Charlotte (ship)
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The Charlotte was a First Fleet transport ship, built on the River Thames in 1784, and weighing 345 tons. She was a heavy sailer, and had to be towed down the English Channel for the first few days of the voyage. Her master was Thomas Gilbert, and her surgeon was John White, principal surgeon to the colony. She left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying eight-eight male and twenty female convicts, among them the later-to-be-famous Mary Bryant, and arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia, on 26 January 1788. She left Port Jackson on 6 May 1788 bound for China to take on a cargo of tea, under charter to the East India Company. On her return to England on 28 November 1789 she was sold to a firm for the London to Jamaica run, and was lost off Newfoundland in November 1818.
[edit] Popular culture
An early scene of the film National Treasure depicts the lead characters discovering the Charlotte frozen in an Arctic wasteland. The obvious mystery of how the ship ended up so far off-course is explained through technobabble.
[edit] Further reading
- Gillen, Mollie, The Founders of Australia: A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1989.
- Bateson, Charles, The Convict Ships, 1787–1868, Sydney, 1974.
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