On this day 221 years ago, a fleet of eleven ships carrying about 1400 people landed at Port Jackson, ready to start a new colony called New South Wales. They had set out from England some eight months previously, on 13 May 1787, and landed at Tenerife, just off the west coast of Africa before crossing the Atlantic to land at Rio de Janeiro, then re-crossing the Atlantic to land at Cape Town in South Africa, and finally crossing the Indian Ocean and sailing to the south of Australia and up the east coast to New South Wales.
The ships first landed at Botany Bay in New South Wales, but that location was considered unsuitable, so about a week later they moved north to Port Jackson, landing on the day now celebrated as Australia Day. Captain Arthur Phillip, the man who had been appointed Governor of the new colony, named the location Sydney Cove. Some 48 people had died on the journey and a further 21 had been discharged or had deserted, and 22 babies had been born.
One of the main aims of the new colony was to solve the overcrowding problem in England’s prisons. The majority of the people in the First Fleet were convicts, and over the next 60 years more than 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia. The convicts and other arrivals on the First Fleet were poorly equipped for settling in the new country, and relationships with the local indigenous people were on the whole poorly handled; nevertheless the colony thrived and grew into a prosperous nation.