The First Fleet Founds Colonial Australia
Eleven ships carrying convicts and marines land at Botany Bay and begin British settlement of a continent
Quick facts
- Region
- Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, New South Wales
- Commander
- Captain Arthur Phillip
- Convicts transported, 1788-1868
- More than 162,000
What happened
The First Fleet, eleven Royal Navy and convict transport ships under Captain Arthur Phillip, left Portsmouth in May 1787 carrying more than 1,400 convicts, marines, and officials. After an eight-month voyage the fleet reached Botany Bay on 18 to 20 January 1788, but Phillip judged the site too exposed and short of fresh water. On 26 January 1788 he moved the fleet to Sydney Cove in Port Jackson and began establishing a convict settlement there. Between 1788 and 1868 Britain transported more than 162,000 convicts to Australia's penal colonies, with about 7,000 arriving in 1833 alone.
Why it matters
The settlement at Sydney Cove opened an entire continent to British colonization less than two decades after James Cook first charted its coast, at devastating and lasting cost to Aboriginal peoples who had lived there for tens of thousands of years.
How we know
The National Museum of Australia holds contemporary letters, including Arthur Phillip's own dispatch to Lord Sydney describing the settlement's first months, alongside its record of the convict transportation system's later scale.
Sources
- National Museum of Australia. Convict cargo · Primary source (author-declared)nma.gov.au · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- National Museum of Australia. Convict transportation peaks · Reputable sourcenma.gov.au · The domain "nma.gov.au" is on our Reputable source registry.
- World History Encyclopedia. The First Fleet · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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