HMS Gorgon (1791)

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HMS Gorgon was a 44 gun 5th rate frigate of 911 tons, converted to a storeship.

Under Captain John Parker she went to New South Wales in March 1791, about the time of the Third Fleet, arriving on 21 September. She carried six months provisions for 900 people in the starving colony and Watkin Tench said “we hailed it with rapture and exhilaration”. She also carried about 30 convicts, and Philip Gidley King who was returning to the colony to take up the post of lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island.

On 18 December 1791 Gorgon left Port Jackson, taking home part of the marine contingent, sent by the First Fleet to guard the convicts, including Tench, Robert Ross, William Dawes, and Ralph Clark. She also carried samples of animals, birds and plants from New South Wales. At the Cape of Good Hope ‘’Gorgon’’ took on board Mary Bryant, her daughter Charlotte, and the four surviving male convicts involved in an escape from the penal colony. She also took on board four of the mutineers of HMS Bounty who had been captured in Tahiti by HMS Pandora and survived the wreck of that vessel. During the voyage many of the children on board, including Charlotte Bryant, died of heat and illness.

Gorgan arrived at Portsmouth on 21 June 1792, discharging her cargo of marines, escaped convicts, and mutineers.

[edit] Further reading

• Bateson, Charles, The Convict Ships, 1787-1868, Sydney, 1974.
• Gillen, Mollie, The Founders of Australia: a biographical dictionary of the First Fleet, Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1989, pp.433.