1788 Read online

  When the First Fleet eventually reached Australia, much of what Phillip had envisioned was to be achieved, but he was to encounter problems he had not foreseen. He had no real way of knowing the full extent of the struggle they would experience while trying to build the new colony. Nor did he have any inkling of the crisis they would face in the first years of settlement, caused by the shortage of food.

  4

  PREPARATION FOR THE VOYAGE

  [W]e beg leave to propose that the wives of the [two hundred and forty-seven] marines going to Botany Bay, not exceeding ten to each company, which will not in the whole amount to more than forty women, may be allowed to embark with them.

  The fleet was to take more than fourteen hundred people – including seven hundred and fifty convicts, several hundred soldiers and officers, some wives and children and the ships’ crews – to the new colony on the other side of the world.

  The organisation for the venture, which would take nine months, included the commissioning of eleven ships, the appointment of the officials to lead the expedition and the loading of supplies sufficient for the long voyage and for two years’ subsistence after arriving.

  The first move came from Lord Sydney, who wrote to the lords of the Treasury on 18 August 1786 asking that the necessary arrangements be made for the transport of the convicts:

  My Lords,

  I am … commanded to signify to your Lordships his Majesty’s pleasure that you do forthwith take such measures as may be necessary for providing a proper number of vessels for the conveyance of seven hundred and fifty convicts to Botany Bay, together with such provisions, necessaries and implements for agriculture as may be necessary for their use after their arrival.1

  At the same time Lord Sydney communicated the king’s decree that marines be recruited ‘not only to enforce due subordination and obedience but for the defense of the settlement against incursion by the natives’. He continued:

  His majesty has been pleased to direct that one hundred and sixty private marines, with a suitable number of officers and non commissioned officers, shall proceed in the ship of war and the tender to the new settlement, where it is intended they shall be disembarked for the purposes before mentioned.2

  Two weeks later Lord Sydney wrote to the Admiralty with a specific request for the organising of the ships necessary for the transportation fleet:

  My Lords,

  The King having been pleased to signify his Royal Commands that seven hundred and fifty of the convicts now in this kingdom under sentence of transportation should be sent to Botany Bay, on the coast of New South Wales, in the latitude of thirty-three degrees south, at which place it is intended that the said convicts should form a settlement, and that the Lords of the Treasury should forthwith provide a sufficient number of vessels for their conveyance thither together with provisions and other supplies for their subsistence, as well as tools to enable them to erect habitations, and also implements for agriculture …3

  During the voyage out the marines were to be spread out on the different ships to maintain order among convicts. Once they reached New South Wales, they were to serve for a term of three years, after which they could either return to England or settle as farmers in the new colony.

  The full requirements for this venture were contained in a ‘Heads of a Plan’, which was drawn up in Lord Sydney’s office, probably by his deputy Evan Nepean, and sent from Whitehall to both the Treasury and the Admiralty. By this stage there was no pretence that the venture had any higher ambition than disposing of the convicts and no mention of the settlement otherwise contributing to the good of the British Empire.

  The plan outlined the route the fleet would take to New South Wales and the seeds and plants and animals that should be collected on the way for the settlement. The navy commander of the fleet would be authorised to spend whatever was necessary at the Cape of Good Hope ‘to obtain cattle and hogs, as well as seed grain, all of which must be procured for the new settlers, with a view to their future subsistence’.4 It was hoped that by the time the First Fleet had consumed all of the food it had itself imported, the new colony would be producing much of its own requirements.

  Also in the Heads of a Plan were minute details of the tools that would be needed for the clearing of vegetation and the creation of the new settlement. This included three hundred chisels, a hundred and seventy-five hand saws and hammers (‘one for every four men’), a hundred and forty drawing knives and augers (large drills), a hundred wood planes, broad axes and adzes (an arched axe with the blade at right angles to the handle), fifty pickaxes, forty cross-cut saws, frame saws and wheelbarrows, thirty grindstones, twelve ploughs and ten forges. Among the other supplies to be taken on the ships were two thousand spikes, a thousand squares of glass, two hundred pairs of hinges, one hundred locks, ten barrels of nails and a large number of fish hooks.

  It was envisaged that the settlers would build their own homes when they arrived in New South Wales. For the initial period financial provision was made for five hundred tents for the convicts and a hundred and sixty for the marines.5 A special two-storey tent was to be provided to Arthur Phillip as his temporary residence.

  The plan calculated the necessary clothing for each male convict to be two jackets, four pairs of woollen drawers, one hat, three shirts, four pairs of worsted stockings, three frocks, three trousers and three pairs of shoes. The budgeted cost for outfitting each convict was two pounds, nineteen shillings and sixpence.6 The plan did not elaborate on the items of clothing for the women, other than to say ‘the expence of clothing female convicts may be computed to amount to like sum’.7 However, when the fleet eventually sailed from Portsmouth nine months later, it left without enough clothing for the women.

  The plan also suggested – as the Matra proposal had a few years earlier – a simple solution to the anticipated shortage of women in the new colony: a ship should be sent to the nearby Pacific islands to collect some. This proposed large-scale removal of women to another country was wholly a pragmatic measure, as it was felt that otherwise ‘it would be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders’.8

  In a later instruction it was made clear that the women could not be abducted:

  [W]henever [the ship] shall touch on any of the islands in those seas … you are … to instruct [your] commanders to take on board any of the women who may be disposed to accompany them to the said settlement. You will, however, take especial care that the officers who may happen to be employed upon the service do not, upon any account, exercise any compulsive measures, or make use of fallacious pretences, for bringing away any of the said women from the places of their present residence.9

  As well as cultivating flax in the new colony, as had been proposed by Sir George Young of the Admiralty, the settlers were to consider going to New Zealand for timber that could be used for the masts of ships.10

  Phillip’s initial written instructions, issued by King George in London and presented to him when he was formally commissioned as governor at the Court of St James on 12 October 1786, were very brief:

  George the Third Etc., to our trusted and well loved Captain Arthur Phillip, greeting:

  We, reposing especial trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage and experience in military affairs, do, by these presents, constitute and appoint you to be Governor of our territory called New South Wales … You are therefore carefully and diligently to discharge the duty of Governor in and over our said territory by doing and performing all and all manner of things thereunto belonging … and you are to observe and follow such orders and directions from time to time as you shall receive from us …11

  He was not to receive his detailed instructions until he was about to leave Portsmouth with the fleet the following year, only weeks before his departure.

  At the time he was given his formal commission, Phillip was also ordered to colonise a vast territory roughly the size of Europe, stretching some three thousand kilometres from north to
south from the very top of Cape York on the east coast of Australia to the south of Tasmania. From east to west the claimed territory was also some three thousand kilometres, from 135 E, which is roughly a vertical line down the middle of Australia, to the east coast and beyond, taking in ‘all islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean’.

  Britain’s claim to such a large part of the world was based on a convention that had emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries whereby European powers accepted that the nation to first discover and navigate an area had first claim to own and occupy it – and Cook had been the first to navigate the east coast of Australia and claim it for Britain. The Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish had for hundreds of years effectively colonised lands they had discovered and developed these outposts into strategically located trading ports in the new world and the south seas. The Dutch had been the first to regularly sail to the west coast of New Holland but had made no attempt to establish a settlement or claim the land.

  A major challenge in the implementation of the plan was the organising of sufficient shipping to transport almost fifteen hundred people. The Admiralty responded quickly to the request and within six weeks of the official order, in October 1786, was able to confirm that the first two ships would be available within another two weeks. One was a small warship, the Sirius, which was to become the flagship of the First Fleet, and the second was an even smaller support vessel, the Supply:

  We immediately ordered the Sirius, one of his Majesty’s ships of the sixth rate,12 with a proper vessel for a tender, to be fitted for this new service; and that the ship will be ready to receive men by the end of the month.13

  The Sirius and the tender Supply were the only Royal Navy vessels of the prospective eleven. The other nine were contracted from private owners. Six were designated for the transport of the convicts and three were for carrying supplies.

  The British Government paid ten shillings per ton per month for each of the privately contracted ships. The charges would apply until the ships returned to Deptford, except for the three that would be released from government service when they unloaded in New South Wales before going on to China to pick up a cargo of tea for the British East India Company.

  By today’s standards the ships were tiny. The largest was only a hundred and thirty-two feet, or less than forty metres, long and a little over thirty feet (nine metres) wide. The smallest was only seventy feet (twenty-one metres) long and barely twenty feet (six metres) wide.

  To look at, all of them were fairly similar. They were all blunt nosed and round bodied with three masts, except for the supply ship the Friendship and the navy ship the Supply, both of which had only two masts. The flagship of the fleet, the Sirius, had been built in 1780 as the Berwick for the East India trade but, as Lieutenant Philip Gidley King recorded, it was badly burnt in a fire before being bought, rebuilt and renamed by the navy in 1786:

  She was built on the river [Thames] for an east country [East India Company] and in loading her she took fire and was burnt to the wales.14 The Government wanted a roomy vessel to carry stores abroad, in 1781 purchased her bottom and she was rebuilt with such stuff as, during the war, could be found. She went two voyages to the West Indies, as the Berwick, store ship; and without any repairs she was reported, when the present expedition was thought of, as fit for the voyage to New Holland. She was then renamed the Sirius, so called from a bright star in ye southern constellation of the Great Dog.15

  The Sirius was in no way a glamour flagship. Although the largest of the fleet, it sailed badly and slowly, and it leaked. It was later dismissed by Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, who sailed on it, as the ‘refuse of the yard’.16

  The Sirius was to carry a hundred and sixty passengers, with Arthur Phillip as its captain. Before leaving England it was fitted with extra guns, as it was intended that they could be taken ashore in the new settlement if fortifications were needed.

  Prior to the journey John Hunter, who would become a significant figure in the new colony and later serve as governor of New South Wales, had been working for Phillip helping to prepare the flagship and was on the lookout for an appointment. He explained in his journal how it came about:

  I had some reason, during the equipment of these ships, to think that I might be employed upon this service in some way or other, and as Captain Phillip was appointed Governor of the new settlement, and of course had much business to transact in London, I frequently visited the Sirius and frequently received his directions in anything that related to filling her … On the 9th of December [1786] the ship being ready to fall down the river, we slipped the moorings and sailed down to Long Reach where we took in the guns and the ordnance stores. On the 15th, I was informed by a letter from Mr Stevens, Secretary to the Admiralty, that there was a commission signed for me in that office, and desiring I would come to town and pick it up.17

  Hunter had initially been impressed with the Sirius, which he described as ‘exceedingly well calculated for the service’. He was commissioned as ‘Second captain of His Majesty’s ship Sirius with the rank of Post Captain, and with the power to command her in the absence of her Principal Captain’,18 which meant that while Phillip had overall command of the fleet, Hunter was effectively in command of the flagship. Hunter would consequently be paid the full captain’s pay and permitted to take with him four servants on the ship.

  Born in Edinburgh, the son of a shipmaster, Hunter joined the navy as a captain’s servant before becoming a seaman and then midshipman. He passed his exams to become lieutenant in 1760 but, as a man without a fortune, his rise was long and slow and he was not given his first commission for another twenty years. Hunter was 50 years old when he sailed on the Sirius.

  Other officers who sailed on the Sirius and who would play significant roles in the First Fleet story included Lieutenants William Bradley and William Dawes, and the ship’s surgeon, George Worgan, who took his piano aboard with him.

  The second navy vessel, the Supply, was the fastest ship in the fleet. Weighing only a hundred and seventy tons – about a third of the weight of the Sirius – it was to carry fifty people and a limited amount of supplies and was skippered by Lieutenant Henry Ball. With the advantage of speed came the disadvantage of capacity. As Lieutenant Philip Gidley King was to complain, ‘Her size is much too small for a long voyage which added to her not being able to carry any quantity of her provisions and her sailing very ill renders her a very improper vessel for this service.’19

  The government set in train a process to hire the rest of the fleet from private contractors. While each of the nine chartered ships was to have its own captain, or master, they were to come under the charge of Lieutenant John Shortland, the navy agent, who in turn reported to Arthur Phillip.

  On 14 September 1786 The Times ran the story that the ‘Government is now about settling a colony in New Holland in the Indian seas and the commissioners for the navy are now advertising for 1500 tons of transport’.20 Advertisements for the hire of ships were placed on public notice boards and in the newspapers.

  Within a month the government confirmed it had an acceptable bid for the supply of shipping from William Richards, a London shipping broker. Richards was born in 1735, the son of a tailor, and by the mid-1780s had become a wealthy shipbroker, having made most of his money organising shipping to the American colonies. He advised the government that he was able to provide the ships for the transportation of the convicts at a cheap rate, because he had done a deal with the British East India Company for some of them to sail on to China after dropping off the convicts and their supplies in New South Wales. All were contract merchantmen, in that they had been built and operated as commercial cargo ships and would require conversion for the carriage of the convicts.

  The Admiralty had a great deal of experience in contracting ships for the movement of troops overseas and was meticulous with the details of the contract. It was stipulated that the ships should be adequately ventilated and regularly cleaned out and fumigated. The prisone
rs were to be supplied with clothing, bedding and adequate rations, and were to be given the opportunity of exercise on deck when the ships were safely at sea.

  After all the arrangements were made, the responsibility for ensuring the contract was complied with during the voyage rested with the navy agent, which was extremely difficult because the agent could only be on one of the ships at a time and was unable to supervise the daily management of all the others while on the open sea.

  The First Fleet’s agent, John Shortland, was also responsible for supervising the conversion of the contract ships to carry convicts, which involved securing the prisoners’ accommodation behind a bulkhead below decks and building a security wall across the middle of the ship above the deck. Separate accommodation was required on those ships that carried both male and female convicts so there could be ‘no communication whatsoever with each other’, in the words of Sir Charles Middleton, comptroller of the Admiralty.21 Following the conversions Shortland was to assemble the prisoners from the hulks and gaols and load them onto the transport ships in London, Portsmouth and Plymouth.

  Shortland was 48 years old when he became the navy agent for the convict transports. He had joined the navy as a 15-year-old midshipman and served in Newfoundland, the West Indies and Gibraltar. He had then spent a fairly undistinguished twenty-five years with the navy transport service supervising the conveyance of troops – largely to and from the American colonies. Shortland’s appointment was criticised by the Admiralty, who felt that a better choice could have been made had they been consulted, but Arthur Phillip was to be impressed by Shortland and argue that his hard work contributed to the success of the First Fleet voyage.