Abstract

The transportation of convicts to New South Wales in the early years of settlement was a great deal more challenging than has generally been recognised. Arthur Phillip's success in bringing a convoy of eleven ships, including six transports carrying more than 750 convicts, on a voyage of eight months duration across the globe means we need to rethink his contribution to fitting out and managing Australia's First Fleet.

Highlights

  • There is an old story that shortly after his return from the Americas, Christopher Columbus was dining with some Spanish nobles who downplayed the difficulties involved in making this voyage

  • Ten per cent of the convicts shipped to Australia in the first seven years of settlement perished in the passage

  • We often speak of the mortality rate on the First Fleet as though it consisted only of the 21 male convicts and three women who died in the course of the voyage

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Summary

Gary L Sturgess

There is an old story that shortly after his return from the Americas, Christopher Columbus was dining with some Spanish nobles who downplayed the difficulties involved in making this voyage. The transportation of convicts to New South Wales in the early years of settlement, and the First Fleet in particular, was a great deal more challenging than has generally been recognised Phillip described it as a voyage 'ʹto the extremity of the globe'ʹ. To the best of our knowledge, no one had ever managed a convoy of six transports carrying more than 750 convicts, and there was certainly no one had tried to manage them on a voyage of eight months duration to the far side of the globe This means that we need to rethink the contribution of Arthur Phillip (along with other key figures such as Evan Nepean, the Under Secretary of the Home Office, and William Richards, the First Fleet contractor) in fitting out and managing Australia'ʹs First Fleet. This paper explores Phillip as a leader and manager of men, and in the spirit of Columbus'ʹs Egg, it does so through a series of incidents and anecdotes associated with the outward voyage

Commissioning the Fleet
Sea provisions
Commanding the Fleet
Managing the Fleet
Crew protests
Shipboard discipline
Manager of a floating prison
Convict rights
Conclusion
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