Lady Penrhyn (ship)

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The Lady Penrhyn was a First Fleet transport ship of 338 tons, built on the River Thames in 1786. Her master, William Cropton Sever, was part-owner. John Turnpenny Altree was surgeon to the convicts, and Arthur Bowes Smyth was surgeon to the ship. She left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying 101 female convicts, and arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia, on 26 January 1788. She had been chartered by the British East India Company, and left Port Jackson on 5 May 1788 to sail to China for a cargo of tea. She arrived back in England in mid August 1789.

The Lady Penrhyn was part-owned by London alderman and sea-biscuit manufacturer William Curtis.^[1]

Curtis was a London Lord Mayor of the 1790s, who sent a regular tea ship to China. Curtis was affectionally known as 'Billy Biscuit' because of his family links to sea biscuit manufacture. Curtis' speech about reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic', belied his literacy level which didn't have a lot to do with his success in life.

The list of stores unloaded from the Lady Penrhyn on 25 March 1788 at Port Jackson has been widely quoted in books on the First Fleet. In Sydney Cove 1788 by John Cobley ^[2] the amount of rice unloaded is given as 8 bram. This amount has been repeated in various books on the First Fleet. Bram, however, is not a unit of measurement and the original log entry lists the amount of rice as 8 barrels. ^[3]

she was built by Thames in 1786

[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.
• Arthur Bowes Smythe's journal aboard the Lady Penrhyn - State Library of NSW