Botany Bay New South Wales Australia
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Endeavour continues northwards along the coastline, keeping the land in sight with Cook charting and naming landmarks as he travels.
A little over a week later, the explorers come across an extensive but shallow inlet, and upon entering it moor off a low headland fronted by sand dunes.
Cook and crew make their first landing on the continent, at a place now known as Botany Bay, on the Kurnell Peninsula, and make contact of a hostile nature with the Gweagal Aborigines, on April 29.
As the ships sail into the harbor, they notice Aborigines on both of the headlands.
At about 2 PM, they put the anchor down near a group of six to eight huts.
Two Aborigines, a younger and an older man, come down to the boat.
They ignore gifts from Cook.
A musket is fired over their heads, which wounds the older man slightly, and he runs towards the huts.
He comes back with other men and throws spears at Cook's men, although they do no harm.
They are chased off after two more rounds are fired.
The adults had left, but Cook finds several Aboriginal children in the huts, and leaves some beads with them as a gesture of friendship.
James Cook's landing marks the beginning of Britain's interest in Australia and in the eventual colonization of this new Southern continent.
The expedition's scientific members commence the first European scientific documentation of Australian fauna and flora.
At first, Cook had bestowed the name "Sting-Ray Harbour" to the inlet after the many such creatures found here; this was later changed to "Botanist Bay" and, finally, Botany Bay after the unique specimens retrieved by the botanists Joseph Banks, Daniel Solander and Herman Spörin.Because the young botanist on board the ship, Joseph Banks, discovers thirty thousand specimens of plant life in the area, sixteen hundred of them unknown to European science, Cook names the place Botany Bay on May 7.
The British government in 1786 had announced its plans to make Australia a penal colony, largely because “transportation” of convicts to North America is no longer an option.
The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships that sail from Great Britain on May 13, 1787, consisting of ten civil officers, two hundred and twelve Royal Marines, including officers, twenty-eight wives and seventeen children of the marines, eighty-one free persons, five hundred and four male convicts and one hundred and ninety-two female convicts.
This represents three hundred and forty-eight free persons and six hundred and ninety-six prisoners, a total of one thousand and forty-four, to establish the first European colony in Australia, in the region which Captain Cook had named New South Wales.
Orders-in-Council for establishing the penal colony had been issued in London on December 6, 1785.
The fleet, led by Captain (later Admiral) Arthur Phillip, arrives at Botany Bay between January 18 and 20, 1788.
HMS Supply arrives on January 18; Alexander, Scarborough and Friendship arrive on January 19, and the remaining ships on January 20.
This is one of the world's greatest sea voyages—eleven vessels carrying about one thousand four hundred and eighty-seven people and stores and traveled for two hundred and fifty-two days for more than ffiteen thousand miles (twenty-four thousand kilometers) without losing a ship.
Forty-eight people had died on the journey, a death rate of just over three per cent.
This is a remarkable achievement given the rigors of the voyage, the navigational problems, the poor condition and seafaring inexperience of the convicts, the primitive medical knowledge, the lack of precautions against scurvy, the crammed and foul conditions of the ships, poor planning and inadequate equipment.
The British soon realize that Botany Bay does not live up to the glowing account that the explorer Captain James Cook had provided.
The bay is open and unprotected, fresh water is scarce, and the soil is poor.
First contacts are made with the local indigenous people, the Eora, who seem curious but suspicious of the newcomers.
The area is studded with enormously strong trees that the convicts try to cut down, but their tools break and the tree trunks have to be blasted out of the ground with gunpowder.
The primitive huts built for the officers and officials quickly collapse in rainstorms.
The marines have a habit of getting drunk and not guarding the convicts properly, while their commander, Major Robert Ross, drives Phillip to despair with his arrogant and lazy attitude.
Phillip worries that his fledgling colony is exposed to attack from the Aborigines or foreign powers.
Phillip and a party that includes John Hunter depart the Bay in three small boats on January 21 to explore other bays to the north.
The party returns on January 23.
The party is startled on the morning of January 24 when two French ships are seen just outside Botany Bay.
This turns out to be a scientific expedition led by Jean-François de La Pérouse.
The French had expected to find a thriving colony where they could repair ships and restock supplies, not a newly arrived fleet of convicts considerably more poorly provisioned than themselves.
There is some cordial contact between the French and British officers, but Phillip and La Pérouse never meet.
Lapérouse takes the opportunity to send his journals, some charts and also some letters back to Europe with a British naval ship from the First Fleet—the Sirius.
He also obtains wood and fresh water.
The French ships will remain until March 10, but will never return to France, being wrecked with the loss of nearly all lives near Vanikoro Island in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu).
The British receive him courteously, and each captain, through their officers, offers the other assistance and needed supplies.
The fleet weighs anchor on January 26 and sails to Port Jackson.
The French establish an observatory, hold Catholic masses, make geological observations, and establish a garden.
Their chaplain from L'Astrolabe is buried here (and will be celebrated annually on the anniversary of his death).
Although Phillip and Lapérouse do not meet, there are eleven visits recorded between the French and the English.
Lapérouse takes the opportunity to send his journals, some charts and also some letters back to Europe with a British naval ship from the First Fleet—Alexander.
He also obtains wood and fresh water and, on March 10, leaves for New Caledonia, Santa Cruz, the Solomons, the Louisiades, and the western and southern coasts of Australia.
Lapérouse writes that he expects to be back in France by June 1789.
The documents that he dispatches with Alexander from the in-progress expedition will be brought to Paris, where they will be published in 1797 under the title Voyage de La Pérouse.
However, neither he nor any of his men will be seen again.
He is buried in the garden of the government building.
Colonel David Collins will say his death was "to the great regret of everyone who had witnessed how little of the savage was found in his manner, and how quickly he was substituting in its place a docile, affable, and truly amiable deportment".
When Arabanoo was first cuffed, he believed the handcuffs to be unique ornaments, but he became enraged when he discovered the purpose.
In the aim of improving relations, the kidnapping of Arabanoo has not done a great deal of good.
He has not learned English very quickly, "At least not to the point where he could make Phillip any wiser on the grievances of the natives."
In any case, convicts will soon launch vigilante attacks on the Aboriginal people near Botany Bay.
They have armed themselves with whatever tools they can find, such as hatchets, shovels, and clubs.
As they arrived near the bay, a body of natives ambushes them, and in the skirmish most of the convicts flee.
Those who flee back to the camp alert the military to the attack.
An officer with a detachment of marines quickly rushes to their aid; however, they are too late to repel the natives, which had left one convict dead and seven severely wounded.
Arthur Phillip seeks no vengeance against the natives for this event, as the convicts had hostile intentions, and instead deals punishments on the convicts involved.