The First Fleet were eleven British ships which transported a group of settlers to mainland Australia, marking the beginning of the British (and European) colonisation of Australia. It consisted of two Royal Navy vessels, three storeships and six convict transports under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. On 13 May 1787, the ships, with over 1,400 convicts, marines, sailors, colonial officials, and free settlers onboard, left Portsmouth and travelled over 24,000 kilometres (15,000 mi; 13,000 nmi) and over 250 days before arriving in Botany Bay, New South Wales, on 18 January 1788. Governor Arthur Phillip rejected Botany Bay, choosing instead Port Jackson to the north as the site for the new colony; the Fleet arrived there on 26 January 1788. The Fleet established the Colony of New South Wales as a penal colony; the first British settlement in Australia.
Lord Sandwich, together with the President of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, the eminent scientist who had accompanied Lieutenant James Cook on his 1770 voyage, advocated establishment of a British colony in Australia at Botany Bay. Banks accepted an offer of assistance from the American Loyalist James Matra in July 1783. Under Banks's guidance, Matra rapidly produced "A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" (24 August 1783), with a fully developed set of reasons for a colony composed of American Loyalists, Chinese, and South Sea Islanders (but not convicts). The decision to establish a colony in Australia was made by Thomas Townshend, Lord Sydney, Secretary of State for the British Home Office. This was taken for two reasons: the ending of transportation of criminals to North America following the American Revolution, as well as the need for a base in the Pacific to counter French expansion.
In September 1786, Captain Arthur Phillip was appointed Commodore of the fleet, which came to be known as the First Fleet, which was to transport the convicts and soldiers to establish a colony at Botany Bay. Upon arrival there, Phillip was to assume the powers of Captain General and Governor in Chief of the new colony. A subsidiary colony was to be founded on Norfolk Island, as recommended by Sir John Call and Sir George Young, to take advantage for naval purposes of that island's native flax (harakeke) and timber.
The cost to Britain of outfitting and dispatching the Fleet was £84,000 (about £11 million or US$15.68 million in 2025).
On 25 October 1786 the 10-gun HMS Sirius, lying in the dock at Deptford, was commissioned, and the command given to Phillip. The armed tender HMAT Supply (1759) was under command of Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball, who was also commissioned to join the expedition. Lt. David Blackburn was the ship's Master. On 15 December, Captain John Hunter was assigned as second captain to Sirius to command in the absence of Phillip, whose presence, it was to be supposed, would be requisite at all times wherever the seat of government in that country might be fixed.
Sirius was Phillip's flagship for the fleet. She had been converted from the merchantman Berwick, built in 1780 for Baltic trade. She was a 520-ton, sixth-rate vessel, originally armed with ten guns, four six-pounders and six carronades, Phillip had ten more guns placed aboard.
Supply was designed in 1759 by shipwright Thomas Slade, as a yard craft for the ferrying of naval supplies. Measuring 170 tons, she had two masts, and was fitted with four small 3-pounder cannons and six 1⁄2-pounder swivel guns. Her armament was substantially increased in 1786 with the addition of four 12-pounder carronades.
Ropes, crockery, agricultural equipment and a miscellany of other stores were needed. Items transported included tools, agricultural implements, seeds, spirits, medical supplies, bandages, surgical instruments, handcuffs, leg irons and a prefabricated wooden frame for the colony's first Government House. The party had to rely on its own provisions to survive until it could make use of local materials, assuming suitable supplies existed, and grow its own food and raise livestock.
The reverend Richard Johnson, chaplain for the colony, travelled on the Golden Grove with his wife and servants.
Scale models of all the ships are on display at the Museum of Sydney. The models were built by ship makers Lynne and Laurie Hadley, after researching the original plans, drawings and British archives. The replicas of Supply, Charlotte, Scarborough, Friendship, Prince of Wales, Lady Penrhyn, Borrowdale, Alexander, Sirius, Fishburn and Golden Grove are made from Western Red or Syrian Cedar.
Nine Sydney harbour ferries built in the mid-1980s are named after First Fleet vessels. The unused names are Lady Penrhyn and Prince of Wales.
The majority of the people travelling with the fleet were convicts, all having been tried and convicted in Great Britain, almost all of them in England. Many are known to have come to England from other parts of Great Britain and, especially, from Ireland; at least 14 are known to have come from the British colonies in North America; at least 15 are identified as black (born in Britain, Africa, the West Indies, North America, India or a European country or its colony). The convicts had committed a variety of crimes, including theft, perjury, fraud, assault, robbery, for which they had variously been sentenced to death, which was then commuted to penal transportation for 7 years, 14 years, or the term of their natural life.
Four companies of marines volunteered for service in the colony, these marines made up the New South Wales Marine Corps, under the command of Major Robert Ross, a detachment on board every convict transport. The families of marines also made the voyage.
A number of people on the First Fleet kept diaries and journals of their experiences, including the surgeons, sailors, officers, soldiers, and ordinary seamen. There are at least eleven known manuscript journals of the First Fleet in existence as well as some letters.
The exact number of people directly associated with the First Fleet will likely never be established, as accounts of the event vary slightly. A total of 1,420 people have been identified as embarking on the First Fleet in 1787, and 1,373 are believed to have landed at Sydney Cove in January 1788. In her biographical dictionary of the First Fleet, Mollie Gillen gives the following statistics:
While the names of all crew members of Sirius and Supply are known, the six transports and three store ships may have carried as many as 110 more seamen than have been identified – no complete musters have survived for these ships. The total number of persons embarking on the First Fleet would, therefore, be approximately 1,530 with about 1,483 reaching Sydney Cove.
According to the first census of 1788 as reported by Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney, the non-indigenous population of the colony was 1,030 and the colony also consisted of 7 horses, 29 sheep, 74 swine, 6 rabbits, and 7 cattle.
The following statistics were provided by Governor Phillip: