Second Fleet (Australia)

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The Second Fleet frequently is regarded as being the group of three convict ships which arrived together at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, New South Wales in late June 1790. These ships were Surprize, Neptune, and Scarborough. A more recent view is to consider all the ships which were intended to sail to Australia together in 1789 as constituting the Second Fleet. According to this viewpoint, it should also include the HMS Guardian, Lady Juliana or Lady Julian and Justinian.

[edit] Origins and history

The Surprise, Neptune and Scarborough were contracted from a firm of former slaving contractors who undertook to transport, clothe and feed the convicts for a flat fee of £17 7s. 6d per head, whether they landed alive or not.

They left England on 19 January 1790, with 1,006 convicts (928 male and 78 female) on board. They made only one stop on the way, at the Cape of Good Hope, in southern Africa. Here 20 male convicts, survivors from Guardian, were taken on board. The three vessels made a faster trip than the First Fleet, arriving at Port Jackson in the last week of June 1790, three weeks after Lady Julian, and one week after the storeship Justinian.

The passage was relatively fast, but the mortality rate was the highest in the history of transportation to Australia. Of the 1,026 convicts embarked, 267 (256 men and 11 women) died during the voyage (26%).

On Neptune they were deliberately starved, kept heavily ironed, and frequently refused access to the deck. Scurvy could not be checked. On Scarborough, rations were not deliberately withheld, but a reported mutiny attempt led to the convicts being closely confined below decks.

Captain William Hill, commander of the guard, afterwards wrote a strong criticism of the ships' masters stating that “the more they can withhold from the unhappy wretches the more provisions they have to dispose of at a foreign market, and the earlier in the voyage they die, the longer they can draw the deceased's allowance to themselves”.

[edit] Arrival at Port Jackson

On arrival at Port Jackson, half naked convicts were lying without bedding, too ill to move. Those unable to walk were slung over the side. All were covered with lice. At least 486 sick were landed (47% of those embarked). The remainder were described as “lean and emaciated” and exhibiting “more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country”.

Among the arrivals on the Second Fleet were D'Arcy Wentworth and his convict mistress Catherine Crowley, on Neptune, and John Macarthur, then a young lieutenant in the New South Wales Corps, and his wife Elizabeth, on Scarborough.

When news of the horrors of the Second Fleet reached England, both public and official opinion was shocked. An enquiry was held but no attempt was made to arrest Donald Traill, master of Neptune and described as a demented sadist, or bring a public prosecution against him, the other masters, or the firm of contractors. They had already been contracted by the government to prepare the Third Fleet for sailing to Port Jackson in 1791.