SEAGULLS – ONLY MEN – ASIDE FROM SEAGULLS HOW MANY WHITE BIRDS WERE ON THE GROUND @ SYDNEY COVE ON 26 JANUARY 1788 – NONE
Tuesday, January 15th, 20191788 – Sydney Cove, Wednesday 6 February: ‘The day the convict women disembarked [Sydney Cove]…they landed by rowing boats between 6 am and 6 pm.’ John Moore, First Fleet Marines 1786-1792, Queensland University Press, 1986
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Westminster – 1786, August 18: Lord Sydney advised; ‘His Majesty has thought advisable to fix upon Botany Bay’.
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1787 – london, 25 April: ‘We have ordered about 600 male and 180 female convicts…to the port on the coast of New South Wales…called Botany Bay. Heads Of a Plan [1786] for Botany Bay. Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales. Vol. 1
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‘In determining the daily ration no distinction was drawn between the marine and the [male] convicts…the standard adopted was that of troops serving in the West Indies’. Wilfrid Oldham, Britain’s Convicts to the Colonies, Library of Australian History, Sydney 1990
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‘Four companies of marines landed with the first Europeans to settle Australia, and twenty-five regiments of British infantry served in the colonies between 1790 and 1870’. Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, The British Army in Australia. Kangaroo Press, 1986
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‘And whereas, from the great disproportion of female convicts to those of males..and without sufficient proportion of that [female] sex it is well known that it be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders it appears advisable that a further number…should be introduced.