First Fleet

The First Fleet was the convoy of eleven British ships that sailed from England in May 1787 to found a penal colony in New South Wales. Commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip, it carried more than 1,400 people, most of them convicts, around the world to Port Jackson, where the settlement of Sydney was begun on 26 January 1788. Its arrival marked the start of British colonisation of Australia and of a long and often violent dispossession of the continent's Aboriginal peoples.

Joseph Banks, the naturalist who had sailed with James Cook on his 1770 voyage, had promoted Botany Bay as a site for a colony. The decision was taken by the Home Secretary, Lord Sydney. Two motives are usually given: after the American Revolution Britain could no longer ship convicts to its former North American colonies, and it wanted a foothold in the Pacific to counter French ambitions. Phillip was appointed in 1786 to lead the expedition and govern the new colony. Fitting out the fleet cost about £84,000.

The fleet comprised two naval vessels, the flagship Sirius and the small armed tender Supply, three storeships carrying tools, seeds and two years' provisions, and six convict transports. Most of the convicts had been convicted in England, many of theft, and had been sentenced to transportation for seven years, fourteen years or life, often after a death sentence was commuted. A detachment of marines under Major Robert Ross guarded them, and some marines brought their families. The exact numbers are uncertain: about 1,420 people have been identified as embarking, but incomplete crew records mean the true total may have been nearer 1,500.

The fleet left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787. It called at Tenerife in June, spent a month at Rio de Janeiro from early August, and reached the Cape of Good Hope in mid-October, where livestock was loaded. Conditions below deck were foul. Phillip went ahead in Supply and reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788, with the rest of the ships arriving over the next two days. The passage had lasted 252 days and covered about 24,000 kilometres without the loss of a ship; according to the fleet's chief surgeon, 48 people died on the way.

Botany Bay proved a poor site, with shallow water, little fresh water and thin soil. Phillip explored to the north and found Port Jackson, which he praised as one of the finest harbours in the world. On 24 January two French ships under La Pérouse appeared off Botany Bay, and on the 26th the British fleet moved to a sheltered cove in Port Jackson, which Phillip named Sydney Cove after the Home Secretary. The British flag was raised that day, a date now marked as Australia Day. A small party was sent to Norfolk Island in February to found a second settlement.

The land around the harbours was the country of Aboriginal peoples, including the Cadigal and other Eora groups, who watched the newcomers warily. Phillip's instructions called for friendly relations, and no treaty was made. Conflict soon followed: from about 1790 the Bidjigal leader Pemulwuy led attacks on the settlers for some two decades. In 1789 an epidemic, usually identified as smallpox, devastated Aboriginal communities around Sydney; historians still debate whether it was brought by the fleet, accidentally or otherwise, or reached the region by another route, such as contact with fishermen from Makassar.

The early settlement struggled to feed itself. Most of the fleet's ships left in 1788, and the store ship Guardian, sent with supplies, was crippled by an iceberg and never arrived. Sirius was wrecked at Norfolk Island in March 1790, and Supply was sent to Batavia for emergency food. Relief came when the Second Fleet began to arrive in June 1790. The colony survived and spread, and with it the conflicts over land described in the Australian frontier wars.

Our 1783 map shows Australia before British settlement, and the 1800 map the region in the colony's early years.