First Fleet

First Fleet, first shipment of British convict settlers to Botany Bay in Australia, under the policy of transportation. The original group of convicts sent under the leadership of Captain Arthur Phillip sailed from Portsmouth on May 13, 1787, as part of an eleven-strong fleet consisting of two Royal Navy ships—Sirius and Supply—six transports—Alexander, Lady Penrhyn, Charlotte, Scarborough, Friendship, and Prince of Wales—and three store vessels—Fishburn, Golden Grove, and Borrowdale. It was this convoy which, some time after its arrival in Botany Bay, came to be known as the First Fleet; the term was later further extended to connote not only the ships and their voyage but also the people involved. “First Fleeter”—a contemporary usage—refers to an Australian who can trace ancestry back to a passenger in the First Fleet.

Assembling of ships, supplies, crews, and other requisites began during the winter of 1786-1787 but the operation fell quickly into disarray until taken over by Arthur Phillip, whose leadership qualities and prodigious capacity for organization transformed the whole enterprise. His discipline continued to be influential after embarkation. An extremely dangerous 24,000-km (15,000-mi) voyage via Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, and Cape Town in the relatively small ships was accomplished in about 250 days with the loss of only 32 passengers out of 1,475. More than 1,000 people safely arrived at Botany Bay on January 18, 1788, to begin the new settlement. One of the best contemporary accounts of this extraordinary voyage is Captain-Lieutenant Watkyn Tench's A Narrative of The Expedition to Botany Bay (1789).