1788

by David Hill

  February While the fleet is being loaded in Portsmouth with convicts, equipment and two years’ supplies, Phillip writes his ‘vision’ for the establishment of the penal colony.

  18 March Convicts begin to die on the transports while the fleet is still at Portsmouth, and Phillip is given permission to temporarily unload them into barges while ships are smoked and fumigated.

  2 April Arthur Phillip is issued with his commission and detailed instructions for the establishment of the colony.

  5 May Phillip is authorised to buy a large quantity of rum en route to Botany Bay for the marines, who have previously been told they would not have a grog ration in the new colony.

  13 May The First Fleet leaves Spithead, outside Portsmouth, for the voyage to New South Wales with almost fifteen hundred people crowded onto the eleven small ships. More than a thousand will be landed to establish the settlement in Sydney, and more than four hundred seamen are expected to eventually sail back with their ships.

  20 May Arthur Phillip sends his first report back from the Sirius with the navy escort the Hyaena – which is returning to Portsmouth – saying that an attempted mutiny by convicts has been thwarted.

  2 June The fleet arrives in the Spanish port of Santa Cruz, Tenerife, in the Canary Islands and stays for a week to take aboard fresh water and a limited amount of seasonal fruit and vegetables.

  19 June The fleet reaches Port Praya in the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. Phillip decides against trying to land because of adverse currents and winds, and leaves immediately to head across the Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro.

  11 July The fleet crosses the equator, and water rationing is introduced.

  6 August After two months’ sailing the fleet reaches the Portuguese port of Rio de Janeiro and scurvy breaks out among the convicts. The officers find abundant fresh oranges and other fruit and load on board fresh food, sixty-five thousand litres of rum and a variety of plants for cultivation in the new colony.

  4 September After a month in the port the fleet leaves Rio and heads east back across the Atlantic on the prevailing winds to Table Bay at the Cape of Good Hope.

  6 October A week out from the Cape a well-organised plot by convicts to seize the Alexander is uncovered.

  13 October The fleet reaches the Dutch port of Table Bay after forty days’ sailing. Initially the Dutch authorities are uncooperative, but over the next month fresh food and plants are purchased and loaded aboard the fleet, including more than five hundred cows, chickens, geese, pigs, horses, sheep and food for the animals for the next leg of the voyage.

  13 November The fleet leaves Table Bay for the longest leg of the journey, to the south of Tasmania.

  25 November Arthur Phillip transfers from the flagship Sirius to the smaller, faster Supply and takes it and the three other fast ships ahead in an attempt to reach Botany Bay well in advance of the bulk of the fleet, in order to lay the foundations of the colony before the others arrive.

  1788

  18 January After the most difficult sailing of the whole voyage the Supply arrives in Botany Bay.

  19 January The other fast ships, the Alexander, the Scarborough and the Friendship, also reach Botany Bay.

  20 January To everyone’s surprise Captain John Hunter arrives and anchors the seven slowest ships (the Borrowdale, the Prince of Wales, the Lady Penrhyn, the Charlotte, the Fishburn, the Golden Grove and the Sirius) in Botany Bay within forty hours of the Supply.

  21 January After an examination Botany Bay is found to be unsuitable for settlement. Arthur Phillip takes John Hunter and other officers in small boats to explore alternative sites for the settlement in Port Jackson, twelve kilometres to the north.

  23 January Phillip returns, having found fresh water and a sheltered harbour in what he is to name Sydney Cove in Port Jackson. The fleet is ordered to immediately abandon Botany Bay.

  24 January As the fleet prepares to leave Botany Bay for Sydney Cove, it sees two ships trying to enter the heads. They are the French exploration ships the Astrolabe and the Boussole, commanded by Captain La Perouse, which left France three years earlier.

  25 January Some of the ships of the First Fleet are damaged as they struggle against fierce headwinds to get out of Botany Bay. The French ships then struggle to get in.

  26 January Arthur Phillip arrives in Sydney Cove on the Supply before the rest of the fleet and conducts a small ceremony on what will become Australia Day. The rest of the fleet arrive and anchor in Sydney Cove on the evening of the 26th.

  27 January The unloading of the fleet, the clearing of land and the pitching of tents for more than a thousand settlers begin. For the next few years most of the settlers will live in tents or crude shacks with little or no furniture.

  February Unable to harvest sufficient local fresh food, the settlers are beset by scurvy and other illnesses. Chief Surgeon John White reports that by mid-year more than a hundred and fifty marines and convicts are infirm.

  2 February Lieutenant Philip Gidley King returns to Botany Bay in a small boat and spends three days visiting La Perouse and the French. He is told some of the convicts have already walked overland to ask the French to help them escape.

  6 February The bulk of the women convicts are finally unloaded from the ships and the sailors bring grog ashore, which leads to a night of wild debauchery.

  14 February Philip Gidley King is sent on the Supply with a party of twenty-three settlers to establish a colony on Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean, about fifteen hundred kilometres to the north-east of Sydney.

  27 February Thomas Barrett becomes the first convict hanged in the new colony, for stealing food from the public store.

  10 March La Perouse and the French ships leave Botany Bay heading north. The ships are later lost and never heard from again.

  13 March The first reduction is made to the food ration.

  5–6 May The first three of the privately owned chartered ships of the fleet, the Charlotte, the Lady Penrhyn and the Scarborough, leave Sydney to return to England via China, where they will pick up a cargo of tea for the East India Company. A number of convicts are thought to have successfully escaped by hiding in the departing vessels with the support of sympathetic sailors.

  15 May Arthur Phillip sends back his first report on the colony with the returning ships and hints at the problems that lie ahead when he admits that the clearing of land has been slow, very little grain has been sown and more supplies need to be sent from England.

  The foundation stone is laid for the two-storey governor’s house, which was designed and built by convict brickmaker James Bloodsworth and finished in June 1789.

  4 July Chief Surgeon John White appeals to Arthur Phillip for more fresh food in the diet of the settlers to offset widespread sickness.

  5 July Arthur Phillip asks the British Government to send clothing to cover the naked Aboriginal people.

  9 July Lieutenant Ball returns from the tiny Lord Howe Island without success at catching the huge turtles it was hoped would supplement the diet of the settlers.

  Arthur Phillip sends a more pessimistic report to London in which he says the colony’s first harvest has totally failed, most of the livestock brought from the Cape has died or been lost in the bush and that the colony will remain dependent for much longer than planned on food and supplies sent from England.

  13–14 July The next four privately chartered ships of the fleet – the Alexander, the Friendship, the Prince of Wales and the Borrowdale – leave on their ill-fated return to England.

  28 September Phillip reports to London that the settlers’ shoes have worn out and that many of the convicts are now in rags, as there is not enough thread to repair their clothing.

  1 October Captain John Hunter is sent on the Sirius via Cape Horn to the Cape of Good Hope for food, although Phillip notes that the amount the ship will be able to hold will not sustain the colony for long.

  19 November The last of the privately contracted ships, the Fishburn and the
Golden Grove, depart for England, leaving the colony with only the two navy ships, the Sirius and the Supply.

  31 December The settlers forcibly abduct a local Aboriginal man named Arabanoo (whom they rename Manly) in an attempt to bridge the language and cultural gap that exists between the newcomers and the locals.

  1789

  1 January The Sirius reaches Robben Island off Table Bay with most of the crew stricken with scurvy and the following day anchors in Table Bay, where it will stay for forty-nine days. Four of the crew desert in the port.

  20 February Hunter sails for Sydney on the Sirius with a shipload of food.

  March The government receives the first report of the colony from the returning ships the Prince of Wales and the Borrowdale. The reports give them comfort enough to confirm New South Wales as the Second Fleet’s destination. If the reports had been negative, the fleet would have been sent to Nova Scotia instead. An order is also given to the Admiralty to immediately send a ship to the colony with relief supplies of food. The Guardian is loaded with supplies in Portsmouth.

  April An outbreak of smallpox in New South Wales kills an estimated half of the local Aboriginal population but only one white man. It is a mystery how the disease was unleashed more than a year after the arrival of the First Fleet.

  Arabanoo, who has become liked and trusted by the settlers, dies while treating the sick among his people.

  2 May The Sirius is first sighted in Port Jackson returning from the Cape of Good Hope with food. Different accounts are given in the journals as to when it anchored in Sydney Cove. (Collins says it was 6 May; Hunter says the evening of 9 May.)

  29 July The Lady Juliana, the first ship of the Second Fleet, leaves Plymouth with two hundred and twenty-six convict women on what will be a year-long voyage to Sydney.

  12 September The Guardian, under the command of Captain Edward Riou, finally leaves Portsmouth more than three months later than planned, with over nine hundred tons of urgent relief supplies for New South Wales.

  October The food ration is further reduced in the colony.

  1 November Following an assessment of existing stores everyone is reduced to two-thirds of the established ration.

  24 November The Guardian arrives at the Cape of Good Hope having taken the most direct route south along the African coast. The Lady Juliana, which left England a month earlier, is still in Rio de Janeiro with its cargo of women convicts.

  24 December Thirteen days and more than a thousand kilometres out of the Cape of Good Hope, and having topped up with supplies, the Guardian crashes into an iceberg. Half the crew attempt to abandon ship and the rest stay on the submerged and stricken vessel.

  1790

  4 January Survivors on only one of the Guardian’s five lifeboats are picked up by a passing French ship four hundred kilometres east of Natal and taken back to Cape Town.

  21 February Nearly two months after it began sinking, the Guardian is seen in the Indian Ocean south of Madagascar by a passing Dutch packet and towed back to Table Bay, where the ship is later destroyed and its remaining cargo salvaged.

  28 February The Lady Juliana sights land approaching Cape Town.

  5 March Arthur Phillip sends more than two hundred settlers on the Sirius and the Supply from Sydney to Norfolk Island, where their prospects for survival are thought to be better. He also sends the marine commander Major Robert Ross, who has become his nemesis.

  19 March After unloading the settlers, the Sirius is caught and wrecked on the reef on Norfolk Island.

  20 March Major Robert Ross declares martial law on Norfolk Island. Captain John Hunter and his crew from the Sirius are stranded on the island with the other settlers for the next eleven months.

  9 April Back in Sydney the Reverend Richard Johnson complains that he and fellow settlers’ ‘hopes are almost vanished’ and that they are being ‘buried alive’ in the colony.

  11 April The standard food ration in Sydney is reduced to ‘less than half’. Pork is expected to completely run out in July, rice by September and flour by November. Later in the month settlers begin to starve to death. Marine captain Watkin Tench records seeing a man fall dead from hunger before him.

  15 April Arthur Phillip writes and asks London to be relieved of his post.

  17 April The tiny Supply, now the only ship left in the colony, is sent north to Batavia for food. On board is Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, who is being sent back to England by Arthur Phillip to report directly to the British Government on the colony. King will board a succession of ships after Batavia to reach England.

  Chief Surgeon John White writes to a friend in England angrily suggesting that the colony has been a failure and should be abandoned.

  May Arthur Phillip is seriously wounded by an Aboriginal man who throws a spear that pierces the governor’s shoulder and comes out of his back.

  3 June The Lady Juliana, with its cargo of female convicts, arrives after more than a year at sea. The ship also brings food for the starving colony.

  20 June The terrible story of the Second Fleet arrives with the Justinian, followed by the Surprize, Neptune and Scarborough. More than a quarter of the convicts died in the appalling conditions aboard the ships and hundreds more are sick and dying when they arrive in Sydney.

  19 September The Supply returns from Batavia with food.

  17 December The Dutch ship Waaksamheyd arrives in Sydney with more food, having been chartered for the purpose several months earlier in Batavia by Lieutenant Ball of the Supply.

  1791

  12 February The Supply finally brings Captain Hunter and the crew of the Sirius back to Sydney, after they have been stranded for nearly a year on Norfolk Island following the sinking of the Sirius.

  27 March Captain John Hunter and most of the crew of the Sirius are the first group from the First Fleet to go home to England on the chartered Waaksamheyd, after more than three years in the colony.

  Late at night, after the Waaksamheyd has left Sydney, eleven convicts, including Mary Bryant and her two children, make a daring escape from the colony and embark on a remarkable journey in a small boat to Timor. Eventually Bryant and the other escapees are recaptured. Bryant and four other convicts reach England, but the others all perish.

  9 July The Mary Ann, the first convict transport ship of the Third Fleet, arrives in Sydney with one hundred and forty-one women convicts and six children on board.

  21 September Philip Gidley King arrives back in Sydney from England on the Gorgon and is immediately sent to Norfolk Island to replace marine commander Major Robert Ross, who is being recalled with the marines to England.

  27 September After six months’ sailing, and with many of the crew stricken with scurvy, the Waaksamheyd reaches Batavia, where Captain Hunter buys the ship for the rest of the journey back to England. They arrive in April the following year.

  November The last ship of the First Fleet, the Supply, finally leaves Sydney with its crew to return to England, carrying with it the first live kangaroo exported from Australia, as a gift for King George III. The ship reaches Portsmouth the day before the Waaksamheyd, which had left Sydney seven months earlier.

  18 December Major Robert Ross and his Marine Corps, recalled after nearly four years in the colony, sail back to England on the Gorgon, which arrived as part of the Third Fleet. The soldiers are replaced by a new marine force, the New South Wales Corps.

  1792

  11 December Arthur Phillip is one of the last officials of the First Fleet to leave, after nearly five years in the colony. He sails on the Atlantic back to England, taking with him two Aboriginal men, Bennelong and Yemmerrawanne, who are an attraction in London society and are taken to meet George III.

  1795

  7 September Captain John Hunter returns to Sydney to take up his appointment as second governor of New South Wales. The governorship has been in the hands of caretakers Grose and Patterson since the departure of Arthur Phillip nearly three years earlier.

  1796

&n
bsp; October Suffering ill health, Philip Gidley King returns to England for the second time, after serving five years as lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island.

  1800

  22 September Philip Gidley King returns to Sydney on the Speedy to take over as governor from an embittered John Hunter, whom he has been sent to replace. King serves six years as governor before relinquishing the post to William Bligh.

  1814

  31 August Arthur Phillip dies in England aged 75. After returning to England, Phillip had served again in the navy before retiring in 1805.

  NOTES

  1. ENGLAND

  1 In 1761 the first entirely manufactured canal was built, to carry coal to Manchester; in 1768 Arkwright invented his spinning machine; and in 1767 James Watt developed his steam engine.

  2 George III’s father had died nine years earlier, in 1751.

  3 The three kings reigned for almost a hundred years. George I was king from 1714 to 1727, George II from 1727 to 1760 and George III from 1760 to 1811.

  4 McAlpine and Hunter.

  5 Colquhoun.

  6 Letter from Walpole to Mann, in Dover (ed.).

  7 Radzinowicz.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Ibid.

  10 Hall.

  11 Radzinowicz.

  12 Howard.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Ibid.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Ibid.

  17 An Act for Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars, 1597, Eliz. 39. See Hughes.

  18 Radzinowicz.

  19 1421: The Year China Discovered the World.

  20 Tasman’s 1644 map of his voyages is stored in the Mitchell Library, Sydney.

  21 Dampier.

  22 Manning Clark.