Lady Penrhyn (ship)
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The Lady Penrhyn was a First Fleet convict transport. She left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787, carrying 101 female convicts, and arrived at Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia, on 26 January 1788. On her return voyage she was the first Euopean vessel to sight the Kermadec Islands and Penrhyn Atoll in the Cook Islands.
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[edit] Voyage to Australia
The Lady Penrhyn was a First Fleet transport ship of 333 tons, built on the River Thames in 1786. Her master, William Compton 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 Lord Mayor of London in 1795–6, 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]
The Lady Penrhyn carried the first horses that came to Australia, which it is thought to have consisted of one stallion, one colt, three mares and two fillies from Cape Town, South Africa.[4]
[edit] Return Voyage
In an attempt to put into execution one of the reasons given for founding the Botany Bay colony, that is, to use the colony as a base to develop the fur trade of the North West Coast of America and for trade with China, Korea and Japan, Lady Penrhyn was under a contract with George Mackenzie McCaulay, an alderman of the City of London, to go to the "North West Coast of America to Trade for furrs & after that to proceed to China & barter the Furrs &ca for Teas or other such Goods..."[5] Her owners had obtained a license to sail to the North West coast from the South Sea Company, which still maintained its ancient monopoly rights over British trade to the eastern Pacific.[6]
The Lady Penrhyn departed Sydney Cove May 5 1778 and sailed north into the South Pacific. On 31 May the Kermadec Islands were sighted—Macauley Island was named after McCaulay and Curtis Island was named after William Curtis.[7] The poor condition of the ship and sickness among her crew compelled the Lady Penrhyn to turn back from this voyage when she had gone only as far as Tahiti, where the crew recovered and the ship was repaired. She then visited and named Penrhyn Island - the atoll of Tongareva in the Cook Islands - on August 8, arriving at Macao on October 19, 1788, then proceeding upriver to Canton (now Guangzhou) to take on a cargo of tea.[8]
[edit] See also
[edit] Citations
- ^ Byrnes, D. The Blackheath Connection: The Phantom First Fleet to Australia, Available [online] http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/blackheath/phantom.htm
- ^ Cobley, John, 1914-1989. Sydney Cove, 1788. London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1962.
- ^ Australian Joint Copying Project. Reel 5777, piece 4376, part 9. Canberra : National Library of Australia, c1988
- ^ Bain Ike, (chief exec.) The Australian Encyclopaedia, p. 1679, Horses, Australian Geographic Pty. Ltd., 1996
- ^ Smyth, Cf. Fidlon and Ryan p. 86
- ^ South Sea Company Court of Directors Minutes, 8 and 10 March 1787, South Sea Company Papers, British Library, Additional MS 25,521; cited in Edouard A. Stackpole, Whales and Destiny, Amherst, U. Mass., 1972, p. 118.
- ^ Hīroa (1953), p 36
- ^ Smyth, "Voyage"; Fidlon and Ryan, Journal.
[edit] References
- Hīroa, Te Rangi (Peter. H. Buck) (1953), "Explorers of the Pacific: European and American Discoveries in Polynesia", Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication 43 (Honolulu, Hawaii: Bernice P. Bishop Museum), OCLC 646912113, http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-BucExpl.html
- Arthur Bowes Smyth, "A Voyage to Botany Bay & Oteheite, 1787, by A.B.S. Surgeon, Lady Penrhyn", National Library of Australia MS 4568. Cf. G. Fidlon and R.J. Ryan (eds.), The Journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth: Surgeon, Lady Penrhyn, 1787-1789, Sydney, Australian Documents Library, 1979, p.86.
[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
- Lady Penrhyn, First Fleet Fellowship Victoria Inc, http://firstfleetfellowship.org.au/ships/hms-lady-penrhyn/, retrieved 2012-02-22
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