watched by the governor: ‘[Phillip] Observed the fish I had hauled in and asked who had caught that fish. I recollect he said that you are the first white man that ever caught a fish in Sydney Cove.’14
Mindful that more than fourteen hundred people and many starving animals were still aboard ships in Botany Bay awaiting instructions, Phillip quickly explored a number of coves that might be suitable.
Later on the second day and some six kilometres deeper into Port Jackson Phillip discovered a sheltered bay about eight hundred metres long and four hundred metres wide, which had fresh water running into it. He decided it was here, and not Botany Bay, that the settlers would found the new colony. He was to describe Port Jackson as the ‘finest harbour in the world’15 and named the site of the proposed settlement Sydney Cove after the home secretary, Lord Sydney.
While he was examining Sydney Cove, a group of Aboriginal people had come down to see the Europeans. They appeared friendly and curious, and were fascinated at seeing food being cooked in a metal pot.16
While Sydney Cove would provide a sheltered harbour and apparently more fresh water, Phillip was forced to make a hurried decision and had no time to consider what might have been better options further along the coast. In a letter to Lord Sydney he was later to explain:
My instructions did not permit me to detain the transports a sufficient length of time to examine the coast to any considerable distance, it was absolutely necessary to be certa
in of a sufficient quantity of fresh water, in situation that was healthy, and which the ships might approach within a reasonable distance for the … landing of stores.17
Meanwhile, some of the convicts back in Botany Bay had been assigned to clearing land for a settlement in case Phillip was unable to find a better alternative. But, according to Surgeon White, even the best place they could find in Botany Bay was unsuitable:
Although the spot fixed on for the town was the most eligible that could be chosen, yet I think it would never have answered, the ground around it being sandy, poor, and swampy, and but very indifferently supplied with water. The fine meadows talked of in Captain Cook’s voyage I could never see, though I took some pains to find them out; nor have I ever heard of a person that has seen any parts resembling them.18
While waiting for Phillip’s return, some of the officers went ashore to see the Aboriginal people who had come down to the bay carrying spears and shields. White fired a pistol to frighten them, and his shot pierced a shield that was standing in the sand. This, White recorded, had the desired effect, because the Aboriginal people immediately learned to ‘know and dread the superiority of our arms’. He describes how ‘from the first, they carefully avoided a soldier, or any person wearing a red coat, which they seem to have marked as a fighting vesture’.19
Phillip and his party returned on the evening of Wednesday 23 January to find that the land clearing in Botany Bay was not going well, and he gave instructions for the entire fleet to immediately sail for Port Jackson, less than a week after its arrival in the bay.
On the morning of 24 January strong headwinds were blowing and the English decided to wait until the following day before trying to sail out of Botany Bay. While they were waiting, the crews were shocked to see two strange ships appear outside the bay. Captain Watkin Tench, on board the Sirius, had woken at dawn and was getting dressed when he heard the news:
Judge my surprise on hearing from the sergeant, who ran down almost breathless to the cabin where I was dressing, that a ship had been seen off the harbours mouth. At first I only laughed but knowing the man who spoke to me to be of great veracity and hearing him repeat his information, I flew upon the deck, on which I barely set my foot, when a cry ‘another sail’ struck on my astonished ear.20
At first it was thought the ships were British, although, as the surgeon Worgan noted, ‘By noon, we could by the help of our glasses discern that they had French colours flying.’21 The ships were the Astrolabe and the Boussole, under the command of Captain La Perouse. They had been on a remarkable exploration voyage for nearly three years, having left Europe nearly two years before the First Fleet in June 1785. The two ships kept being blown to the south of the mouth of Botany Bay and were to be just as thwarted in getting in that day as the British were in getting out.
On 25 January the entire British fleet was still being blown around the bay, and all bar one of the ships again had to abandon their efforts. The ship that succeeded where the others had failed was the nimble little Supply. It got out at midday, carrying Phillip, a number of officers including Philip Gidley King, some marines and about forty convicts. It sailed that afternoon up to Port Jackson, where it anchored for the night. King recorded it as follows in his journal:
The wind blowing strong from the NNE prevented … our getting out … [O]n the 25th … we were obliged … to wait for the ebb tide and at noon we weighed and turned out of the harbour.22
It seems that Governor Phillip sighted the French as the Supply successfully navigated its way out of Botany Bay but decided that dealing with them could wait till after the fleet was settled at Sydney Cove.
Early on the morning of the 26th Phillip and his party were rowed ashore to the spot he had chosen a few days earlier. Here the flag was planted and a little ceremony took place. Possession was taken for His Majesty, whose health, that of the queen and the Prince of Wales, and the success of the colony was drunk. A feu de joie was fired by a party of marines and the whole group gave three cheers.23
Only a few dozen marines, officers and oarsmen participated in the new country’s christening ceremony, while others, including the forty convicts, witnessed it from the deck of the Supply.
While Phillip and his party were marking the start of the settlement of Sydney, the bulk of the fleet was still trying to sail out of Botany Bay to join them. As Surgeon Worgan recorded in his journal:
Thursday 24th. The wind not favouring our departure this morning … Friday 25th … the wind coming on to blow hard, right in to the bay, the Sirius and the transports could not possibly get out.24
On the third day of trying, 26 January, the Sirius was the first of the remaining ships to successfully clear the bay, but, before it left, Captain John Hunter made brief contact with the commander of the French ships. Hunter had sent a lieutenant in a boat across to the French and, shortly afterwards, Captain de Clonard came across and introduced himself and the ships to Hunter.
Meanwhile the remaining English ships were still having great difficulty getting away, as the wind was blowing hard and, in the words of Ralph Clark on the Friendship, there was ‘a great sea rolling into the bay’.25 The Charlotte was blown off course, dangerously close to the rocks; the Friendship and the Prince of Wales ‘could not keep in their stays’ and became entangled, which resulted in the Friendship losing its jib boom and the Prince of Wales its mainmast staysail and topsail.
According to Clark it was only good luck that they were not blown onto the rocks and ‘the whole on board drowned for we should have gone to pieces. Thank God we have got clear out as have all the ships’.26
Later the Charlotte collided with the Friendship, and the surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth claimed that his ship, the Lady Penrhyn, also nearly ran aground. Bowes Smyth was to blame the near calamity on Arthur Phillip for insisting the fleet head immediately for Sydney Cove when it was dangerous to do so:
Every one blaming the rashness of the Governor in insisting upon the fleets working out in such weather, and all agreed it was next to a miracle that some of the ships were not lost, the danger was so very great.27
At three in the afternoon the fleet had finally cleared Botany Bay and by four had entered Port Jackson for the eight-kilometre run up to Sydney Cove. There, according to Lieutenant Bradley of the Sirius, they anchored ‘at the entrance to the Cove in which the Supply was laying and where the marines and convicts that came in her were camped. The convoy all anchored in and off the Cove before dark.’28
Finally, on a fine summer Saturday evening of what was to become Australia Day, 26 January, the entire fleet had anchored in and around Sydney Cove, more than eight months after leaving England.
10
STRUGGLE
Thursday 31 January – what a terrible night it was of thunder and lightening and rain – was obliged to get out of my tent with nothing on but my shirt to slacken the tent poles … Friday 1 February. In all the course of my life I never slept worse … than I did last night – what with the hard ground spiders, ants and every vermin that you can think of was crawling over me. I was glad when morning came.
The struggle to build a new life in the harsh and unfriendly Australian bush was about to begin. For the next few years life would be uncomfortable, to say the least, and most of the settlers would have no chair to sit on, no table to eat at and no bed or cot to sleep in.
However, the first recorded impressions of Sydney Cove were in fact quite favourable and gave no indication that the newcomers had any inkling of the problems that lay ahead. Chief Surgeon White was even more effusive than Arthur Phillip when he described Port Jackson as the finest harbour ‘in the universe’. Its many deep, protected coves would, he wrote, be capable of providing ‘safe anchorage for all the navies of Europe’.1
Judge David Collins said the harbour was so naturally beautiful that it was a shame to dump England’s worst on its shores:
If only it were possible, that on taking possession of nature as we had done, in her simplest puri
st garb, we might not sully that purity by the introduction of vice, profaneness and immorality, but this is not so much to be wished, was little to be expected.2
The unloading of the ships began in earnest on the morning of Sunday 27 January. Many of the convicts were stepping onto solid ground for the first time in more than a year.
Collins wrote of chaotic scenes as hundreds of people began to scramble out of the little rowboats and onto a shore where the dense vegetation came down almost to the water:
The disembarkation of the troops and convicts took place from the following day, until the whole were landed. The confusion that ensued will not be wondered at, when it is considered that every man stepped from the boat literally into a wood. Parties of people were everywhere and seen variously employed; some in clearing ground for the different encampments; others in pitching tents. Or bringing up stores as were immediately wanted. And the abode of silence and tranquillity was now changed to that of noise, clamour and confusion.3
On that first day Captain Watkin Tench recorded an eagerness in all to begin work on the difficult task of clearing land, pitching tents and covering the unloaded stores:
Business now sat on every brow … In one place a party cutting down the woods; a second setting up a blacksmiths forge; a third dragging along stones or provisions; here an officer pitching his marquee, with a detachment of troops parading on one side of him, and a cooks fire blazing up on the other.4