2 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



sight, and, if possible, to place it where it might work out its own 

 redemption without fear of spreading the contamination with which 

 it must taint its present crowded surroundings. 



The rich plantations of Virginia and the Carolinas, that had so 

 profitably absorbed and assimilated many thousands of British 

 felons in the past, were now closed against foreign bondsmen. 

 A shipload that had been experimentally sent to the pestiferous 

 west coast of Africa had perished with a celerity that forbade a 

 continuance of a plan attended with such inexorably fatal results. 



The detailed reports of Captain Cook's discoveries in the great 

 southern land, practically uninhabited, healthful, beautiful, and, 

 best of all, isolated, gave a fresh direction to the efforts of the Pitt 

 Ministry. With prompt decision the celebrated orders-in-council 

 were issued on the 6th of December, 1786, and the district vaguely 

 known as Botany Bay was designated a penal settlement, and 

 provided with a court of judicature and a form of government 

 supposed to be favourable to the development of a community so 

 unnaturally constituted. 



Tenders for the conveyance of about 800 convicts to the 

 Antipodes were called for by the Admiralty in September, 1786, 

 and the final result of their selection was the chartering of six 

 transport ships, named respectively the Alexander, the Scar- 

 borough, the Charlotte, the Lady Penrhyn, the Prince of Wales 

 and the Friendship, together with three store-ships, the Fishbourne, 

 the Borrowdale and the Golden Grove. Of the nine vessels the 

 largest, the Alexander, was only 450 tons burthen, and the entire 

 tonnage of the fleet was a trifle over 3,000, or less than half the 

 burthen of most of the ocean liners that may now often be seen in 

 the waters of Port Phillip. 



The guidance and protection of this miscellaneous flotilla was 

 committed to His Majesty's frigate Sirius, herself only a converted 

 merchantman that had been purchased by a parsimonious Govern- 

 ment from the East India Company. She mounted only twenty 

 six-pounder guns, but was a fair sailer of about 520 tons, and on 

 the matter of comfortable accommodation was well suited to a 

 voyage of long duration. 



Captain Arthur Phillip, B.N., then in his fortieth year, was 



