What Is The First Fleet?

The First Fleet was 11 ships made up of 775 Convicts, Marines (Muskets) their families, Sailors & their families & cargo. Everything on board was going from Great Britain over rough seas to Australia to colonise the land. They departed England on the 13 May 1787.

HMS Sirius

It took 9 LONG months to get from Britain to Australia.

The man In Charge was Captain Arthur Phillip, he was the commodore of the Fleet. People said he was NO oil painting, which means he wasn't very handsome.

There were 6 Convict ships, the Alexander, Charlotte, Prince of Wales, Scarborough, Lady Penrhyn & The Friendship. 2 Naval ships, the HMS Supply & the HMS Sirius. 3 Store ships, the Fishburn, Borrow Dale & the Golden Grove.

Why Did They Come to Australia?

British, Scottish & Irish people traveled to Australia because they were VERY poor. Some thought they would have a better life in a different country. People were either VERY Rich, or VERY Poor.
Prisoners were sent to Australia because the prisons & hulks (Floating prisons) were OVER crowded & they needed MORE space. Punishments were VERY Harsh, if you stole something very small, for example, a handkerchief, you could be sent to Australia, or you could be executed!

 When & Where Did They Arrive In Australia?

The ships arrived to Botany Bay on the 20 January 1788. They were NOT happy with the land, so they went a bit north to Port Jackson Sydney Cove on the 26 January 1788 (Australia day). It was in Sydney Cove where they hoisted the Union Jack to claim for Great Britain.

Route Of The First Fleet

Route of First Fleet to Australia

What Happened When They Arrived In Australia?

FOOD

Since most of the Convicts were poor, they didn't know how to farm crops. It was the worst time of year to plant crops. The ground at Sydney Cove wasn't very good, it was hot, dry and infertile. Opposite of what Captain Cook said 18 years earlier. They didn't have that much food, so the settlers sometimes ate rats, dogs, crows, emus and kangaroos.

SHELTER

They didn't really have that much building materials and tools (the tools they did have were bad quality) to make a good shelter. They didn't bring enough extra clothes, so by July 1788, the HMS Supply and the Sirius went to Cape Town for more supplies. On October 1788, the HMS Supply moved Marines and Convicts to Norfolk Island to set up a new colony. The soil was better, the timber was better than Sydney Cove.

NATIVES

The Natives were scared of the settlers because they had never seen cloud people (white people) before. The settlers called the Aboriginals Indians. The Europeans dressed very well, yet they didn't really thrive colonising Australia, yet the Aboriginals look very poor,  and they survived for a LONG time.

The Burrowdale

5 FACTS ABOUT THE BURROWDALE

1. The Burrowdale was 2 years old when it was part of the First Fleet
2. The ship used to be part of the EIC (East India Company)
3. It was a storeship of the First Fleet 
4. The Captain of the Burrowdale was Hobson Reed 
5. The Burrowdale was 23m long

James Martin Born 1760

Hello, I'm James Martin, in 1785 when I was 25, I was tried at the Old Bailey and sent on a prison hulk for stealing 11 screw bolts. Two years later In 1787, they called me a good tradesman, so they put me on a ship called the 'Charlotte'. To go to an unknown 'Great south land' to help set up a colony. I was happy to go, because I was sick of living in a VERY cramped hulk. But I will really miss my family very much. 

The journey was very long, and when we arrived 9 months later, I met a man called William Bryant, who had broken the law and was sent near me where I was labouring with the other Convicts. He had a great plan to escape. A lot of people tried to escape, but failed, so it was very risky! We wanted to escape cause we were scared of being starved to death. Bryant had been hiding tools for our escape, like a compass, a map, bedding, sails, guns , fishing net and food. 

On the night of March 28th 1791, 11 of us stole the Governors boat, which was 10m long and 1.5m wide, and we rowed out of Sydney heads and away from the colony. We ran into a lot of storms, during one bad storm, we dropped our Anchor to wait it out. In the middle of the night, the anchor cable SNAPPED! We were scared that the boat would brake into pieces and we would all die. But luckily, the ocean calmed down, and the boat didn't get damaged, but we did lose an oar. 

A few times we met the Natives, some were nice and took our gifts, but most wanted to kill us, so we had to quickly leave. Once a great number of Natives tried to attack us, but we just fired our gun into the air, and they ran away. We reached West Timor on the 5th of June 1791, at the end of a 69 day, 5000km voyage. WE ALL SURVIVED!

The Route From Sydney To Timor

What I Think It Would Be Like To Have Come To Australia On The First Fleet

I think a lot of people would be disappointed because they made a lot of news about Australia and that it was a great place to live and they even made a song about going to Botany Bay, so when they arrived, the land was NO good, opposite of what Captain Cook had said about the land.

On the boats there were diseases like small pox and scurvy which made a lot of people sick. There would've been a lot of movement on the boat. There were also a lot of rules on the boat and if you were bad you got flogged and other punishments. There was no privacy. I wouldn't like to be on the boat unless I was a rich settler. 

Interesting Facts

1. Their was a lot of singing on the boats 
2. When they were trying to Colonise Australia, the Trees were so hard they tried to use gunpowder to blow up the trees
3. On the ships, their was school for anyone who wanted to join, their were 4 grades. The school books were bibles
4. The women ships arrived during a terrible thunder storm
5. The males had a WILD party during the storm
6. When they were at Rio, Everybody had to eat 10 oranges a day to prevent scurvy 
7. In the Canary Islands, the only thing they had available was onions
8. On the HMS Sirius, they had a piano onboard
9. The broad arrows that were on the convicts clothes meant that the convict was owned by the British government. 
10. Between 1788 and 1850, 162 000 Convicts arrived in Australia in 806 ships

Thanks for reading my project! 

By Caleb Gomez