HMS Sirius
Naval ship
The flagship of the First Fleet, HMS Sirius was fitted out as an armed storeship with 20 guns. It was required to carry personnel for the penal settlement, embarking some 136 seamen, marines and officers, as well as her share of provisions and stores for Botany Bay. Sirius was selected over other purpose-built warships because of its storage capacity.
From the beginning of the voyage Sirius was so heavily loaded with provisions for the long voyage that it sailed poorly. It carried, among other things, four boats and even the ship surgeon’s piano. In a letter to his mother midshipman, Daniel Southwell (1787) described the extra provisions that were added to Sirius at the Cape of Good Hope:
Were you to take a view of our ship below you would be apt to take it for a livery stable of note … Among the stock are many of the feathered kind, and also plants of various sorts. These all together will take up much room, and the ship is lumber’d. The people, considering the number, are much crouded, for the cattle are to occupy a deck which till now was theirs…
It made only one successful voyage after the First Fleet, travelling to the Cape of Good Hope for supplies in October 1788. After being wrecked on a reef off Norfolk Island on 19 March 1790, the remnants of Sirius’s hull finally disappeared beneath the ocean two years later.
Ship size
Length 35.5 metres (110 feet); width: 9.8 metres (32 feet)
Weight
549 tonnes (540 tons)
First Fleet Ships
First Fleet Ships
At the time of the First Fleet’s voyage there were some 12,000 British commercial and naval ships plying the world’s oceans
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The ships
First Fleet Ships
Alexander
Length: 34.75 metres (114 feet); width: 9.5 metres (31 feet); weight: 460 tonnes (452 tons)
First Fleet Ships
Borrowdale
Length: 22.7 metres (75 feet); width 6.7 metres (22 feet); weight: 276 tonnes (272 tons)
First Fleet Ships
Charlotte
Ship size length: 32 metres (105 feet); width: 8.5 metres (28 feet); weight: 343 tonnes (338 tons)
First Fleet Ships
Fishburn
Length: 31.4 metres (103 feet); width: 8.8 metres (29 feet wide); weight: 384 tonnes (378 tons)
First Fleet Ships
Friendship
Length: 22.9 metres (75 feet); width: 7 metres (23 feet); weight: 282 tonnes (278 tons)
First Fleet Ships
Golden Grove
Length: 31.4 metres (103 feet); width: 8.8 metres (29 feet); weight: 336 tonnes (331 tons)
First Fleet Ships
HMS Supply
Length: 21.3 metres (70 feet); width: 7.9 metres (26 feet); weight: 173 tonnes (170 tons)
First Fleet Ships
Lady Penrhyn
Length: 31.3 metres (103 feet); width: 8.2 metres (27 feet); weight: 337 tonnes (333 tons)
First Fleet Ships
Prince of Wales
Length: 31.3 metres (103 feet); width: 8.8 metres (29 feet); weight: 356 tonnes (350 tons)
First Fleet Ships
Scarborough
33.9 metres (111 feet, 6 inches); width: 9.1 metres (30 feet, 2 inches); weight: 417.5 tonnes (411 tons)
First Fleet people
First Fleet Ships
Ambition and adventure: the early life of Arthur Phillip
We looked back at the early life of Phillip, who had enjoyed an extraordinary career before he even set foot on a boat bound for Botany Bay
First Fleet Ships
John Hudson
Described as ‘sometimes a chimney sweeper’, John Hudson was the youngest known convict to sail with the First Fleet
First Fleet Ships
John ‘Black Caesar’
Convict John ‘Black’ Caesar became Australia’s first bushranger when he fled the settlement in December 1795 and led a gang of fellow escapees in the bush surrounding Port Jackson
First Fleet Ships
James Ruse
Ex-convict James Ruse became the first person in NSW to receive a land grant when Governor Phillip gave him 30 acres at Parramatta in April 1791