ASLEEP IN THE DEEP – MERCHANT MEN OF THE FIRST FLEET
‘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
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‘The final battles of the American Revolution were fought not in North America but in India, another theater where Britain and France were vying for political dominance. In both the United States and India as well as throughout the developing world legacies of that distant war persists’. Essays on The American Revolution – A World War, David K. Allison, Larrie D. Ferreiro, Smithsonian Publishing
1787 – 13 May, Portsmouth England: A flotilla of eleven (11) ships commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip RN, known in Britain and Australia as the ‘First Fleet’ with an overwhelmingly male complement, 1500 souls – 1300 males 200 women, sailed from Portsmouth on a voyage of 15,000 miles (23,000 km) to invade the island continent of New Holland now Australia.
HMS Sirius and HMS Supply carried two hundred (200) Royal Naval personnel – twenty (20) officials including eight (8) medicos and Mr. Smith a mystery stowaway.
Two hundred and forty-five (245) marines guarding five hundred and eighty (580) male criminals ‘rationed as troops serving in the West Indies’ were distributed throughout the fleet’s nine (9) merchant vessels, three (3) charted from the British East India Company. See: A Tale of Two Fleets
‘Legacies of that distant [America’s Revolutionary] war persisted….fought not in North America but in India’. A World War. ibid.
Merchant ships at that time were crewed to a standard formula related to tonnage; eight (8) seamen and one (1) boy per one hundred (100) ton.
With specialist and warrant officers, combined crew numbers on Lady Penrhyn, Alexander, Charlotte, Scarborough, Friendship, Prince of Wales and supply vessels Borrowdale, Fishburn, Golden Grove would have reached approximately four hundred and forty (440) men.
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‘The short term consequences [loss of America] were less dramatic than many expected. Though Britain’s eclipse as a world power was confidently predicted her economic recovery was swift ad the colonial development of Australia, New Zealand, India and part of Africa went some way to compensating for the loss of the first British Empire’. J.A Cannon, Emeritus Professor of Modern History, University of Newcastle upon Tyne ed. Oxford Companion to British History
Fully funded by government the aim of this large expeditionary force was to invade New Holland and claim British sovereignty over the entire eastern coast and establish secure alternate strategic, logistical and trade sea-routes to and from India and Asia.
‘New Holland is a blind, then, when we want to add to the military strength of India’. Anon. to Evan Nepean, Frank Murcott Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales Vol. 1 & 2
Just as importantly a naval base and military presence in the Southern Oceans would expose Spain’s fabulously rich South American Pacific Coast ‘treasure’ colonies to direct sea and land attack. Proximity not Distance Drove the Invasion of New Holland.
There were plans to use the corps in expeditions against Panama, Peru and the Phillippines, but nothing eventuated and the corps’ first experience of war came in January 1793 on the Hawkesbury River north west of Sydney’, Professor Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, The British Amy in Australia 1788-1870, Kangaroo Press, Sydney, 1986
Y – NEW HOLLAND – THE BACK STORY
‘The idea of a British settlement in the Pacific goes back, probably, to the notable voyage undertaken by Commodore George Anson in 1740-44’ Geoffrey G. Ingleton, General Introduction, Captain Watkin Tench,Sydney’s First Four Years, ed L.F. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson, Sydney 1961
Commodore George Anson’s voyage of ‘triumph and tragedy’ is a tale that holds a ‘a unique and terrible place in British maritime history’. Glyn Williams, The Prize of All the Oceans, The Triumph and Tragedy of Anson’s Voyage Round the World, Harper Collins Publishers, 2000
Similarly the ‘First Fleet’ was a voyage of ‘triumph and tragedy’. ‘Triumph’ for Britain ‘tragedy’ for the First Australians. Gender imbalance holds ‘a unique and terrible place’ in the near destruction of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples.
‘Few personal documents relation to [Arthur] Phillip survive, his low personal file and the secret work in which he was sometimes involved help to make him one of the least-known founders of any modern state in his case – Australia’. Pacific Explorations, Voyages f Discovery from Captain Cook’s Endeavour to the Beagle, Bloomsbury, Adlard Coles, London, 2018
The secrecy is deliberate. Along with smallpox and starvation the overwhelming gender assault on the First Australians receives little attention. it is the reason Governor Arthur Phillip RN is ‘the least-known founders of any modern state in his case – Australia’.
1788 – Botany Bay, 18-20 January: After a voyage of eight (8) months the ‘First Fleet’ found safe anchorage in Botany Bay. Careful planning kept mortality, to a minimum, reckoned at 2%
This was in stark contrast to Anson’s ‘tragedy’. Few of Anson’s men died in battle most succumbed to scurvy.
Only one (1) of Anson’s eight (8) ship squadron, the flagship HMS Centurion, returned to England with a mere one hundred and forty-five (145) survivors of the original 1300 souls embarked.
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In April 1770 Captain James Cook RN and the men of HMS Endeavour had landed in Botany Bay. When the ‘First Fleet’ reached the same spot in mid January 1788 they encountered a population of black people ‘naked as at the moment of their birth’.
Using the ago-old charade the pale strangers requested help to find find fresh water. That done the locals had their equally urgent question answered – I’ve shown you mine – what are you hiding?
In 1770 they had managed to protect their women. But in 1788 -1300 white men with guns – was overwhelming. And so it proved. See: G is for Testosterone fuelled Genocide
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Phillip assessed ‘Botany Bay offered no Security for large Ships’ and sought a more suitable site. Next day taking Captain Cook’s 1770 charts he set out with surveyors in three (3) small row-boats to find Cook’s ‘Port Jackson’.
Port Jackson – 21 January: Later that day their tiny craft rowed through its towering sandstone bluffs into a vast harbour. ‘Here’ Phillip wrote ‘a Thousand Sail of the Line can ride in the most Perfect safety’.
Sydney Cove – 22 January: From a myriad of bays and inlets Phillip chose a snug deep-water cove with a stream of fresh running water. He named it for Lord Sydney the then Home Secretary
Botany Bay – 23 January: By sunset on 23rd the scouting party was back in Botany Bay with good news. The ‘First Fleet’ had found a home. Orders were issued to ‘evacuate‘ on the morrow.
24 January – ‘Consternation’: At daybreak masts of two (2) ships appeared on the horizon. Phillip instantly recognised La Boussole with Comte Jean-Francois La Perouse at the helm and L’Astrolabe astern.
Earlier (August 1785) Phillip, then a spy in the pay of Britain’s Secret Service, had watched as the two (2) ships made a difficult exit from Brest naval base to embark on a wide-ranging voyage that was to include New Holland.
Now three (3) year later, in 1788, Sirius with gun-ports open refused La Perouse entry to Botany Bay. The French turned away and sailed out of sight.
‘Phillip was alarmed…[he] ordered a party to be sent to Port Sutherland to hoist English colours. He also stipulated that the move to Port Jackson be kept secret, and that no one was to go on board the French ships’. John Moore, First Fleet Marines 1786-1792, Queensland University Press, 1988
25 January: ‘Phillip was alarmed’. Three (3) days prior he stepped ashore at Sydney Cove but had not raised ‘English Colours‘ nor left personnel to ‘occupy’ it.
Phillip was fully aware ‘command of the seas’ was at stake. The closeness of the race for New Holland for ‘king and country’ was mind- blowing. See: Australia – Britain by A Short Half-Head
‘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’. Behrendt. op.cit.
If La Perouse sailed north and, planted ‘French Colours’ before Phillip returned there, ‘a state of war’ would exist between Britain and France.
According to Euro-centric international ‘doctrine of discovery’ – ‘the finest harbour in the world’ – was still up for grabs.
‘International law had developed a doctrine of discovery that dictated the rules by which European colonial powers could claim territory around the world’. Behrendt. op.cit.
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Botany Bay – 25 January: Captain Phillip had no stomach for blowing the gallant La Perouse and his men out of the water. He boarded HMS Supply but dense fog held up departure until noon. John Moore, citing fleet journals,says ‘Supply reached Sydney Cove at 7 p.m.’
Sydney Cove: 26 January: At first light a party of officers and marines rowed ashore. The ‘Union Jack of Queen Anne’ was raised from ‘a hastily erected flagstaff’.
1788 – 26 January: During the day all remaining English ships made an albeit dangerous exit from Botany Bay. Sailing nine (9) miles (14 km) north of Botany Bay by nightfall they anchored alongside Supply.
HMS Sirius was last to leave. Captain John Hunter RN stayed to guide La Boussole and L’Astrolabe navigate the bay’s dangerous cross-currents. La Perouse dropped anchor in what we know now as Frenchmen’s Cove.
‘Owing to the multiplicity of pressing business necessary to be performed immediately after landing, it was found impossible to read the public commissions and take possession of the colony in form, until the 7th of February’. Tench. ibid.
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La Perouse was the most ‘pressing business’. Governor Phillip called on Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN a trusted fiend and ally who, in 1783, served under him in HMS Europa on a ‘secret’ mission to attack Spanish Monte Video.See: Hush ‘ Whisper who dares’ Christopher Robin
Two officers, King, along with Marine Lieutenant William Dawes, were to make their way overland to Botany Bay. King’s task, to gauge what La Perouse intended on leaving Botany Bay.
Dawes was in for a surprise. La Perouse had been supplied with a number of sea-going chronometers capable of providing ‘true time’ . The ‘First Fleet’ had only one.
‘With his marine clocks John Harrison tested the waters of space-time [he] wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket-watch’. Dava Sobel, Longitude The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, Fourth Estate, London 1996
Astronomer Royal Reverend Nevil Maskelyne of Greenwich Greenwich Observatory supplied the ‘First Fleet’ expedition with K-1, a faithful replica of John Harrison’s H-4 marine chronometer.
John Harrison’s H-4 revolutionary time-keeper had, in 1759, solved the problem of calculating longitude, essential to safety, when ships were at sea beyond sight of land. See Lotto and Longitude
However it is unlikely, given the secrecy surrounding H-4, Dawes the fleet’s scientific officer, would have revealed its presence to La Perouse. See: Three Yorkshire men Walked Into A Bar – Nevil Maskelyne
Without delay the two (2) Englishmen set off overland to Botany Bay. That night they dined on La Boussole and no doubt talked till dawn.
Gidley King was able to assure La Perouse Governor Phillip would honour his request to allow official detailed accounts of the highs and lows of the Frenchmen’s long voyage, together with a box of private letters, be sent to France with the returning English transports. See: A Band of Brothers and Mortal Enemies.
King learned from La Perouse, before moving onto Botany Bay, Bousolle and L’Astrolabe had made two (2) unsuccessful attempts to land on an uninhabited island.
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Captain James Cook RN, in 1774, on his second voyage in HMS Resolution had charted that island and named it Norfolk. King did not doubt La Perouse intended to land and occupy the island when he left Botany Bay.
Norfolk Island: Dawes and King were rowed back to Sydney next day where Governor Phillip agreed with King’s assessment. Arrangements to occupy the island began immediately.
‘As soon as circumstances will permit of it, to send a small establishment thither to secure the same to us, and prevent it being occupied by the subjects of any other European power’. Governor Phillip cited Jack Egan, Buried Alive Sydney 1788-1792, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1999
Sydney – January 30: On the 30th of January 1788 Phillip formally commissioned Lieutenant Phillip Gidley King RN Lieutenant-Governor of Norfolk Island.
Sydney – 6 February: Throughout the day, beginning at 6 am, the ‘First Fleet’ women, one hundred and eighty-nine (189) prisoners and thirty-one (31) marine wives, along with their children, twenty-two (22) born on the passage, were rowed ashore from ships that had been home for just on a year. See: ? Aside from seagulls how many white birds were on the ground at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 – None
7 February: ‘On that day all the officers of the guard took post in the marine battalion…his Excellency Arthur Phillip Governor and Captain General’ proclaimed, without consent or treaty, British sovereignty over the entire eastern coast of the island continent of New Holland ‘from Cape York…to South Cape’. See: A Cracker Jack Opinion – No Sweat
14 February: ‘At‘6 pm’ a week later HMS Supply laden with six (6) months of supplies, tools,seed, plants, pigs, poultry, sheep, approximately twenty-nine (29) people including two (2) physicians, nine (9) male and six (6) female convicts, marines,sailors and a couple of volunteers departed for Norfolk Island to seed n axillary white population.
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Meanwhile Charlotte, Lady Penrhyn and Scarborough, chartered from the British East India Company. Their masters were under orders to disgorge their human cargo and sail without delay
Their masters were under orders to disgorge their human cargo and sail without delay
1788 -China, 6 May: Contracted to purchase tea from China and take it to England These three (3) departed for China on the 6th of May 1788.
Although scurvy and dysentery plagued all ‘First Fleet’ merchant crews, the fate of these three (3) fared better than the other chartered vessels.
1788 – England, 14 July: Alexander, Friendship, Prince of Wales with the store-ship Borrowdale set sail for England in mid April.
1788 – 16 July, Jakarta: Two (2) days later off Lord Howe Island they parted company. Alexander and Friendship set course for the Cape of Good Hope via Batavia, present-day Jakarta.
Prince of Wales and Borrowdale, fearing monsoons might overtake them; ‘thought it advisable to bear down for Rio’.
1788 – at sea, 15 August: The two (2) ships broke contact in mid August 1788. Both made for Rio but took separate pathways.
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1788 – Rio, 14 October: Prince of Wales ‘We signalled the harbour-master for men to carry us to the Anchoring Ground’. By then her captain was dead and there were too few crew to bring her safely to port.
1788 – 18 November, Brazil: A month later – 18 November 1788 – Borrowdale was standing-to off Rio. Like Prince of Wales she needed assistance to come to anchor.
1789 – Rio: Local sailors were recruited to augment the depleted crews. Early in 1789 both ships sailed for England. Seven (7) Borrowdale seamen died but the total mortality is not known.
1789 – England, March: Prince of Wales docked at Falmouth, Cornwell on 22 March 1789.
1789- 23 March, London: Next day the first news from Botany Bay hit London’s newspapers arousing intense interest. Family, lovers, friends, neighbours – people could not get enough of news from Botany Bay.
1789 – Falmouth, April: Borrowdale arrived a few days later with duplicates of Governor Phillip’s dispatches.
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But what of Friendship and Alexander with Lieutenant Shortland and the originals of Governor Phillip’s dispatches and La Perouse’s documents and letters? See: Evacuation – Saving Lieutenant William Collins
1788 – Borneo, October: Their voyage was truly terrifying. Attacked by pirates bent on murder they managed to outrun them. But the delay proved costly.
Off the coast of Borneo, they were caught by monsoons. Lashed by torrential rain-storms the two (2) ships were tossed about by gale force winds.
Shortland fearing Friendship could not survive such a battering, ordered her crew abandon ship.The following four (4) days were filled with utter terror and outstanding courage.
Alexander’s crew, their legs so swollen from scurvy they could barely stand, battled mountainous seas and unrelenting rain, yet they managed to snatch Friendship’s survivors from her deck.
It was nothing short of miraculous Alexander manned by starving men did not founder during this extremely risky manoeuvre. Friendship was spiked and left to sink.
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1789 – Cape Town, January: Alexander limped into Cape Town in mid January 1789 where Shortland was astounded to find Sirius riding at anchor. Why he soon found out.
Governor Phillip had been assured more convicts and provisions would ‘follow [the First Fleet] shortly’ but none arrived.
Shortland was distressed to learn, relief ships considered well overdue when he left Sydney in July 1788, had still not arrived when Sirius sailed for Africa at the beginning of October 1788. See: Titanic: Australia’s Titanic – HMS Guardian – The Missing Link
1788 – Sydney, September: By September 1788 a tipping point had been reached. See: Abandoned and Left to Starve at Sydney Cove January 1788 to June 1790.
For black and white ‘the main battle was about having enough to eat’. White survival depended on black starvation.
A desperate Governor ordered Captain Hunter prepare HMS Sirius for a lone voyage to Africa to buy food and medicines from the Dutch at Cape Town.
1788 – 2 October, Africa: Sirius, Captain John Hunter RN, with First Lieutenant William Bradley RN his 2-I-C, departed Sydney for the Cape of Good Hope at the beginning of October 1788.
Hunter took Captain Cook’s charts of his 1774 voyage in HMS Resolution. Manning pumps around the clock Hunter pushed both ship and crew to the limit.
In freezing southern oceans, dodging ‘islands of ice’, the Sirius crew clung to life and limb through tumultuous Drake Passage.
1788 – Christmas Day: In even worse weather, they worked their way round Cape Horn.
1789 – 1 January, Cape Town: HMS Sirius anchored at Robbin Island off Table Bay on the first day of January 1789.
Lieutenant Shortland was not a run-of-the mill naval Lieutenant, He had been appointed the Royal Navy’s Agent for the ‘First Fleet’. Captain Hunter had no qualms entrusting him with ‘secret’ intelligence’.
‘The voyage to and from Chilli and Peru would be Easy and Expeditious for a sailing from Port Jackson…the proximity of our Colony in that Part of the World to the Spanish settlement and the coast of Chile and Peru…makes it an important Post, should it ever be necessary to carry…war into those seas’. John Hunter Journal, Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, 1793 Bibliobaazar ed. 2008
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1789 – England, 25 May, England: After repairs, Alexander, continued on her way and reached England towards the end of May 1789. It is believed only four (4) of her original merchant crew survived the voyage home.
London – June:. On 3rd of June 1789 Lieutenant Shortland delivered Hunter’s ‘intelligence’ to the Admiralty together with the originals of Governor Phillip’s dispatches
Paris – 26 June 1789: Despite tensions and difficulties existing between Britain and France at that time La Perouse’s documents [appeared] in the Journal de Paris on 26 June 1789′ detailing among other ‘tragic events’ the death of Viconte Fleuriot de’Langle L’Astrolabe’s Captain.
Hunter’s ‘intelligence’ convinced Whitehall of the utmost importance of ‘our colony…Port Jackson to Great Britain.
1789 – London, October 16: Recruiting began by mid October the War Office announced:
Shortland reported to Lord Sydney at the Home Office. The English men, women and children he had sent 15,000 miles (23,000 km) to Botany Bay were facing annihilation.
And if, as was highly likely, HMS Sirius did not survive her extremely risky return-passage from Africa, those marooned without any logistical support from home might even now be dead.
1789 – London, May: Meanwhile because of the First Fleet’s extraordinary gender imbalance, Home Secretary Sydney gave priority to Phillip’s request for more female convicts. See: Brokeback Mountain
1789 – Whitehall, June: Just before he resigned as Home Secretary (mid June 1789) Lord Sydney issued a contract to William Richards, sole civilian contractor for the ‘First Fleet’, to fit-out and provision a female transport. the Lady Juliana.
1789 – Plymouth, July: Dubbed ‘The Brothel Ship‘ with two hundred and twenty-six (226) female prisoners and six (6) children Juliana sailed from Plymouth at the end of July 1789 on what turned out to be an extended year-long voyage.
William Wyndham Grenville, a young cousin of Prime Minister William Pitt, succeeded Sydney as Home SecretaryHe issued expressions of interest for the transportation to Australia of another 1300, predominately mainly male convicts.
Grenville accepted the lowest tender and awarded ‘slave contracts’ contracts for three (3) ships Neptune, Suprize and Scarborough to Camden, Calvert and King – the largest firm of slaver-traders working the infamous Afro-American slave trade from London.
Apart from from seventy-eight (78) women, eleven (11) of whom died on the passage, all prisoners were male. Starved and treated with savage brutality one-quarter (25%) died during the voyage.
Many survivors went onto to brutalise each other and the ‘other’. There can be no doubt Genville’s zeal for cost-cutting was an added factor in determining the future fate of Australia’s First Nations’ Peoples. See: A Tale of Two Fleets
1790 – England, January 4:The second fleet departed England in the first week of January 1790. Infantry, one hundred and fifteen (115) officers and men, first contingent of the New South Wales Corps, were tasked with riding shot-gun to prevent mutiny and escape.
1790 – Falmouth,January: Justinian a lone store-ship, contingent to but not part of the second fleet, sailed from Falmouth, Cornwell on 12 January 1790.
1790 – Sydney, June: By the end of June 1790 Neptune, Suprize and Scarborough with the first of twenty-five (25) regiments of British infantry who served on Australian soil between 1790 and 1870,reached Sydney. See: Britain’s Grim Armada: The Dead and the Living Dead
‘The great change came in the arrival with the Second Fleet of the New South Wales Corps…[among them] Lieutenant John Macarthur – a central future in the military ‘mafia’ which quickly established itself as Australia’s first governing and property elite’. 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
‘Military and police raids against dissenting Aboriginal groups lasted from the eighteenth to the twentieth century…These raids had commenced by December 1790′. Prof. Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1995
EPILOGUE
‘Captain Arthur Phillip founded a penal colony with instructions from the [British] crown to protect the lives and livelihoods of Aboriginal people and forge friendly relations with the natives…within a matter of years violence had broken out on both sides and Phillip would now [December 1790] instruct raiding parties to bring back the severed heads of warriors’. Stan Grant, Talking to My Country, Text Publishing, 2017
1789 – Sydney Cove, 8 May: HMS Sirius did return from Africa in doing so she circumnavigated the globe. Sirius sailed through Sydney Heads on 8th May 1789 bringing an ‘unflattering amount’ 127,000 lbs. of poor quality flour, intended for the king’s ships and what could be spared for the colony.
‘The night carried us by daylight in sight of the entrance of Port Jackson, and in the evening we entered between the heads of the harbour and worked up to Sydney, where we anchored before dark after an absence of 219 days – 51 of which we lay in Table Bay Cape of Good Hope, so that, we had only been 168 days in describing that circle’. Hunter Journal. ibid.
HMS Sirius did return from Africa in doing so she circumnavigated the globe. Sirius sailed through Sydney Heads on 8th May 1789 bringing 127,000 lbs, ‘an unflattering amount’, of poor quality flour, intended for the king’s ships and what could be spared for the colony.
1789 – Sydney Cove, 8 May: But Sirius returned to a very different Sydney from the one she left on the 2nd of October 1788.’We did not see a canoe or a native the whole way coming up the harbour….smallpox had made dreadful havoc among them’. Lieutenant William Bradley RN, A Voyage to New South Wales, facsimile edition, Ure Smith, 1969 See: Dead Aborigines Don’t Eat
In April 1789 smallpox struck the Gadigal Aborigines killing 50% of their number.
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1838 – London:A mere fifty (50) years post 1788 a Parliamentary Select Committee found; ‘On the subject of the Aborigines of New Holland…It is impossible to contemplate the condition or the prospects of that unfortunate race without the deepest commiseration’. Lord John Russell to Sir George Gipps, 21 December 1838, Historical Records of Australia, Series 1. Vol XX
As for the French La Boussole and L’ Astrolabe sailed for home on the 10th of March 1788 and were never seen alive again. Each year a their fleeting presence is commemorated at the Sydney suburb of La Perouse.
Each year the cove’s sloping lawns, a picture-perfect picnic spot, hosts a memorial to the fleeting presence of La Perouse and his men.
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ADDENDUM
‘The voyage to and from Chilli and Peru would be Easy and Expeditious for a sailing from Port Jackson…the proximity of our Colony in that Part of the World to the Spanish settlement and the coast of Chile and Peru…makes it an important Post, should it ever be necessary to carry…war into those seas’. John Hunter Journal, Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, 1793 Bibliobaazar ed. 2008
The Sirius voyage proved what the British Government needed to know as; ‘It is generally appeared when we have been involved in a war with France, that Spain and Holland have engaged in hostilities against us.
In that Part of the World to the Spanish settlement and the coast of Chile and Peru…makes it [Port Jackson] an important Post, should it ever be necessary to carry…war into those seas’. Hunter Journal. ibid.
Addendum
hhhhhh ccccccc ‘There were plans to use the corps in expeditions against Panama, Peru and the Philippines’, but nothing eventuated and the corps’ first experience of war came in January 1793 on the Hawkesbury River north west of Sydney’. Prof. Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, The British Army in Australia 1788-1870, Kangaroo Press, Sydney 1986
‘New Holland is a good blind, then, when we want to add to the military strength of India’. Anon. Historical Records of New South Wales.
‘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, cited Michael Pembroke, Arthur Phillip Sailor Mercenary Spy Governor. Hardie Grant Books, Sydney 2013
La Boussole and L’ Astrolabe sailed for home on the 10th of March 1788 and were never seen again. Each year a their fleeting presence is commemorated at the Sydney suburb of La Perouse.
Tags: merchant ships, provisions