ASLEEP IN THE DEEP – MERCHANT MEN OF THE FIRST FLEET
Sunday, October 25th, 2009‘By Alexander, under care of Lieutenant Shortland, agent for the [ 9 First Fleet] transports, I have sent dispatches to the Right 9Honourable the Lord Sydney and yourself, with a rough survey of Port Jackson….Lieutenant Shortland is likewise charged with a box of letters from Monsieur La Perouse for the French Ambassador’. Governor Phillip to Under-Secretary Nepean, July 10th 1788.Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales
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‘Our wealth and power in India is their great and constant object of jealously; and they [the French] will never miss an opportunity of attempting to wrest it out of our hands’. Sir James Harris [1784], cited Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip Sailor Mercenary Spy Governor. Hardie Grant Books, Sydney 2013
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‘When leaving Botany Bay, two French ships were seen in offing…there would seem to be “some justification for the saying that England won Australia by six days”. Edward Jenks, cited H.E. Egerton, A Short History of British Colonial History, Methuen, London 1928
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‘When Phillip planted the flag at Sydney Cove in 1788 he was not claiming the land for the British to take it away from the Aboriginal people but to make sure the French did not make the claim first’. The Honest History Book, Larissa Behrendt, Settlement or Invasion. ed. David Stephens & Alison Broinowski, NewSouth, 2017
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‘The British had long sought to penetrate Spain’s jealously guarded South American trade’. Nigel Rigby, Peter van der Merwe, Glyn Williams – Pacific Explorations, Voyages of Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, London, 2018